Bover87 Demodded for Account Hijacking
This issue spilled across multiple boards as longtime users provided evidence, kept up the pressure, and eventually brought about the change. Here at GUAC we decided to take a neutral monitoring of the events, since the charges were pretty serious and...iffy at the start...but after enough effort, bover's misdeeds were established and there is now one less mod at gamefaqs. This was all brought about through the actions of folks like hotdogturtle and Mecha Sonic, who worked to help prove that bover was not the original owner of the account he said was his. Through an uphill battle (as we'll see below), users in action brought about a change in the system. That's something worth noting.
Long explanation after the page break:
It Begins...
On October 8, a user named dude202_2 posted on Message Board Help that he had not visited the site in a few years and was having trouble accessing his original account, dude202. The topic quickly took an odd turn:
"Holy s***, I thought that this day would never come. Your account has been through some crazy stuff since it was first stolen from you (note to mods, I didn't have anything to do with this, but I've seen everything that happened to it)...This is the account that used to be the original dude202 account: http://www.gamefaqs.com/users/bover87/boards" --hotdogturtle--
After being filled in on more details through private messages, dude202_2 found that this moderator was now in control of both his original account and his alt, Foofer_Mucky. "This is blatant identity theft regardless of how you look at it. He has attempted to completely take my identity for himself on GameFAQs and I'm still shocked that somebody would even bother to do something like that."
At this point we were still at speculation and, although some high-profile users weighed in, the burden was on dude to show that the bover-associated accounts originally belonged to him. Other allegations came up as well:
"You would be surprised by how much the Mods and Admins are corrupted here. I know of at least 5 users on stolen accounts and the Moderators / Admins know it - they just choose not to care." -RobFord
CrazyMaori eventually closed the topic.
The Resistance...and Pressure
With the MBH topic closed, discussion spread to Hellhole and CE. Additional users weighed in:
"Do you guys think the admins/mods knew that bover_87 stole the dude202 account? It seems to be common knowledge amongst the people on Hellhole, and a lot of mods hang around there. If that is the case, I wonder why nothing has been done before now..." -The Eternal Flame
" I remember Dude202 years ago as well. Would not be surprised at all if bover stole his account. Yet nothing will be done about it. Half of hellhole is full of people who stole others accounts and the mods know it, yet don't give two s***s about it.
Bover's a lostfacts guy like TRC and Firecrotch and co. They take gamefaqs wayyyyyyyyyyyyy to seriously and literally have no lives outside of it, so they had became buddy buddy with most the mods and admins who overlook everything they do.
stuff like this is the norm for them. funnily enough considering a lot of them were on the KoS list long ago, but now are buddy buddy with most mods." -Josh__Gordon
"Haha that's hilarious. Back in my day if someone even brought up the thought it was a shared / stolen account, it was locked until EITHER party confirmed it. I guess the rules change when it's a Moderator. Especially when so many confirmed it was true. I guess it's not a matter of what you know, but really it's about what you can falsify and lie about online for proof. Gonna be funny as hell when nothing happens to him...3/4 topics on this have been closed already." -SourDiezeL
"The sig change on Foofer_mucky is pretty out there. This whole thing reeks. Hopefully he wins. Not holding my breath, though." -Stereotypicat
As the discussions went on, bover himself stayed away. Where did other mods stand? Most were waiting to see what happened like the rest of us. However, it was acknowledged that whether dude was really the original owner or not, bover had taken the account:
"what the MBH guy is saying is that the user bover_87 (bover the mod's original account) is the one who stole dude202 and had it renamed to bover87." -The Eternal Flame
"Fair enough, you're right about this." -The Admiral
As users turned their attention to the debate, additional evidence arose. Bover had taken the account years ago. Had anyone noticed? An old post from a Hellhole topic (#123) seemed to show that it was known since at least 2011 that the accounts were not originally bover's - and that mods were apathetic:
"Isn't this conclusive proof that the lead mods (since that account is RaptorLC's alt IIRC) were aware that bover didn't originally own the account though? And he was still made a mod despite this?" -The Eternal Flame
"it was common knowledge to everybody on Hellhole and Hardcore that Bover had taken the account at the time. That's not even the issue in debate here. The only question is whether "dude202_2" can provide enough proof that he is the original dude202, the person who created and owned the account up until 2009/10.
After having a short PM conversation with him, I personally do believe that he is the old user that he is claiming to be." --hotdogturtle--
"So if a known hacker was openly parading around an account that everyone knew wasnt his, why was he not banned? In fact, why was he made a god damn mod? Pathetic that if you know the mods, the rules dont apply to you" -Josh__Gordon
As for discussion on Hellhole, Krystal closed the topic.
After two weeks without any progress, CE continued to talk about the issue and argued that admins weren't taking it seriously:
"It seems a lead mod alluded to the account not being bover_87's originally, and the admins even said something to the effect of "it may have been yours at one point, but we can't verify that it was you who owned it first", which means that the account must have been stolen or given away (both of which are against the rules and used to result in bans IIRC...the evidence here (although mostly circumstantial) is suggesting that in 2010, it was stolen by someone called "rerkid" and given to bover_87." -The Eternal Flame
"the elephant in the room is raptor confirming that the account isn't bovers and no one seems to be addressing that..." -Andel
"everyone (including admins and mods) know the account was hacked and stolen. The bigger problem is that you have a mod using a stolen account on the website and the admins really don't seem to see the problem with that."-chrono625
"still not concrete proof, but here's TRC listing a bunch of accounts that definitely weren't stolen back in 2011: http://puu.sh/ck0No/25f9c08cbf.png" -lolcanada
"So now we can prove it ON THIS SITE that DicksForDinner from the spin off site is the original account owner of dude202. http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/916587-a3-awakening/41111500 Foofer Mucky is DicksForDinner (signature in first post) That topic is from 2008...
You guys cited RaptorLC, so read this topic from 2010, especially posts 3 to 6, posts 8 to 13, and posts 28 to 31). http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/573081-hellhole/58675125 It was common knowledge that bover and other users had stolen accounts (posts 28 to 31)." -StCanard
"tc could be a random dude thinking itd be funny to pull this up, but the fact remains how sad that someone has modship yet pulls s*** like this, or the fact that mods like error, raptor and burgers are constantly aware of the lostfact crews history and openly cover for them." -Josh__Gordon
"I have zero doubt that the tc is telling the truth. dude202 and I used to post on the same board together. Unless this guy is one hell of an impersonator who's managed to pick up on all of the real dude202's mannerisms, this is 100% legit. And it doesn't surprise me one bit that the administration isn't taking this seriously. Just claim the moral high ground, sweep it under the rug. Let the trolls do the real work. Once they taste blood, they'll circle like sharks and turn the whole situation into a farce by calling tc an internet nerd, and dismissing the whole thing as e-drama. I f***ing miss CJayC so much." -Mecha Sonic
dude202 himself couldn't establish that his info matched up with what he originally entered when he registered, but began providing other details to other users he knew and convinced them that he was the original dude202.
"...Given that the Moderators and Administration are clearly aware that the account was stolen a few years back and is not in the hands of it's original owner, I just find it amusing that they want to make me out as the bad guy here. This kind of thing never would've happened years ago when CJayC was still in charge. I really just wanted to see LUE again and what it has become but it's obvious that it won't happen so oh well...It's interesting that topics concerning this matter continue to get locked whenever issues are posed that the Moderators/Administrators can't answer. Still haven't seen anyone address RaptorLC, Lead Moderator, directly stating that the dude202 account didn't belong to bover. Still haven't seen anyone address the fact that my account from 2000 was renamed to match the name of an account originally created in 2006 (bover_87)." -dude202_2
It was here that Krystal, who had already been locking topics that brought up the issue, began to lose her patience:
"And you can whine all you want about it being proven. As far as the administration is concerned it has not been proven that he is guilty. Enjoy whining like a baby." -Krystal109
After calling the complaints those of a whiny baby, Krystal continued to oppose the long-time users who could vouch for dude202, setting off a lengthy exchange:
"it has been proven on this site as you have been linked multiple times to the post where raptorlc acknowledges bover isn't the original account holder...which is a bannable offense by itself. the issue at this point isn't whether the original account holder gets his account back, it is when will the account be taken away from bover as it has been proven here that it wasn't originally his account." -Andel
"Right, let's just blindly take the word of a mod with no proof. That will go over well with the community if we started allowing that to happen...You guys are all about mod corruption and mods shouldn't be able to do blah blah just because and now you are using a mods words as definitive proof that something is true." -Krystal109
"sounds like you are out of arguments tbh. all the evidence supports the fact that bover did not originally own that account which is bannable by itself, but even if nothing is done everyone will know that bover is using a stolen account and that will certainly not be a secret, it will just make the administration look like they were protecting him and no one will take him seriously as a mod" -Andel
"http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/573081-hellhole/58675125 Wow, so this topic is really interesting. But I guess if the Administrators don't trust their own Lead Moderators, they aren't going to trust known account hijacker and apparent VIP user TRC?" -dude202_2
"SlotWaste posted...'Pretty funny that Krystal was hired to handle the community, yet continues to alienate said community by blatantly disregarding their claims for no reason' It's not even just that, she's also contributing to the antagonistic and confrontational climate that she herself has claimed has led to the decline of this website. I can't imagine a more counter-productive community manager in action than this." -JazuPankuNi
"Thing is they look even worse right now as they would by claiming they changed their minds. I'm getting seriously tired of this site, and thought the new CM would steer things in the right direction, but clearly I was mistaken." -SlotWaste
"Krystal109 Posted...'You realize this would set grounds down that anyone accusing and slandering a person means you can get whatever you want?' Why do you begin with the presumption that the tc is engaging in slander? Why not operate impartially, open to the possibility that he might actually be telling the truth? This is clearly a unique case, and the tc has a lot of evidence on his side -- certainly more than 99.9% of all the random buffoons out there who might try fabricating something like this to gain special privileges. The tc has signature evidence from eight years ago, direct statements from the moderators, statements of support from "in-the-know" Hellhole regulars, character witnesses, and there's a blatant record of something fishy going on with bover's account around the time dude202 says it was stolen." -Mecha Sonic
Mecha Sonic then asked to prove who he was by saying what game they used to play together. dude202 confirmed it: "The game was Alien Adoption Agency"
"so...we have a lead mod confirming the account wasn't originally bovers, screencaps from 2010 when the account was stolen from offsite, a link on site that confirms the offsite name is correct and that is two years older, multiple long time users confirming and mecha sonic with his own way of confirming what we all know.
inb4 more one line excuses" -Nephromarn
Krystal's response was to tell all those whining babies that the topic was stupid.
"I really think this whole topic is dumb, since the only people reading it is CE and myself." -Krystal109
"I remember when the mantra used to be "if you have problems with the moderation staff, PM it to me", and now that we have a mod accused of stealing an account, it becomes "yeah, I can't actually do anything, and it's stupid of you whiny babies that you'd expect otherwise". Community = Managed" -JazuPankuNi
Krystal said "this BS is done"...and closed the topic. Keep this in mind.
The Revelation
Finally, on October 31, SBAllen himself came to CE with a breakthrough:
"At this point, we're left with two questions. The first is what to do with the account. It clearly doesn't belong to bover, but we have no reason to believe it belongs to dude202_2 either. Our solution here is pretty clear. We're simply going to close the account and be done with it.
The next question is what to do about bover. For starters, we plan to take the history of the bover87 account and move it over to his actual account. He will also be losing his moderation privileges. Even putting the moral issue of acquiring an unused account and claiming it for his own for a minute, what we're left with is someone who got their job using a fudged resume. His actual account is 4 years old. He applied for and received the job as a moderator by using a 10 year old account. Would he have gotten the job using his real account? Who knows. The fact of the matter is that he essentially lied by using an older account.
As for the future, he's always welcome to reapply with his actual account. Given that this incident isn't going to be forgotten anytime soon, I can't really speak for his chances though." -SBAllen
This is where we learned that bover had, from the start, admitted that those two accounts were not his. We also learned that bover had used the accounts to look better when applying to be a mod, although this wasn't his original goal (which was most likely to get an account with LUE access). This didn't stop Krystal from arguing right up to the end that the topics were "dumb," users were "whining like a baby" and closing down the topics because of their supposed "BS." Turns out that most of the BS was from the site's side.
Naturally the topic quickly headed toward 500 posts, with some users still dissatisfied. If any user had hijacked an account or shared accounts with others, would they be asked to give up the accounts they took and walk away without consequences? Some voices called for a bover ban. Here at GUAC, we'll support being magnanimous in victory - now that bover's a regular old user again, he's on the right side after all.
A few more issues that remain:
"I still find it altogether probable that dude202_2 is, in fact, who he claims to be. It's been a long time since he and I posted on the same board, but I don't doubt the clarity of my memory. Certainly, if a user popped up claiming to be Dais, or bekah_strife, or Kildread_2, you would probably remember enough about them to get a good feel for whether or not they're telling the truth.
Furthermore, dude_202_2 has provided information about an online game we played together back in 2000, the Alien Adoption Agency, that only about five other people on Earth could possibly know about. The odds of this being coincidence are slim.
Again, I make the same suggestion I raised in my feedback ticket and my post on TOS Discussion: quiz the guy. There are questions you can ask him that would help verify his identify." -Mecha Sonic
"I asked dude202_2 if he recognized what a certain acronym from 8 years ago stood for. He not only remembered the name, but also where it came from, which a random impersonator would not know. That, combined with old posts from the original dude202 regarding his account before he went inactive, proved to me that dude202_2 was the real dude202.
Of course it's perfectly reasonable that a site administrator would require more conclusive proof in order to turn over access to an account. But at least dude202 does have people on his side, even if our word does not hold any water in regards to solving the problem." --hotdogturtle--
"Supposedly, I heard bover's selection as a mod was due to a joke between some of the existing mods, because they all put in a referral for him to move up in the ranks quicker." -Chunkey Simmons
We'll keep an eye on any further developments.
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