Just today my main account got banned. I botted with SGather for over 250,000g, and then sold it and with some of the profit got a second account up to Cata and leveled it to also run Sgather on that for gold.
I carelessly botted CONSTANTLY. Never had trouble. But, my main account that I opened on Nov 23, 2004 [release day of wow], and had over 7500+ hours on, got banned. :C Very Very upsetting.
My email said that they could tell I was laundering gold. I wrote a five paragraph email attempting to say I was hacked, and did a great job, and they replied basically, PFF, NAH, SUCK.
I figured the chances would be slim of them eyeing my trade transactions.
But truly, once a gold buyer/reseller's account gets hot, they can reverse track to all who were dealing with it.
The other two main methods besides face-to-face are Guild Bank Deposit, and Auction House.
My opinion is that both of these methods are also sketchy.
Blizzard: Riiiiiiight, that dude just loves Linen Cloth so much that he buys stacks for 45,000g.
Suree.
Blizzard: Wowwww, that guy sure is generous, depositing 45,000g into that bank he just joined and then leaving.
We should come up with a more standard fool-proof way of laundering gold.
I mean yeah theres only so many ways but I'd like to see some opinions from everyone.
If people can smuggle pounds of marijuana into the US, I think us nerds can come up with a way to make cash off virtual currency and not get their 7500 hours played accounts banned.
Like me and my dumb ass.