Yes, there is piracy even high-sec empire space and I have found out about it the hard way. It was a little bit unexpected for me to be blown up and then extorted by a pirate corp in a high-sec space. It was a 0.7 system, to be exact.
I was mining some pyroxeres ore in an asteroid belt and putting the ore into a jetcan. There were about 5 people along with me in that belt. A few of those had the yellow pirate label on their names, but so far it was quite common for me to see those and I've never been bothered by those people, so I didn't give it any second thoughts when I started mining.
After getting a rather substantial amount of ore, the jetcan window I had open suddenly disappeared. My jetcan was all of a sudden renamed and it already belonged to another person. Looking back, this is where I made my first mistake. I opened the jetcan and took some of my ore back. I was mining with a Cormorant, so I could only take a limited amount. After bringing the ore back to the station, I took of the mining lasers and put on the hybrid turrets along with a missile launcher. I was pissed off, so I went after the guy. I've found him and did some damage to the shields before he warped off.
Then all of a sudden my ship started targeting another ship in the asteroid belt. At the time I thought that I have accidentally targeted another ship nearby, so I was frantically sending messages out that it is an accidental lock and I didn't even fight back. But what really happened is that I've made that mistake of opening up and taking ore (that was really mine to begin with) that now "belonged" to the pirate corp. And since there was another one of their people in the belt, I was flagged red for them.
Long story short, my Cormorant was destroyed. Still being oblivious to the fact that there's more than 1 pirate in the belt, I have returned to get my ore with a Badger. They've crippled my ship with webifiers and demanded money or they would destroy me. So I gave them a few hundred thousand ISK, but what they didn't realize is that I took back all of my ore that was worth alot more than what I gave them. They didn't have cargo scanners and they didn't bother to check "their" jetcan.
The whole thing set me back more than 1 million ISK, but that was a valuable experience. Later some old-school miners told me that it's never a good idea to take back stolen ore because the pirates crave some PvP action and by taking back your ore you're letting them attack your ship. I'm not quite sure whether there is a CONCORD retaliation in such cases, but I will research that.
Personally, such an act of thievery infuriates me. Being only one person out there I could barely take on the first thief, but the other pirate had a Minmatar cruiser. I'm pretty sure the other miners didn't even notice all of the commotion either, that is until their ore was stolen. I have been ganked in low-sec space while mining before and this is something I accept because that's just the way things are in low-sec. These kinds of actions definitely took me by surprise in high-sec though. But I guess this is EVE and you always have to be vigilant.
Rest assured, I have added that pirate corp to my contacts and flagged them red. I remember the people's names and if I happen to meet them again while piloting a better ship than I have now, I will definitely try to settle the score. At the very least, I will get some PvP experience.
Looking back, what I can suggest in such cases is don't take the ore back right away. Bring your hauler, get very close to the jetcan, then take everything you can and warp out of there before they can shoot you. I definitely shouldn't have taken a little bit of ore at first, because that's what flagged me red for the rest of the pirates.
But an even better strategy would be to jettison your ore into a secure container. The secure container needs a password to be opened. The only disadvantage is that is a rather small container, it holds only 3,900 m3, compared to jetcan's 27000 m3. But such is the price of security.
So be a little extra vigilant in hich-sec space and watch out for can-flippers when you're mining. I know I'm trading the anchoring skill that would let me use secure containers right away.
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