By David Wallace
C & G Staff Writer

FARMINGTON — An identity-theft report earlier this month presented a new set of circumstances for the Public Safety Department.

The Sept. 4 report posed the question of whether someone can be charged with stealing a person’s online video-game identity.

The unique report involved a 32-year-old Farmington man who had stopped playing the popular “World of Warcraft” online subscription video game in January only to recently discover that someone had accessed his character and sold much of the character’s worth.

“World of Warcraft” is a massive multiplayer fantasy game in which players create characters — elves, orcs and humans, for example — and venture about in an online world with thousands of other players. An outsider might think of it as similar to Middle Earth from “The Lord of the Rings” brought to video-game life.

Complicating the matter is that characters in the video game require players to invest a lot of time and effort to build up the characters’ powers and abilities. Consequently, people sell advanced characters online for hundreds of real American dollars. There are numerous Web sites for such transactions, including craigslist.com.

The Farmington man played the game for five years, according to the report, and he thought his character would have been worth about $1,500.

“Well, it’s an intangible thing, which means there really isn’t a value assigned to it,” explained Public Safety Department Cmdr. Frank Demers.

He said the department was networking with the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office to see if some other charge applies, perhaps a charge involving the fraudulent accessing of a computer. He did note that the case was not a high priority, which the complainant understands.

“So, it’s still under investigation,” Demers said.

The Farmington man discovered that someone had taken over his old character when a friend e-mailed him after seeing the character in the game. The Farmington man figured that the culprit somehow accessed the e-mail account linked to the character and sent an e-mail to the game’s parent site, blizzard.com, requesting that the account password be reset.

The Farmington man thought the culprit then received the new password confirmation e-mail and deleted it before the Farmington man saw what had happened.

According to the report, the complainant contacted the game’s parent company to report what had happened and found that the person accessing his character had paid for the game using a MasterCard. The Farmington man does not have a MasterCard, and feared the culprit had opened one in his name.

“That did not appear to be an issue,” said Demers Sept. 18.

The parent company put a hold on the man’s “World of Warcraft” account, the report said, and soon after sent him confirmation of a request to reset the password. The man received that e-mail and told the company not to reset the password. The company told him to file a police report.

The report said the Farmington man sent an e-mail to his friends asking if someone had accessed his account, but no one claimed responsibility.

You can reach Staff Writer David Wallace at dwallace@candgnews.com or at (586) 498-1053.