The Boxing Day Earthquake was initially reported as a 7.6 on the Richter Scale. They just kept moving the magnitude, along with the death toll, higher. Ended up as a 9.1. Hopefully, this won't be the case this time. And anyone know the difference between Moment and Richter magnitudes? Richter was 7.6 for this, but Moment was 8.1.
There are several different magnitude scales - the only one that works for really big quakes is the Moment Magnitude.
To be perfectly anal-retentive and pedantic, technically the "Richter" scale only applies to Southern California and is no longer used, thus technically it's basically misused all the time.
Good article on all the scales:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seismic_scale