I am so trusting and I expect the good in people. I am always floored when I see blatant evil in others. As I blogged yesterday, I opened up a new gacha re-sale store. It was actually kind of hard because there are about 44 yard sale places that I know of and many of them were all fully rented as far as the shops go and I had decided that I wanted more than a table (which I also already had). I wanted a little bit bigger place. So after hunting around, I came across Drakes' Public Gacha Car Boot owned by FDrake Resident.

     When I found it, it was already pretty full and almost completely rented. However they had just built a whole new section and I thought I was getting lucky because I found it when there were still a lot of shops open. I rented that day and by the next day the entire new section was fully rented as well. As I said yesterday, Gacha addiction, Gacha resellers, and yard sales are all over SL.

     I was all excited about my new little "thrift store." I made a cute shabby chic logo indicative of me and who I am: girly and a lover of pink. I filled up my store and blogged about it too. Today I logged in to nothing (see picture above) and was at the bottom of an empty sim drowning in the ocean. The owner of the yard sale apparently returned everyone's items en-masse without any notice and abandoned the land running off with a whole lot of monthly rent and donations that renters had just paid for a few days previous.

      To those of you that tried to visit and ended up at the bottom of the ocean, I am truly sorry. I was conned. I did not intentionally send anyone to an empty sim! I had readers send me IM's like this one:

"Hello, I am one of your devoted blog readers. I was so excited about your Gacha Shoppe, but I've tried the tp 3 times now and I am drowning in the middle of nowhere lol Help me Help me!"- kallieme

I also had similar comments left on my blog post also. Again, I am sorry and thank you for supporting me!

      As I sat in the bottom of the ocean almost like a fish with my mouth agape, I realized that this was most likely an intentional con artist scheme. My fellow renters reported that they believe they caught this same avatar in an alt attempting to open up another yard sale location the very same day. I heard they went over there in angry mob style and the place is closed already. No doubt this particular individual will probably just try to open up another place, but I am hoping that the Gacha re-sellers are a small enough group that we will figure it out and expose him. He will hopefully need to move onto another con scheme. That (and the fact that I am mad as a hornet) is why I am blogging about this. Someone that is doing something so shady needs to be exposed!

   Drake writes in somewhat broken sentences with that characteristic ellipses pattern where one never finishes a thought and always has something more to say. He is from the UK and on voice chat he speaks with a British accent. I had one person report to me that it was very cockney and not refined and another who reported that he was always well spoken when she conversed with him. Both ladies at least agreed on the British accent. He is a heavy smoker and coughs a lot on voice.  He seems to have an army of alts that he has in reserve so they are not newly made and not as obvious. This kind of activity seems to be something he has planned for and works hard at achieving so he can con as much money out of Second Life residents as possible before moving onto his next scheme.

     Possible avatars of this same person: FDrake Resident, Jamesbryon1 Resident, and z28m Resident. If you know of any others or this blog post makes you suspicious of someone, please leave them in the comments. The best offense against crime is a good defense, knowledge, and good people looking out for each other. So be cautious when you rent! I suppose that I am looking around for another shop now, but I have an awfully bad taste in my mouth. (I promise that I will get back to fashion and my normal modus operandi next post!)

Kirsten Corleone