Last week Diablo III hit a bit of a major snag when a bug was introduced in the code of patch 1.0.8 that allowed some players to exploit the bug to duplicate gold. According to a recent post from Blizzard Production Manager John Hight, only 415 players decided to try their luck at profiting off the exploit, and those players have apparently had their efforts thwarted by Blizzard.

Players were fortunate enough to avoid a complete rollback last week and while many trades happened during the window of the exploit, Hight explained that Blizzard is trying to ensure the legit trades are not affected. But more interestingly is what Blizzard did to isolate the offending accounts and any of those that were helping them to harbor gold or items. Those accounts were either locked or banned outright, and any cash earned on the real money auction house by those players using have been confiscated and donated to charity.

Many people bought and sold items and gold on the Auction House on Tuesday. We're making sure that all legitimate transactions go through. This means that if your account was not involved in the exploit, you will get to keep your items and gold, as well as any money you received from sales on the real-money Auction House. We'll also be donating all proceeds from auctions conducted by the suspended or banned players—including all of THEIR sale proceeds that we intercepted as well as our transaction fee—to Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals.

I guess in this case crime really doesn’t pay.

Source: Diablo III Update