Recently I spent some time reading complaints from World of Warcraft players who were scammed when buying virtual gold with real world, hard earned money.
It seems that there are a number of gold clearing houses that are not living up to their promise of transferring the purchased amount of gold to the buyer.
The Blizzard User License Agreement states in no uncertain terms that ownership rights and intellectual property rights to all "objects" (gold is considered an object) are sole property of Blizzard.
While buying and selling virtual currency is technically not illegal it demonstrates that a company has no respect for the property of others, and that they have no problem selling things that they do not own nor to which they have a legal right.
When a player buys from this type of company why would they expect the company to have respect for the buyer's money? The buyer's cash is just another "object" that they do not own or have legal right to.
The majority of these companies operate outside of the United States.
Even if buying and selling virtual currency were illegal in the US the chances of actually prosecuting the offenders would be nearly zero.
In situations such as this it is my belief that these buyers have no room to complain that they were scammed.
They knowingly entered into a situation that is against Blizzard Entertainment's End User License Agreement with a company that has already demonstrated that it has no respect for anyone.