My GTA Online RP forgery scheme is rapidly escalating and I won’t stop

I recently decided to stretch my creative muscles and engage in a new and exciting hobby: I’ve engaged in a slow escalation of increasingly sophisticated fraud in a video game to deliberately mislead and mock the in-game police officer role-players. Some people spend their nights playing Battle Royale or fighting Margit the Fell Omen. I, however have been managing an intricate rental paperwork scheme. GTA Online role-play. It started small, with a few silly fibs, but it’s escalated into what has turned out to be a fantastic confidence-building exercise (literally). Now, I’m building an entire empire of fraud.

In a GTA Online New Day is a role-playing site. It focuses on grounded, realistic roleplay. I’ve been building up my characters’ stories on the server for about 10 months; I also volunteer as staff and help with narrative and administrative work. All the cops on the server are real players. They pull people over for traffic violations and investigate murder mysteries. Becks Lawson is my main character and tries his best to keep the law in good standing as a representative for the state. Jessica Butler, however, doesn’t give up.Fuck. And in order to stay one step ahead of the police, she’s created a fictional rental business and associated paperwork.

Butler, a self-identified sovereign citizen and cryptid hunter who infuriates many members of the force. As Butler, I have no plans to let things like “jail time” or “an increasingly serious investigation” stop me. And so, in order to throw people off, I invented a persona for Butler to use in her scheme: “Shady Dan,” the mysterious and fully-fictional purveyor of used cars, and also barbeque. Don’t believe me? Even has his own website. The contraband was fooled by Josh Robertson (detective on the case), and I was allowed to leave with it.

The New Day server allows players to earn money with either a universal income or a job in a civilian company. There are many people who sell coffee in charming cafes and run taxi companies. A form of currency known as bands is created by criminal activities like robbery or drug sales. These bands are a mix of counterfeit and real cash, and so they must be “washed” before they can be safely used. NPC contacts provide cars to clean bands. They then exchange the fake currency for actual money. It’s not an entirely accurate representation of the real-life mechanics of money-laundering, but that’s OK — the point is to establish a criminal economy.

Butler is the most prolific wash-man on the server, and also a key lynchpin within the criminal economic. While she is funding major criminal gangs from her car, Butler looks on. But at this point, she moves so much volume that the Shady Dan scheme has become necessary to stop a Major Crimes Division from cracking down on Butler and all the havoc she’s been wreaking on the state.

Rockstar Games, via Polygon

So far, the paperwork and web presence seem to have fooled the law – well enough, anyway. Yes, the police have had some questions, but they’ve been along the lines of, “Why are you renting cars from a man named Shady Dan?” and “Why does Shady Dan have a picture of himself on hIs car rental paperwork?”

At one point, a cop squinted at my paperwork, and then said, “You know, it’s funny. The paperwork says that this is a ‘Sultan’, but it’s really a ‘Bravado’.”

“And somehow, an extra letter ended up in the license plate on the form,” said his partner.

“That is funny,” I agreed. “Well, you know how Shady Dan is. He was probably … engrossed in a good book, or perhaps enjoying a television programme.” The officers let me go on my way after that.

Maybe the police do suspect something, but they can’t prove anything. This article won’t even count as evidence, because that would be metagaming. If they want to stop Butler, they’ll need to take her to court for fraud.

Some officers are so convinced that Butler is driving the car, they just walk off. One streamer on the server, who plays a trooper named Ignazzio Dinozzo, pulled Butler over for the umpeenth time, and as soon as the guy saw it was me, he groaned, “God fucking damnit.”

I didn’t even have to pull out the paperwork to try and swindle him, and it’s a good thing too, because I had about $10,000 in illegal currency in my car. At this point, I’m carrying hundreds of counterfeit bands on me at any given moment.

You can pull me over. Please do, I want you to. This will allow me to keep the story going about Shady Dan with his car rental.