LL moves to stop Island sale fraud:

Well it looks like Linden Labs are taking some action to stop fraud.

It has been known for disreputable island owners to sell their islands to more than one purchaser, this is possible because of the delay in transfer of ownership, the owner of the island after selling the same island several times over would then 'disappear' with enough to buy several more islands.

Now LL have decided :

For new transfer requests submitted on or after Monday 10th March we will be enabling the Buyer in an island transfer to pay the Seller through their Second Life account. This will be our default transfer process.

How does it work?

The buyer will now have to have payment info on file and then both will create a support ticket through the support portal and both parties would have to confirm the details before the sale is allowed to go through and of course LL will still continue to charge US$100 (L$28000) for the transfer.

This is not completely foolproof and ways to defraud the unsuspecting buyer are always possible but on the whole this is a step in the right direction.

[UPDATE 6:10AM SLT] Also read our article in the Finance section about how this can be used to dodge VAT charges when you buy a region.

source: secondlife blog