Scam

Scams occur when one player or a group of players deceive other players out of money, goods, or enjoyment in-game. The only way to fall victim to a scam is to be unaware of them; knowledge and a little common sense will protect you from any scam another player tries.

Identifying a scam
In general, any offer that appears to be too good to be true is probably a scam. If you are in doubt as to whether a deal is genuine, ask on a public channel. And, if you catch a scammer in the act, be sure to let everyone around you know what he's up to and report it to Arenanet as soon as possible.

Be cautious about paying any fee in advance of any service (e.g. runs) and always double check trade windows before accepting any deals, there is nothing people won't try, similar looking objects (such as mursaat tokens and ectoplasm), weapons that are only slightly different to what is advertised (sundering 19% instead of 20), and most commonly simply displaying incorrect but misleading sums of money (6 gold instead of 6 platinum).

People are not afraid to impersonate moderators or falsely claim that you owe them money for a previous service and will even ironically threaten you with action against your account.

Reporting a scam
While you may not be able to recover your "game resources" (like gold paid or items lost), you will at least be able to stop this person. The developers of the game have every bit as much interest as you in stopping scams, although you will not be told any information concerning the actions taken against the reported person.

To report a scam (the following only works if you have not logged off or it has not been a long while since the scam took place):
 * 1) Generate proof of the scam. This is best done using a screen capture.
 * 2) Press the Chat button (bottom left corner) or the ` key (under Esc). This will bring up the chat log.
 * 3) Scroll to where the important exchanges between you and the scammer took place. Capture each exchange.
 * 4) If there was trading done, it will also show on your chat log. This is the most important evidence. It will show what you gave and what you got in return.
 * 5) See how to report for details on reporting scams to Arenanet.

Note
In certain cases, ArenaNet will not take any action for petty scams for example, say if someone took 500 gold from you but didn't finish your run or the selling of a common quest item such as "Althea's Ashes". This is due to the large number of cases they have to deal with and the more serious violations are their priority.