Online companies are now on high alert after the recent identity theft case where Fouad Mourtada was sentenced to three years in jail by the Moroccan government for opening a false Facebook profile in the name of the Moroccan Prince, Moulay Rachid.

On another front, BackgammonMasters Mexico found several users in their systems that opened accounts with names of famous persons such as Prince William, Madonna and Tom Cruise. They were even playing some of the backgammon tournaments at the site.

After checking the activities and locations of these users they found them to be fraudulent. Luckily, these accounts were only used to play for “funny money”, at the site’s backgammon, blackjack and many other online games.

This type of behaviour is quickly becoming a trend in many online communities and websites in general, and they should not be taken lightly. Although in most cases, they do not represent a real danger to the site owners or any of its members, this kind of practice can easily be turned into some very dangerous and destructive, as these fake accounts can be (and sometimes are) used to either generate income in an illicit way, defame the person whose identity has been stolen and other types of damage.

Spokesperson for http://www.backgammonmasters.com says, “We’ve seen a trend in the industry for people to register popular names, as we call them “Gold user names” such as backgammonking, pokerking, blackjack king, etc. Celebrity names are just as popular in some of our  online backgammon rooms.

We see people in game forums even buying and selling these usernames. For these people its status, kind of like having a custom license plate. As long as the games are for fun and do not go over playing blackjack with a cute name, we are not concerned.”

Tags: Facebook, fake accounts, famous persons, Forums, Games, HTML, online games, theft case, user names