I've still got a lot of work ahead of me before the infiltrator plan is up and running. Agent Black Cat (ABC) needs a bio and a page on Evelopedia. I'm going to have to start a second, clean account to hold characters bought and sold for infiltration projects. The cost of the accounts and character purchases means I'll need a budget of somewhere between 10 and 20 billion per month. I'll cover each of these in detail later. For now i'm going to do something most intelligence agents would be loathe to do and share some of my sources. I go over each one every day looking for leads, changes in the balance of power in nulsec and so forth. This is how I locate low hanging fruit (this concept will be expanded on in a future post).

Eveskunk - automatically aggregates alliance-wide mails from its members. Most of it is worthless to outsiders or refers to forum posts that you don't have access to. Every now and then, though, you'll see signs of hate and discontent or details about upcoming ops. These are ripe for exploitation. If I had a fleet at my beck and call, I could probably ambush several alliances per weekend just with this information.

Dotlan - has up to date Sov maps and tracks the top 100 alliances based on how many outposts they run. This is a great place to do some research. Pick an alliance that you found elsewhere and see what systems they control and what corps are members. Remember, the bigger an alliance and the more members, the more likely that they have a corp with weak security to join somewhere in the mix.

Battle Clinic - All the killmail that's fit to print. Look someone up and you can tell if they're a hopelessly incompetent industrialist, a seasoned PVP veteran or a pirate ganker. Its also got lots of fittings, which are useful for a relative newb trying to pass of as a semi-competent pilot.

EVE News 24 - A good look at marco-politics and also a great way to spot who's on the ropes and desperate for someone to help.

Similarly, Eve Radio may be a bit news light but you never know what you'll hear on their show. They're still growing, too. So expect them to become more news-focused once someone realizes their strategic propaganda value. The music's not bad, either.

Kungustuman - established by a legendary alleged forum hacker who was permanently banned from EVE. The fact that the word Kungutsuman used to be in the bad language filter for EVE's forums should tell you all that you need to know. I admit I haven't looked too deeply into this yet but I'm definitely looking forward to having the time to put it to use.

Any other news/intel sources that anyone may know of would be greatly appreciated. The more you know, the better you can tailor your actions to maximum benefit.

Speaking of which, The Mittani kindly answered an EVEmail I sent him asking for tips on being a spy. Most of it was fairly bland, but one thing in particular stuck out. He recommended scamming as the best way to raise the amounts of money I need. To paraphrase, since I don't have the EVEmail open, he said that it is the only game in town that's not rigged in the house's favor. Since infiltration is basically scamming on the macro scale, this sounds like a good idea. I've been doing some reading up on that, too. Once I have the time to really put a few good ones together, I'll be doing some testing. This weekend will be too busy outside of EVE but next week should be my entry into scammerdom. In the meantime, here's some more fun reading:

Eve Princessbride - Not updated often but it has a nice overview of some of her scams as well as chat logs and screen shots. I'm already using her "big sell" technique on a couple of standing market orders.

Eve Evolved and ISK Watch each have a nice article on scams to avoid. These should also get your creative juices flowing.

Obviously, these should be taken only as a guide. Sure, these scams keep being reused because they produce results. If you've got a winning personality and can appeal to people's greed, though, you may want to come up with your own. Sure, it'll be stolen eventually. In the meantime, giving the fish something they haven't seen before makes them more likely to bite.

For example, I have high hopes for this one posted as a link in my trader alt's bio:

Yes, someone might eventually connect me to "her" but I'm not especially worried. Market orders are blind and the kind of people who fall for scams in Jita local aren't likely to have read this blog. By the way, yes I do have some other pics to go with it. Yes, if you send ABC enough money, I'll really send you links. No, I will not introduce you to her.

Random Intel of the day: from DICE

"Now that H-FOYG is secure with it's POSes and such, we're onlining the first super arrays. Yes yes I know, we store them there but we're finally building them too. We have a line up for the first Nyx but we've already decided who gets it. The next few are lined up and will go into production within 2 weeks"