I'm in a tough situation (stolen account) more serious than it seems

I'm not sure how to proceed with this and would be very grateful for everyone's input.

Back story:
Last summer my brother turned 15 and received money as his main present. He noticed someone was selling a wow account in the local ads on a site like craiglist and wanted to use that money to pay for the account. I did my best to persuade him for a couple of weeks not to buy it and made him aware of all the risks associated with buying an account (recovery etc.) and that he could spend the money in a better way. After a couple of weeks of being undeterred and persistent nagging in my ear:laugh: I gave in and used my paypal (The form of payment the seller wanted the money in) and sent the payment. (My brother reimbursed me for this with his cash)

- The account was $110
- My brother paid for several months of membership costing around $40-50
- Also bought other in game upgrades costing around $40-50

Now, things start to get interesting.

My brother had the account for 8 months completely fine. But, last month he received emails from wow that customer support tokens had been submitted (basically someone had tried to recover the account). He only told me this today. Four to five customer case reports were submitted, whereupon the latest one was 'accepted.' In the emails my brother received, the person making the claim had told wow customer support that his account had been hacked. I'm guessing the latest email which said CS token as 'accepted' meant wow saw the account as being hacked and allowed the recoverer an email and password change.

Unbeknown to the person recovering the account we had been receiving automatic email updates from wow informing us of the progress of these tokens- as the account during this was still registered to my brothers email.

Now for a twist.
We searched one of his characters through wows player search to see if it had been played on at all. (We did this mostly to confirm our suspicions and triangulate our data points to build a case up against the seller) And low and behold from around the date of the first recovery was filed at wow, this account started leveling up and getting achievements in game and has continued to do so to this day... lol.(I should add in here, my brother hasn’t played at all the past few months as he didn’t even have membership) This further, in my mind discounts the probability that it was a random hacker as why would they start levelling up in game? For a month?
Another implicating factor is that this person who recovered the account also bought the new wow expansion pack... lmfao. I really struggle to see why a random hacker would do this.

Now for some big twists.
- The paypal payment was sent to his wife
-I felt uneasy about sending such large payment to someone I never met at the time and to someone my brother only had spoken on the phone to (He never spoke to the wife but husband) So as a precaution I backtraced the email address the paypal account was registered with and found the wife had a facebook. (I did this, incase one day something like this happened and I needed to contact them)
-We also found the husbands facebook profile from the wifes facebook and confirmed it was him as he had uploaded his house address himself on facebook and it matched with the address saved as the payment adddress on wow. ( We took note of this at the time, again incase anything like this happened)
-The reason for selling his wow account was because they needed the money and his wife complained he played too much.
-Unbeknown to them we have their home address and other personal details.

A massive twist:
The guy is married with a wife, has kids and is an ex war vet. He toured in the middle east during the wars. (All of this found out from his facebook profile)

Now, I can't out rightly prove it was him who recovered the account but in my eyes the evidence looks pretty condemning.

A final thing to take into consideration is that I contacted wow support, spoke to someone in live chat and they said the only way for me to get access back to the account is to send photo id on top of todays newspaper of the name registered to the account. When we got the account, we changed everything but the name as we thought that might look like a to obvious real life trade on wows end and might have flagged the account- especially since the ip use to log in to it would have changed also.

Bearing in mind, the person recovering the account must have sent real life id in since we set new email, password, recovery questions and safety question and wow won’t allow you to even begin live support if you can't provide answers to them; the only way to bypass that is by sending photo id of the name registered to account- which was still the original owners. Aka the seller.

Now, sorry for all that wall of text, but I find this to be a tricky situation to deal with. Let me cliff note as

-Man sold me wow account to me on paypal.
-8 months later it's recovered.
-Account has new expansion pack bought for it, played a lot of in game time regularly over the last month.
-Name registered to the wow account was unchanged and when I contacted customer support they said the only way to recover it would be to provide real life id of the name registered to the account
-His name was still registered on the account
-Found him and his wife on Facebook
-Hes ex military
-He had to sell because wife said he was playing too much
-Wife and kids

What do I do now? We lost the mobile number my brother talked to him on, and the only source of communication they think we have to contact them is through a site like craglist. But I doubt the husband would even answer the email since it looked like he recovered it and if he’s going to do that I doubt he would answer us.

I’m thinking I should send an email to the wife explaining that the payment I sent to her last summer for a wow account has now been recovered and could she please recover it and provide me with the new details- in the most unaccusatory tone possible.

I feel slightly uneasy though since, if I remember correctly the wife made him sell because he was spending too much time on wow and sending this email could cause some friction at their home if the wife is completely innocent (which I guess she probably is). My hypothesis is the guy saw a new expansion pack came out, got wow blues and recovered the account because he got the itch again.

What do you all think? Am I right in my line of thinking and what would you do in this situation?

I want a civil solution to this.

 

I'd make an attempt to contact them, not much else you can do.

 

Try to contact him, if he refuses to help you out... Then there really is nothing you can do.

 

Alright, I'm going to send the wife an email, since that's the only email address I have.

If they are unresponsive, what do you guys think about going around their house and asking them?

 

In some situations its better to just let it go if you're at the point of going round their house. If you end up going round then don't go alone, and tell your parents where you're going and give them the address. See what his wife says first, though.

 

I certainly see that side of the argument. I'm currently composing an email that is written in a manner that seems completely dumbstruck this has happened and is not at all accusatory.

What's cooked my goose though is seeing my brother upset, as it was essentially a birthday present and hes spent a good $200 overall.

Obviously I'm not looking for trouble or anything but would just present my case and see what they have to say.

I'll update everyone with what the email says.

 

Ok, I just sent a very polite email to the wife playing dumb.

I will wait it out for a few days for a response and then review my options.

 

You state that your brother hasn't played the account in months, so why would he be that upset?
And wasting $110 on a world of warcraft account instead of just making his own account? I mean, the membership is $15 a month, the $110 could have gotten him roughly 9-10 months of membership, in which time he could have leveled up his own account.

 

Because it's 200 hundred bucks man, at that age that's a lot of money. I hear your line of thinking, but he would rather pay for someone else to have leveled up an account for him rather than spend the time doing it himself.

edit: Also, you're on the wrong site if you don't believe people should buy/sell accounts.

I have received an email from the wife and the hubby is abroad atm. She's going to contact him when she can.

 

As others have said here, try to contact them. If you can't make contact, there's not much you can do, and definitely nothing you can do that would be worth the time and effort.

You warned your brother and your concerns panned out. It's a valuable lesson. Also, be glad you barely lost any money.