Police in Finland are investigating 400 cases of online theft in the virtual world of Habbo Hotel, a chat site popular with children and teenagers.

Habbo Hotel allows its members to use real money to buy virtual goods online, such as furniture. However, members have reported that they have had up to £840 worth of virtual items stolen by cyber criminals.

Sulake, the Finnish company who owns Habbo Hotel, has reported that several hundred users have been targeted. The online thieves targeted members with fake web pages that captured their usernames and passwords.

This is not the first time Habbo Hotel has been targeted. In 2007, a Dutch teenager was also arrested for allegedly stealing virtual furniture worth thousands of euros on the site.

Unfortunately, it seems that online games and virtual worlds are becoming an increasingly popular target for hackers and cyber criminals. World of Warcraft and Facebook’s Farmville game have also been subject to malware and Trojans that attempt to steal user information.

Anyone using Habbo Hotel or similar sites should be aware of these scams and not enter their log in details to any pages other than the site itself.