How to find out if the former owner of my Pokemon game has cheated?

[Einhornbaby]

Hi there

as the title says, how can I find out if the former owner of my pokemon game has cheated to get certain Pokemon?
Me and my husband have been Pokemon fans for years now (no hardcore fans but we still love or little monsters <3) and these days we are slowly collecting the older games to complete our Pokedex one day. Today a used copy of Pokemon Diamond arrived and I was stunned when I tried it out to see if it worked. The copy was played for 135 hours and I found TONS of amazing Pokemons! And that made me think...
One for example is a Shiny Darkrai lvl 100. There is a normal Darkrai too, 4x Deoxys, 2x Mew... I guess you could get them via trading but when I asked somebody about how the chances were to catch a Shiny Darkrai for example I got laughed at and they said "They are all cheated I bet". Well,... we planned to catch our own Pokemon anyway but something like a Shiny Darkrai should be saved from being deleted I thought. But now Im thinking... they might all be cheated? How can I find out if they are?? Is there a way?

Thanks for any answer

[MilkyTaroMochi]

If it's a good hacked pokemon, you really cant tell from looking at it.

But one way with Legendaries (that you cant normally catch in the game without an event) to check if it was caught with any other ball besides a Cherish Ball (all red pokeball), if it lacks a certain event ribbon (forgot the name atm; cant rememeber if this would apply for 4th gen games), and/or if it lacks a "caught/saw in a fateful encounter (or where you would legit catch that pokemon)" in its location description.

If else, I can almost assume that Shiny Darkrai is a hacked one.  The other oens can be legit (I personally have an legit Mew from a TRU event years ago, same with Darkrai).

[Einhornbaby]

Thank you MilkyTaroMochi, thats really interesting
I did not have time to check them all yet but those ones that I checked were caught in different balls and for example Darkrai had that saying "apparently recieved with level XX" (dont know what exactly it says in english, since im playing the german version) but its the saying that is shown in the profiles of pokemons recieved from a trade.
As soon as I have the time to check I might do a list. I think in the end we will be deleting any of them who seem not to be legit.

[DemureGirl]

I'll take any non legit pokemon off your hands

But yeah, you can usually find out online what the conditions for event pokemon are

[Kitkumi]

I'm not a 100% on it, but I think there is an stupidly insane low chance of receiving a shiny through event distribution. So it may be possible that the shiny Darkrai is legit. And technically the multiples of legendary ones could also be legit, because before they started doing the distribution code cards if you had a main game and a second game you didn't mind restarting, you could just camp in the store and keep downloading pokemon lol (download, trade, restart, and download again). My fiance and I did this once to get 15+ of Arceus because I wanted one for each plate type ; (It took awhile lol). If it were me, and just playing for fun, I would go ahead and keep them all, just to have them, and just tell myself that they are legit, but thats me

Edit: I looked through my Pokemon, which I know are all 100% official because I got them from events myself. These are the ribbons and ball that they came with:

Mew - Premier Ribbon and Cherish Ball (level 5)
Mew - No Ribbon and Pokeball (level 10)

Deoxys - Dusk Ball and Classic Ribbon (Level 100)
Deoxys - Dusk Ball and Classic Ribbon (Level 100)
Deoxys - Cherish Ball and Classic Ribbon (Level 50)
Deoxys - Cherish Ball and Classic Ribbon (Level 50)

Darkrai - Ultra Ball and No Ribbon (Level 50)
Darkrai - Cherish Ball and Classic Ribbon (Level 50)
Darkrai - Cherish Ball and Classic Ribbon (Level 50)
Darkrai - Cherish Ball and Classic Ribbon (Level 50)

Also, in Pokemon Diamond and Pearl there was an event that gave you an item to take you to an island where Darkrai was waiting to battle, instead of just giving you Darkrai (it is why one of mine is in an Ultra Ball). So, the Shiny Darkrai that you have could have very well come from that 'event', and if it did it means that a person could have saved right before battling Darkrai and then just reset the game over and over until they got it to show up as shiny. Hope that helps!

[shelvesofwhimsy]

You'll know if they're a fake or cheated pokemon when you try to move them with the Pokémon Bank to the newer games. If its not authentic it will not be able to be moved. We had quite a few ones that couldn't be moved over.

There are also even pokemon though. Like recently I got a shiny Dialga from Gamestop level 100, and Giratina shiny level 100, so it could happen.

[MilkyTaroMochi]

Plus there was an event in Japan where they gave out a Shiny Jirachi not too long ago for Tananbata Festival.
And i forgot about Dialga/Palkia/Giratina being shiny at GameStop's event. I have one of them. xD I also recall that the Legendary Dogs were tiven away as Shinies for Gen 5 (it was how you'd get Zoroark in Black/White 1).

It just depends if said Pokemon is "shiny-locked" or not via events.

They wont glitch up your game if you keep the hacked pokemon, if that is what you're concerned about.

Post Merge: June 18, 2015, 12:18:10 PM

You'll know if they're a fake or cheated pokemon when you try to move them with the Pokémon Bank to the newer games. If its not authentic it will not be able to be moved. We had quite a few ones that couldn't be moved over.

Not sure if they patched it, but I know PokeBank actually wouldnt allow a legit event Pokemon to be transfered (Arceus, IIRC). Hacked pokemon can still pass through Bank's check if the person that created the Pokemon "changed it" enough to where it matches all the requirements. But that couldnt have bene payched as well. ^^'
That said, Bank is one of the easier ways to check how legit a Pokemon is, if you're unsure.

[Silver_mirror46]

hmmm pokemon bank checks if your pokemon are legit or no, although some cheats from 3rd gen go unnoticed by the system

[Einhornbaby]

Thank you all for your input Especially to you Kitkumi! I will check them all later today (just got up lol), cant wait to see what balls and ribbons and stuff Ill find!

[pyrodarknessanny]

i would think to check the pokemons   stats   
what dose it say under the  field for  location the pokemon was captured / where the pokemon came from.
dose the  trainer  id / name match the save files?

do the pokemon have any unusual moves? 
or  stats   (unusually high sp. att  , defence , speed etc)

if you have the  battle game for wii ( i forget what its called?   not Colosseum but  similar)
try to  load them up , if they are badly  cheated  they will show  up as "bad eggs" and you wont be able to use them.

or as others have sugested  try  moving them over with the Pokemon bank.

its verry likly that they were  cheated using a game shark or action replay.
or even  the poke save program.

some  times the cheated part is as simple as   just getting  the event tickets to go to the islands to capture thos pokemon,     
those pokemon are  un tampered with , the only cheating was  getting access to them.

on the more extream side of things,   if they were  created  using pokesave then the entire pokemon are  fabricated and  their stats   will be   askew  those pokemon  are the easyest to detect if they have been  cheated / hacked . 

[Princess Lala]

Based on the OPs pokemon description, it sounds like the pokemon in the game are hacked!!! The DS games (diamond, pearl, platinum, hg, ss, black, white gens) are easy to hack, especially if theres a shiny legendary event pokemon at lv 100! xD There are tons of guides how to tell if your pokemon is legit or not, especially if you have tried to transfer it to other games via pokeradar/pokebank and it wouldnt let you send them. However sometimes AR pokemon can still be sent even to the newer games.... its so sad lol.

[FullMoonFever]

legit non legit, doesn't matter to me.  I have an action replay for the 3DS and I take full advantage of it.  In fact I got Hoopa!  I don't care if my pokes are legit or what, as long as my game doesn't get ruined.

~Jenn


And yes you can take very well hacked pokemon to pokemon bank.  I've done it.

[pyrodarknessanny]

i have an AR for the DA and  did have the pokesave program for a while  it was good for a laugh , i made a shiny charizard with the ability  water absorb   as well as some other stupid  things. 

i used to always have at least 2 coppies of   one game for each gen,  one to beat normaly  and one  to goof off on and cheat  the  absolute crap out of.

emerald and leaf green were  my  GBA cheat games    pearl was  the one  i used for the D, P,PL  generation ,  that was the last generation i was bothered to  get into tho.

[melodys_angel]

Don't go jumping to conclusions soo lightly--theres always a chance that one can get multiples of something--or that there was the offchance a shiny version was released.

Like a few people here I was able to get a few of one of the event pokemon before they gave out codes (was awhile back..all you needed to do was stay inside gamestop for awhile).

Whne in doubt, just check pokemon bank if you have access to it.

[Aerora]

For fourth gen, there were no shiny locks for caught legendaries (e.g., in Black and White, you can't catch a shiny Reshiram or Zekrom - they'll just never come up shiny legitimately) - so it's possible to have a shiny Darkrai!

Basically most of the things that would mark a Pokemon as obviously illegitimate aren't ready visible to the player; obvious stuff like the wrong ability or "came from Mystery Zone" pretty much just shows up on badly hacked ones. If it also has 5/6 perfect IVs, that'd make it much more likely to have been tampered with, but that's a pain to check in games before sixth gen.

Pokebank will not catch well-hacked Pokemon, though - a few of mine were Pokegenned or cloned, and they made it through from Gen IV to XY without an issue.