Ransoms for everyone?

It seems that lots of people are willing to pay ransoms these days...

As a case in point, I found a C2 WH this evening where the hi-sec static entrance was getting ready to close for time.

I jumped in to take a peek and saw a Minmatar Control Tower on scan with no force field and nothing anchored.

Usually I just ignore these unless they have Ship Maintenance Arrays or Corp Hangars but I had a feeling about this one. Best case: it was in the process of being unanchored.

So - I quickly scan it down, warp to it and find that it is "online" but not forcefield.

As I'm trying to figure out why the owners wouldn't put up the force field, a bestower and an itty III jump in and warp to straight to the POS.

I kill both of them (one had a few weak POS mods and one had more fuel) and pod one of the pilots.

The other was too fast for me.

But - I convo'd him and offered to let him finish fueling and setting up his POS before the WH collapsed for time if he'd pay me 150 mil. After all, we want more carebears in WH's... not less!

He gives me a sob story about not being able to afford 150m but then finishes with 'But I can pay you 50m'

As I really didn't want to camp the WH anyway - I just took the 50m and ran. Not a bad use of about 10 minutes time and a little luck.

This is definitely worth remembering for the future.