Wednesday, August 3, 2011

RedZone’s zFire Xue Gets Four Months in Prison

Michael Prime, or zFire Xue as known to the residents of Second Life, the creator and operator of the infamous RedZone, is on his way to a small cell behind bars.

According to Tateru Nino’s blog, zFire plead guilty “for four counts of violating his probation following a prior conviction for fraud,” and “has been remanded to the custody of the US Marshals and is off for four months in prison.“ When he’s released from the penitentiary, the conditions for his parole include not being allowed to work near computers or being allowed to go on auction websites, social network sites such as Facebook, or virtual worlds, at least not without the permission of his probation officer. The section of terms Tateru Nino posted specifically stated accessing Second Life would be a violation of his terms, unless he got permission from the probation officer.


Tateru also noted that a $500 fine that was part of his sentence had been waived due to “financial incapacity.” The investigators couldn’t find the money he made off RedZone. What happened to it is unknown, but this suggests that perhaps the residents of Second Life may hear of him at least one more time in the future.

For now however, he won’t be in a position to bother the Grid for a while.

Tateru provided details of his prior conviction Here. A “Redzone Victim” responding to her blog post pointed out the “United States of America v. Michael Stefan Prime” case Here. The gotvirtual.net forum also has a lengthy thread on ZFire's sentencing.

Sources: “Dwell on it,” “Find a Case

Bixyl Shuftan

5 comments:

  1. He violated probation once, he'll do it again. Retarded space poodles like this one don't learn their lessons, they know their lessons but simply choose to ignore them.

    Something tells me we haven't seen the last of him, not by a long shot.

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  2. I agree with AJ there -- few crackers and conmen give up the thrill of the chase. Ripping people off is fun and profit! Why should they quit? Oh, because they might get some time in jail if by some small tiny chance they get caught? I've little doubt this punk will buy a laptop with his stolen money, squirrel it away at a friends house where the cops can't go, and be back in action again within a week of his release.

    It's how he gets his rush, outsmarting everyone else.

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  3. Indeed.. This has got to be good!

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  4. Seems like just yesterday SL residents and merchants were screeching about how good Redzone is and how its worth every penny to stop copybotters.
    Lolz...
    !quit

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  5. The same must finally happen to the infamous Skills Hak, who was a developer of the spyware/DDoS tool "Emerald Viewer" and now sells the Gemini CDS Ban Relay, a piece of scamware similar to Redzone.

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