World of Warcraft hackers get up to two years in prison

Late last week, 10 men from a hacking group responsible for stealing and defrauding 10,000 World of Warcraft accounts, were found guilty and dealt sentences as high as two years in a Chinese prison.

The first five to be arrested were named Chen, Ma, Zhu, Zhi, and Wang. The operation started off with Chen who had set up a small space where he and his colleagues would purchase stolen WoW accounts, log in to them and then sell the contents of those accounts for profit. After a while Zhu, a member of Chen's team had broken off from the original group and started up his own studio, he then hired workers to help him flip stolen accounts for profit.

It couldn't last forever though, eventually an investigation was launched and authorities ended up learning that over 10,000 WoW accounts were looted and flipped for over $10,000 profit. After both Chen and Zhu's teams were arrested, nine out of the ten men involved were charged with nearly two years in prison as well as a $1000 fine. However, because Chen started the trend, he got the standard two years in prison coupled with an $8000 fine. All ten men also had their computer equipment and profits from the operation confiscated.

KitGuru Says: There's no word on whats going to happen to the people who had their WoW accounts stolen but considering all of the profits were confiscated, maybe it would be nice if it was split amongst those affected. Then again, that would only work out at less than one dollar each. 

Source: Kotaku

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