Most def this is the issue, gold farmers exploiting chests in Shadow Labs was so common it is not funny.
Guildie A : I think QQPEWPEW got hacked!!!!
Guildie B: Looks like they are in Shadow Labs . . . .. prob hacked . . . .
When BC first came out my lvl 57 was farming ore to lvl JewelCrafting. I was in Burning Steppes a few hours a day for a few weeks (when i realized how much $$ gems from thorium could bring at that time) I would often see lvl 2 toons running at hyper fast speeds around the zone. They were using a speed hack to zip through a mob of dragonkin, the dragonkin would make chase. At a point hte dragons would all 'evade' and run back to home base. While they were evading the speedies would be out of combat and run back to loot hte chest before the dragons even got close.

I reported and reported, I would send /w to the lvl 2s and try to talk to them (cause normally that made them log.) And I decided I would do Blizz and me both a favor. For a few hours a night I would farm the chests so the chinese farmers couldn't.

I made lots of money of the BOE blues I found in those chests. And yes they were chinese cause one gave e his email address so he could work on his english more. We became odd penpals for a while (he mostly used some translation program that his 'work' used for when they played WOW, so they could respond to people so they didn't look like bots.