A Dutch teenager was recently arrested for stealing virtual furniture from Habbo Hotel, a social networking website.

The 17-year-old boy is suspected of cheating players of Habbo Hotel, stealing the furniture they bought with real cash, according to the Guardian. His name has not been released yet.

The teenager stole virtual furniture worth 4,000 euros from the players of the game and moved it into his own Habbo Room. The police have interrogated five other teenagers, who have been contacted by the website’s owners, according to the police in Amsterdam.

This is the first time when police involves in such cases saying: “It is a theft because the furniture is paid with real money.” This is the first time when someone accused of stealing virtual items is arrested.

"The accused lured victims into handing over their Habbo passwords by creating fake Habbo websites,” a representative for Sulake, the company that operates Habbo Hotel said.

"In Habbo, as in many other virtual worlds, scamming for other people's personal information such as user names has been problematic for quite a while. We have had much of this scamming going on in many countries but this is the first case where the police have taken legal action."

Habbo Hotel is a virtual game in which his players can create their own characters, decorate and personalize their own rooms and play a number of games, after they previously paid with Habbo Credits bought with real cash. Six million teenagers and younger web surfers, in more than 30 countries around the world, play Habbo Hotel each month.

Virtual defrauding is a real concern in virtual worlds, after a Chinese player was stabbed to death in a row over a sword in a game in 2005.