The disgraced ex-Old School RuneScape dev who stole in-game items from the accounts of players has finally been sentenced for his crimes after pleading guilty.
After a secret internal investigation, it was found that Andrew Lakeman’s (also known as "Mod Jed") devices and his address were the source of player account breaches on the popular MMORPG, which led to his dismissal and a police investigation.
Lakeman was arrested in July of 2019 and charged with unauthorized computer access with intent to commit other offenses, theft by employee, conceal / disguise / convert / transfer / remove criminal property and acquiring criminal property.
Andrew Lakeman, formerly Jed Sanderson, and more widely known by fans of the game as "Mod Jed," began working as a developer for the company behind Old School RuneScape, Jagex, back in November 2015. He came under suspicion three years after the fact, when virtual, yet valuable items and gold were disappearing from the accounts of players.
In May 2018, Jagex’s player support team realized that there was suspicious account recovery activity occurring, with in-game items, including gold, being taken. The activity stopped for a short while, leading the team to put down the incident as nothing more than a glitch in the system. However, serious doubts about that being the case began when incidents started happening again later on in 2018.
Jagex thought that the perpetrator was likely to be someone who worked for the company, as accounts were being recovered using details actual owners would be unlikely to know. Jagex began its own internal investigation that included creating a curfew for account recovery and modifying the firewall without informing others in the company that this was happening to avoid alerting the perpetrator.
During the investigation, Jagex found that the illegal activity was linked to Lakeman’s devices and home address. Lakeman was questioned by bosses, where he denied the allegations against him. What’s more, he claimed he didn’t know how his devices were being linked to the activity he was accused of, suggesting his account must have been hacked by somebody else.
Following his dismissal, the incident was taken on by Report Fraud, before being handed over to Cambridgeshire Police in the UK in 2019, who conducted a full criminal investigation.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.dualshockers.com/former-old-school-runescape-dev-sentenced-stealing/
