Anyone ever buy/sell airline frequent flyer miles?

[Rick Lee]

I mean, have you ever done so through a broker? I had no idea this was against all airlines' terms and conditions. I was booking trips to Germany two yrs. ago and didn't have enough miles. But Mrs. Lee found some folks on a Chinese bbs that offered around $.016 per mile. It was a leap of faith thing and I had to give the guy access to my mileage account. But he used exactly what he paid for, even though I had more miles there and then he told me when he was done and I changed my password. All worked well and I ended up paying about $400 out of pocket for us both to go to Germany and back.

Anyway, I've just been reading all about this and didn't know it could lead to a ticket getting canceled and/or miles being forfeited. Nevertheless, there are a lot of mileage brokers out there, who apparently pay upfront. Seems to me, if I get paid upfront and use all my miles to buy the ticket for their customer, the airline has no recourse against me. I've already been paid, have no miles left to lose and plan to pay cash for my ticket on another airline. What am I missing?