Police in Amsterdam have arrested a teenager for stealing virtual furniture.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch police have made their first arrest of an online thief—a 17-year-old accused of stealing virtual furniture from rooms in the Habbo Hotel—a popular teen-ager networking Web site.

An Amsterdam police spokeswoman confirmed a report that the teen-ager was accused of stealing 4,000 euros ($5,864) worth of virtual furniture by hacking into the accounts of other users.

Four other 15-year-olds have also been questioned in the case, which was instigated by the Web site. They are suspected of moving the stolen furniture into their own online hotel rooms.

Habbo users can create their own characters, decorate their own rooms and play a number of games, paying with Habbo Credits, which they have to buy with real cash.

Habbo Hotel is owned by Finnish Internet company Sulake which said last month it had reached 80 million registered users of its sites in 31 countries.

(Reporting by Emma Thomasson; Editing by Dominic Evans)

Yeah, I was going to post on this. Note the exact same text.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,22762534-5014108,00.html

Given how stupid it is to actually pay money to buy virtual furniture, I find it hard to believe that you could steal enough to make $6000. How many accounts would you have to hack to get that much?
(Yes, I know, people pay a lot more money in Entropia, but it actually looks better than this)

I think this is a viral add for the website. They set up some fake’ theft’ to get their name/website in the news. Looking at the website, it looks pretty stupid. I cant imagine too many people finding it cool enough to spend money on it given the free alternatives out there.

Habbo Hotel is owned by Finnish Internet company Sulake which said last month it had reached 80 million registered users of its sites in 31 countries.

Even assuming everyone has more than one account I still have a hard time believing those numbers (users not countries).

WoW only has 8 or 9 million registered users, and it’s the biggest MMORG in the world.  Of course if this is a free registration site (I’m thinking something along the lines of Second Life) then far more people might be registered, as well as them having multiple accounts.  But that number still seems awfully high to me.

Hmm.
I’m fairly sure Matt and I have accounts that we started one afternoon when we were bored in an internet cafe.
We puttered around on there for about half an hour, got bored, and never went there again.

So, that’s two out of the 80 million…

After a bit of research, I have to say I’m surprised. Habbo hotel IS actually a big phenomenon, and raked in $30Million last year.

But that still doesnt change the fact that it’s a completely stupid idea to pay money to play it. I have to commend the programmers:- That they have suckered people(usually under 13’s and pedophiles, according to most reports on it) into buying virtual decorations for their hotel rooms is amazing.

This is to much of a cowinkie dink. I just read this book yesterday,HALTING STATE by Charles Stross. It goes into great detail of virtual fantasy games, and the one in this story has it’s bank robbed. The tech garble was too much for me to understand completely, but I can see how someone could do that. We’ve got to watch our back in fantasy land as much as we have to in the real world now. Or someone may steal your pokie thing you stored in the on line bank to kill off the zombies.