I think I may have figured it out. I could be completely in left field. If you view someone's profile it says what they are currently doing. I just tested on myself and if I open up Private Messages, it says in my profile something like "Actively Messaging @ XXXXXPM" If enough game players were on and you followed a pattern of people by checking their profiles often enough you might see people checking private massages. For example, you see Player X is PMing, ten minutes later Player Y is pming and it repeats many times. This could be construed as Mafia banter. Of course we all use our PMs for other things as well, but that explains JMax's supposed "physic" powers, and the code she tried to give us all with the bolded "p M"
Am I even close?