Zynga Poker Hacker Gets Two Years In PrisonAshley Mitchell Convicted of Computer Misuse and Money Laundering |
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British hacker Ashley Mitchell has been sentenced to serve two years in prison after being convicted of computer misuse and four counts of money laundering.
The 29-year-old pleaded guilty in February of hacking into the online gaming website Zynga and stealing 400 billion virtual chips. He later sold some of those chips on Facebook, picking up £53,612 from the site’s users. Had he sold all of the virtual chips, he could have netted approximately £7 million.
Zynga Poker is an application that is played on a variety of gaming portals that include Facebook, MySpace, MSN Games, Yahoo!, the iPhone and Android. The company has over 50 million daily users and has offers other popular games such as Farmville, Cafe World, Mafia Wars and Cityville.
Though his defense team tried to argue that Zynga would not have suffered any losses, because they could simply create additional virtual chips, Judge Philip Wassall of the Exeter crown court wasn’t buying it.
“The sentence has to reflect the impact on public confidence in security systems and online business when someone breaches security in this way,” he said.
Mitchell also received an additional 30 week sentence for violating an earlier supsended sentence after hacking into his previous employer’s network in 2008.
Zynga recently held a Poker Con in Las Vegas with a live tournament and a $100,000 prize pool. Card Player spoke to General Manager Laurence Toney about the event and the application.
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