Hello, friends! Today I will tell you a story related to account thefts. The information is taken from the Mzkshow channel.
Mzkshow delved into this story back in January of this year and has been closely following its developments ever since. Earlier, he released several series of videos in which it was discovered that Steam support staff were involved in the theft of skins.
Mzkshow briefly recounted everything in his video, and the subsequent post will be from his perspective:
In January of this year, I was contacted by a good friend of mine who always helps me out. Thanks to him, we managed to figure out the story with the Steam employees, for which I'm immensely grateful. He wrote the following: he provided a link to an account and said that the story would be exactly like that of the popular RU-community streamer "evelone." This account was hacked 3 months ago, when it already had a VAC block in CS for more than a year. The true owner tried to recover the account but was asked for a key. In general, the usual. However, someone knew this key and managed to restore the account with such skins.
But with a VAC ban. I then looked at this account and unfortunately didn't record anything. However, the next day my friend wrote to me again and said that the account's inventory was made private and that soon the VAC would 100% disappear, followed by the skins.
My reaction was skeptical. It all sounded insane, as lifting a VAC ban and stealing skins is a whole new level of fraud.
This is not like what I showed you a year ago. Back then, they were just stealing accounts. But lifting a ban and extracting skins is over the top. Let me remind you what we discovered a year ago: there are people who work in cahoots with Steam support staff. The fraudster first finds an abandoned account with a large inventory or an account with a ban that also has a large inventory. Then, they inform their accomplice working in support. After that, the employee reviews all the information about the account, which looks like this.
After that, he relays the information back, and then the account is restored through a regular support ticket as they have all the necessary data. Why did I consider this a "next level" theft? As far as I know, an ordinary support employee cannot lift a ban in any game. This means it must be done by someone in a much higher position. But let's discuss this in more detail a bit later.
So, I saved the ID and said I would keep an eye on this account. Just in case, I recorded what it looked like on January 11th.
Days, weeks, and months go by. From time to time, I check on the account, but nothing happens. However, on June 6th, while checking the account again, I notice that the inventory is open and it is empty—there’s nothing in it.
I become curious about when exactly the skins were extracted. I go to check inventory changes on Price Empire and find that on May 18th, the account still had skins, but on May 19th, they were gone.
This account had skins worth approximately $50,000. Yes, the skins alone are worth $26,000, but due to stickers, patterns, and other factors, their real value exceeds $50,000.
So, the account with the ban was stolen around October 2023, and only in May 2024 were all the skins extracted from it. At the time of the skin extraction, the account still had a ban in CS. If you log into the account now, the ban is still present, but the skins are gone. So, the skins were extracted somehow, bypassing the ban.
Next, I checked this account using the Steam ID and noticed something strange: it shows that the VAC ban was lifted, but the profile still displays a Game ban.
But that's not all the oddities.
Just in case, I speculated that maybe the support team removed all the skins. I’ve already shown you that this can happen, but in such cases, they usually remove graffiti and sometimes even medals.
The account still has graffiti and medals, which partly disproves my theory. So, the skins were indeed stolen from an account that has a ban in CS. This is incredible.
I continued to monitor the account and the skins. As of today, the skins haven’t appeared anywhere; the data parsers haven’t updated any information. This means they were transferred to a private account and haven't been sold yet. Also, on July 2nd, I noticed that the account's inventory was hidden.
The reason for this is unknown. What's more surprising is that the people who stole the account crafted a few badges and leveled up the Steam account. The account looked like it was at level 32 in January, and now it is at level 35. The badges were crafted on June 29th, just a few days ago. The reason behind these actions is unclear.
https://ibb.co/mBZpz5w
https://ibb.co/FHvkwTL
My assumption: the skins were stolen, and then the account was sold. It would make more sense to entirely delete the account to cover all tracks, which could also happen soon. Perhaps someone has reached a new level in skin theft. I don't exclude that this might have happened before, but I only noticed it now.
Most likely, this is not the end of the story. I will continue to monitor all the skins, and sooner or later they should appear somewhere, allowing us to gather much more information. Let's go back to the fact that the skins were stolen from an account that had a ban in CS.
As I mentioned, an ordinary support employee cannot lift a ban. But technically, it seems the ban wasn't actually lifted because, in the January log, the account had been banned for 681 days, and now it shows 857 days of the ban. So, the ban wasn’t lifted, but if you check through steamid, it says the ban is possible. This indicator could have been there in January — honestly, I don't remember, and unfortunately, I didn’t record this.
It turns out that perhaps the ban wasn't lifted, but the skins were extracted despite the ban. But again, who could do this? Clearly, it must be someone who is in some way connected to Steam. There’s no other way to accomplish this. Initially, tell me, who would go through the trouble of stealing an account with a decent inventory but banned in CS? These skins are worthless when there's a ban in CS. So, initially, the account was restored through customer support just to extract the skins. That’s all I have for now, but I’m sure this story isn’t over.
This is the first time I’ve personally witnessed skins being moved from an account banned by VAC or Overwatch, which is a complete shock to me. What do you think about this, and have you ever encountered something like this? Share your thoughts in the comments. And if you have proof of similar cases, please get in touch with me and support this post with an upvote. Good luck to everyone, and see you soon
by Kentukkis