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Online Poker Chip Thief Gets Two Years In Jail
jhernik writes "A 29-year-old gambler from Paignton, Devon, has been sentenced to two years in jail after hacking into an online gambling site and stealing billions of poker chips. Ashley Mitchell admitted to hacking into the servers of American gaming company Zynga Corporation in 2009 and making off with $12 million (£7.5 million) worth of gambling chips."
And they'll be filling his 'slot' in prison. At least there'll be plenty of tables to play. If he plays his cards right, he'll probably get a shortened sentence. Maybe he can roll the dice and get in with a gang that will protect him.
Hopefully he'll be well behaved and won't end up in the pit.
I literally laughed out loud when I read the bit about "Zynga" and "worth 12 million".
Just because they are trying to sell them for 12 million doesn't make them worth that.
I dream of a nation where a man is not judged by his skin color but by an number assigned by a credit rating agency.
Throw him in the worst virtual jail there is !! :\
That's great that he is getting punished for the theft. Poker chips have a real value on the sites that are employing them. But what about those poker sites that ban accounts and refuse to pay their owner for vague or no reasons at all? Lots of people have had their money stolen for suspected collusion or for playing in a pattern similar to a poker bot.
Football Odds
As if they would not notice. This is a "currency" they
control. While the guy seems to have been at least somewhat capable for
being able to hack, I can see the risk analysis on the other side: "We can
track those in detail anyways, so if so somebody steals them, we will easily
identify the thief. No need to secure this better." I mean, how stupid can
you get? Obviously a person that cannot generalize or apply his intellect to
something not in his narrow vision.
In addition, he has a previous (suspended) sentence of 30 weeks for hacking.
Obviously also unable to learn.
When a former school-mate that is now a
police detective told me that they do not catch the really smart perpetrators, but
that there were plenty of dumb ones around of any level of intelligence, I
first did not believe him. By now I do. This is just one more data point.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I keep dreaming of a day when things like this will not be described at a grade 6 reading level. (Full blame on TFA in this case.)
- Chips were not stolen. A number in a database was forged.
- He did not "make off" with anything. Probably didn't leave his chair.
I like Tron and Ocean's Eleven too, but using these metaphors for real crime is just as goofy.
...the CFO of Parker Brothers was convicted of felony embezzlement when he tried to make off with 12 million pink Monopoly dollars.
Funny how my story sounds ridiculous yet 21st-Century funny money is a "crime".
if you steal cash from a bank, the cash you have stolen is anonymous (well, it usually is): that is, there's no way to tell later if it is the same cash you stole from the bank
but this guy just moved around bits on someone's server. hey frank, the ton of chips with id #445566, where'd they go? hey jack, maybe its this guy here, with a ton of chips with id #445566?
i mean seriously: you're smart enough to hack a server, but not smart enough to play that scenario out?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
That seems to be a constant with stories we hear about people trying to cheat the system.
There was a great series on TV called "breaking vegas" (not the documentary on the MIT blackjack team, but a series based off it) and this was a constant element. You may have a fool proof system, but even atop a pile of gold, if you steal millions, someone is going to notice.
Kind of makes you wonder how many (if any) smart criminals there are out there, stealing enough to live happily, but not enough to get noticed. When we look at a lot of these systems people come up with, if they just took it easy they'd probably go un-noticed for years. I like to think there are a few out there with the cleverness and greed to come up with something, but the rationality to restrain themselves.