Jita, The Forge - Earlier this week, the SOMER.blink lottery was robbed of approximately 110 billion ISK in liquid cash and assets by one of its Claims Administrators, Daquaris. Yesterday, however, Somerset Mahm of SOMER Blink confirmed that the corporation had been able to recover some of its stolen assets from Daquaris without payment.
Somerset Mahm confirmed that the theft originally took cash and assets worth approximately 110 billion ISK and negotiated with Daquaris the return of all stolen material goods for the sum of 94 billion ISK, as stated by Andrev Nox of SOMER in a previous press release.
Mrs Mahm said "I had requested that Daquaris sell the assets back to us to avoid having to re-acquire them. Daquaris contracted me a large amount of assets back for 0 ISK per contract and then set one large contract at the end with the total value of all assets. I accepted all contracts for 0 ISK and then left the remaining contract to him. This by itself reduced the amount he was able to remove by approximately 25 billion ISK. He also contracted seven Thanatos-class carriers to me for 6 million ISK, instead of 6 billion."
SOMER now estimates its total losses from the theft at "approximately 65 billion ISK, 19.9 of that in liquid ISK." As stated in previous coverage of the theft, SOMER limits the access of each employee to cash and assets and anticipates no difficulty in continuing to operate.
Many ship hulls, including some 30 rare, pirate-faction battleships, still remain in Daquaris' possession but SOMER Blink still hold possesion of some very expensive assets, including 8 limited edition prize hulls from past Alliance Tournaments.
Mahm closed by stating that "The theft was in no way due to Blink's inherent insecurity, nor any long-term subterfuge... He [Daquaris] simply took the opportunity available."
TornSoul, CEO of BIG (well-known for the BIG lottery amongst other services), gave her thoughts on the matter. She described SOMER's security measures as "...Basic as can be, but also as effective as can be given the tools we have." She also said she was impressed that "...They indeed had the capital still intact... to make the buy back at all" and was "extremely surprised by SOMER's success."
The SOMER.blink lottery service has continued to run despite the theft of 110 billion ISK by ex-employee and fomer friend of the CEO, Daquaris, but some 25 billion ISK were recovered after the thief contracted the goods back to the lottery with only one of the contracts carrying a price.
Daquaris himself remains unavailable despite numerous attempts to get in touch.
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