HIGH END LOOT ADJUSTMENT

Back in February it was discovered that many players had been taking advantage of an exploit for a few months.   Those who use automated scanning scripts unknowingly utilized the glitch because it involved manipulating news feed requests.  The exploit allowed anybody to manipulate your own news feed request so it's possible that you did nothing and still got loot item and/or Collectable Stat Cards that you shouldn't have.  Zynga is now taking back loot items they determined were not acquired by normal means.  Players are getting the account notice popup shown below. 

ACCOUNT NOTICE:
Dear Mafia Wars player,
Due to certain technical errors, your account was incorrectly credited with some items. We have corrected this discrepancy and the wrongly credited items have been removed from your inventory.
Thank you for being a devoted Mafia Wars player.
Sincerely,
The Mafia Wars Team

It appears most players getting this notice are missing Mission and Secret District items.  The person whose account this Inventory History run came from still has a Harbinger.  Not much more is known but I was told all items are being looked at.  It’s possible they all aren’t being removed at the same time. 

Customer Support has posted an update on the situation. It can be found here.

High End Loot Adjustment

Updated 04/17/2012 at 15:12

On April 17th, the Mafia Wars team corrected the amount of high end loot in in the accounts of players who inadvertently received extra loot.

We understand that many players did not know they were receiving additional loot that gave them an unfair advantage in the game.

We apologize that our error added too many valuable loot items to the accounts of players.

While we do not want to punish players, we made the decision to adjust those affected by this error to maintain a level playing field for everyone.

This adjustment has corrected the amount of loot only in the accounts of players affected by the error, making sure that nobody ended up with more than the maximum allowed loot.

We welcome your continued feedback via this survey:

http://goo.gl/i8kKl

- Mafia Wars Team

To take the survey about this incident, go here.