I made a decision based on what I felt was right, not based on who has donated and who hasn't. If you truly believe that's how I make my decisions, then that's your choice. However, if this was true, Crunchy would still be playing and several in Seven Laws who have never donated would be gone.
The decision may not be what everyone agrees with, but I currently feel it is the correct decision. However, I'll leave it open for a second look (an appeal), as it's obvious that many feel what happened deserves some sort of punishment. As always, I had to make a quick decision based on what I knew at the time.
The facts:
- Crunchy came upon an exploit that worked. At first I felt he deserved at least a suspension, and he was blocked from logging in. After some time I came to the conclusion the suspension should be modified to a banishment based on other evidence that came about a couple of days ago.
- Seven Laws gang was given a massive amount of credits. Crunchy stated he got a huge raise at work via gang mail, and wanted to share.
- The Seven Laws gang vault was emptied by me, ignoring the fact they may have had some in there that were legit. After checking the logs, it ended up being a good call.
- All credit use was reverted back to pre-exploit levels.
- Everyone who benefited from the credit use, other than Crunchy, notified staff shortly after they were notified the credits were not legit.
- Crunchy, in an attempt to help AL staff, notified us of the exact exploit and how to fix it.
- Crunchy stated he was in the process of notifying us about what happened when I discovered something amiss.
- No one in Seven Laws continued to use the credits after being notified they were from an exploit.
- The exploited page was taken down promptly until Err fixed the issue, which took approximately 2 hours. No one else benefitted from the exploit.
While the law is not the same everywhere, here in California receiving stolen property is not a crime unless you know it is stolen. However, our case is not black and white, as there is some grey area here that I was required to make an initial decision on based on the evidence I see (the logs).
Some questions I cannot know the real answer to. However, based on the evidence I see, I felt like I was making the proper decision.
Did they truly know it was from an exploit?
My guess is they probably knew something wasn't right, but having that many credits burning a hole in their pocket was too hard to resist. I do feel it's reasonable to believe they had no idea the credits were from an exploit though. While they did have poor judgement initially, their actions after did help their cause.
Did they try to get away with it?
I'm pretty confident they did not try to get away with it since they probably assumed it was being tracked. Since they only had the benefits for less than an hour, and notified me as soon as they knew it was from Crunchy's exploit, they went out of their way to correct the situation. No one told any fibs to try and keep a little of what they got. They said everything they did, and it was corroborated by the logs.
I'm pretty sure they notified me based on fear of being banned as well as because they thought it was the appropriate thing to do. Since everything was reverted back so quickly and the culprit locked out, I seriously didn't think it was such a major issue and felt my decision was appropriate.
