A Dutch teenager has been detained for allegedly stealing virtual furniture from ‘rooms’ in a 3D social networking website. The 17-year-old is accused of stealing virtual furniture worth 2,840 pounds, bought with real money from social networking website the Habbo hotel. Police, who were contacted by the website’s owners, has also questioned five 15-year-olds. A spokesman for Sulake, the company that operates Habbo Hotel, said that the accused lured victims into handing over their Habbo passwords by creating fake Habbo websites. "The accused lured victims into handing over their Habbo passwords by creating fake Habbo websites,” the BBC quoted Sulake, as saying. "In Habbo, as in many other virtual worlds, scamming for other people's personal information such as user names has been problematic for quite a while. "We have had much of this scamming going on in many countries but this is the first case where the police have taken legal action." Sulake said. Habbo users can create their own characters, decorate their own rooms and play a number of games, paying with Habbo Credits, which they have to buy with real cash. "It is a theft because the furniture is paid for with real money. But the only way to be a thief in Habbo is to get people's usernames and passwords and then log in and take the furniture. "We got involved because of an increasing number of sites which are pretending to be Habbo. People might then try and log in and get their details stolen,” Sulake added.
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