A GROUP of PlayStation 3 (PS3) players has been left high and dry after a scam artist left the lot not only out of pocket and but also their consoles offline.
Some of the more than 20 fuming gamers have made a police report against the anonymous man, entrusted to buy games online on their behalf for the popular video game console.
It all started back in February, when a user nicknamed Prinsipe offered, on game forums such as GameAxis and Play-sg, to purchase games for others from the PlayStation Network store in the United States.
The US store offers the newest games months ahead of their release in Singapore, but you need a US credit card to buy them.
Prinsipe said he was offering the service in order to chalk up his credit card points. He also offered discount packages of $88 for about 20 games, which would be shared among groups of players. Many users thought it was a deal too good to miss.
Software technician Vincent Weng, 24, said he decided to buy because he saw on the forums that Prinsipe had received good reviews from other buyers.
'At first, I questioned his reliability, but from the threads, lots of people said he was a reliable seller, so I joined,' he said.
Such pitching in to share game costs is technically not disallowed though it is understood that Sony Computer Entertainment, which makes the PS3, did not mean for the system to be used this way.
The gamers trusted him, despite only knowing him by his online handle. After corresponding via a few e-mail messages or text messages, they paid the money and received links to the games for their consoles.
But barely three months later, these same users found the games could no longer be played.
Further checks on the forums found that they had been cheated.
Process engineer Samuel Low, 30, said: 'At first I thought it was a connection problem, but even after a few days, it was the same problem.
'I went back online and realised other people had the same problem too. We put the puzzle pieces together and realised the (game) accounts had been suspended.'
They contacted Sony in the US and found that the accounts were suspended because the bill had not been paid.
One victim, a civil servant who wanted to be known only as Mr Koh, 30, said a staff member at Sony told him the credit card's owner was disputing the charges and Sony's legal department was investigating.
Generally, accounts suspended for billing reasons will be resumed once the money is paid. But for 'other more serious reasons', owners will not be able to download software updates or buy any more games online.
After compiling a dossier of Prinsipe's personal details such as his e-mail addresses and clues about his real-life identity like his bank account number and nationality, the group of disgruntled buyers recently reported the scam to the police.
The Straits Times could not reach Prinsipe despite repeated e-mail messages and phone calls to him.
Some of the victims said their options were to 'wait-and-see', live with a machine that cannot connect online or try to sell it to those who want a second-hand console.
