Identical Icon Scams

This can be used to obtain anywhere from 5k-20k gold every few days. Although you can make much more with other scams, this scam will never get you banned, which makes it ideal for scamming gold for your legit account. It can be worked into your daily routine and only takes about 5-10 minutes a day, just check the Auction House when you pass by.

1. Browse the Auction House for people buying gold. This can be done by opening the Auction House menu, leaving the search field and all other options blank, and hitting “Search”. Then, click “Current Bid” until it sorts items from most expensive to least expensive. The buyers are the ones that are selling crappy items for insanely high prices. Often, they will have 5 or so items all at the same price. 1053g is common.

2. Quickly type “/who [buyer's name]” to see if they’re online. If it gives you a description of the character (including their name, class, level, race, guild, and current zone), then they’re logged in and you can move on. If not, be sure to put them on your friends list and check every so often to see if they’re logged in.

3. Now that the target is logged in, hop onto a new level 1 alt (I would recommend using random letters and throwing in a few accents. Alt+141 looks identical to a lowercase “i” in-game) and say “hi sir”. When they respond, wait a few seconds and say the following. (You can copy it here and use Ctrl+V to paste it into a macro in-game)

We are sorry to inform you that there may be complications with the delivery process. Blizzard is cracking down on Real World Trading and banning many of our farming accounts. When you receive your gold, please do not spend it until one of our workers makes sure your order hasn’t been tracked and contacts you in game.

4. Most of the time they’ll probably just say “OK”, and you can log out and wait until their items aren’t in the Auction House. If they ask questions, answer them. Go along with your story that you work for the company that they’re buying gold from and Blizzard has been banning many of their farming accounts, so you have to make sure Blizzard hasn’t tracked their gold order before they can spend their gold.

5. Check the AH one or two times a day until their auctions are gone. Log back onto the same alt and whisper to the victim “Our records show you have received your order. Is this correct?”. If they say yes, continue. If not, just try again the next day.

6. Copy the following into a macro and whisper it to the victim.

We are sorry to inform you that we believe Blizzard has tracked your gold order, because the account we used to deliver your gold was recently banned. Please meet our worker in Stormwind/Orgrimmar city and return the gold so it can be electronically destroyed. You will receive your gold plus a 20% gratuity for the trouble.

7. Now hopefully they havn’t spend the gold, you meet them in either Stormwind or Orgrimmar and they hand it over. You maintain your persona as a worker from the gold selling company until they stop talking to you, send the gold to your main and delete the character.

Why you can’t get banned:
If the victim opened a ticket and reported you, they would have to admit that they bought gold, which would get them permanently banned. You also used a name that they didn’t realize was accented (Alt+141 is golden!), and if by any chance they DO report you, they’ll give the GM the wrong name.

Obviously, this only works for gold buyers who use the AH system to get their gold, it would work for others as well, however there is no easy way to find them.  Don’t use the cross-faction AH for this, as sometimes legit players use this to trade gold to an alt.