News

Wednesday, 30 March 2011 01:16

Crime didn't pay for the computer hacker from the UK who managed to hack the Zynga Corporation's computer system and steal £7.4million in virtual gambling chips.

When Ashley Mitchell learned how to hack into a virtual world of online gamblers to steal a huge number of virtual gambling chips which he intended to sell on the black market, he had no idea that he would be caught. But despite his obvious skill and ability in perpetrating this crime, he made stupid mistakes that got him caught.

At first, when Mitchell bought the hacking software from an online seller to use on his corporate victim in 2009, it looked almost too easy to imitate two employees' accounts at the Zynga Corporation and use their accounts to siphon off the chips into his own account. The company became suspicious of the chips going missing and started their own investigation which led them to the two employees whose accounts Mitchell had hijacked. That trail went cold when the employees were absolved of any wrongdoing.

It wasn't until Mitchell started to sell the stolen chips via several bogus Facebook accounts that he had set up that the trail heated up again, but even that made it difficult to locate the actual perpetrator. It wasn't until Mitchell made an almighty blunder of the first magnitude by being stupid enough to use his own personal Facebook account in one of his hacking attempts into Zynga's system that the trail stopped right at his door in Paignton, Devon.

By the time Mitchell's identity had been discovered, he had sold almost a third of the chips he had stolen at a knock down price of just £53,000. The full value of his entire stash of chips was valued at closer to £7.4million ($12 million).

Mitchell used the money he made from the sale of the stolen chips to buy expensive items including a Rolex watch and to fund his online gambling addiction. He also set up a legitimate online poker portal at the beginning of 2010 which could earn him as much as £100,000 per year. Unfortunately, that legitimate business and the money it makes may have to be used to pay back the value of the chips he stole.

Judge Philip Wassall, presiding in the court case told Mitchell that his actions in targeting a large multi-national company could have undermined the public's confidence in other such online business run computer systems. Mitchell was jailed for two years.