Mod Jed, accused of hacking players and selling their gold, pled guilty
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Former Old School RuneScape developer Andrew "Mod Jed" Lakeman has been sentenced for stealing gold from player accounts following several years of investigation and litigation.
The Cambridgeshire Constabulary recently published a report covering the sentencing and history of the crime.
With his arrest in July 2019, Lakeman was charged with "unauthorised computer access with intent to commit other offences, theft by employee, conceal / disguise / convert / transfer / remove criminal property and acquire criminal property." It's estimated this scheme netted him over £300,000.
Lakeman eventually pled guilty to the charges and, this week on September 3, "was handed a three-year sentence suspended for two years at Cambridge Crown Court," the Constabulary writes. His sentence also includes 150 hours of "unpaid work" and a 25-day "rehabilitation activity requirement."
To go back a few years, Lakeman, then known as Jed Sanderson, was a developer at Old School RuneScape studio Jagex. In mid-2018, he began using the game's account recovery system to steal gold and high-value items from players, and then sell that in-game wealth for real money or crypto currency through the MMO's gray market.
A search of Lakeman's accounts found that "he had banked more than £364,829 in cash, which came from crypto currency dealers," the investigation found. In private messages to his wife, Lakeman apparently shared plans to "make a lot of money" before leaving Jagex.
But before he could make his grand escape, Jagex clocked the account breaches and "realized the perpetrator was likely to be someone who worked for the company, as accounts were being recovered using information genuine owners would be unlikely to know," the Constabulary notes. It laid a trap in its employee network firewall and Lakeman walked right into it.
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Just as most banned OSRS players reflexively deny any wrongdoing, Lakeman apparently claimed his account must have been breached and used by another party to commit the gold hacks. He was handed to police in 2019.
Detective Constable Andrew McKeane describes the case as "an unusual and lengthy investigation," and "certainly not one you see every day."
"Lakeman was well aware what he was doing was wrong, and the hundreds of thousands of pounds he gained from selling the in-game items is no different to any other theft," the investigator adds. "Just because it’s virtual, doesn’t mean he shouldn’t face the full force of the law."
This investigation has become a tentpole in discussions about the legal value of in-game items, and it could become a useful precedent in case law. At the start of the year, addressing Lakeman's case, the UK Court of Appeal ruled that OSRS gold can legally be defined as "property" subject to criminal theft.
Previously, a judge had ruled that "gold pieces were not rivalrous and were more akin to pure information." (To borrow and slightly butcher the Law Commission's terms, something is rivalrous if, when you have it, somebody else can't.) The appeals court overturned this assessment, ruling that these gold pieces "are rivalrous because the use and consumption of them by the game player necessarily prejudices the use and consumption of them by others."
