Zynga Poker Hacker Sentenced to Two Years in Jail

When people steal from a casino or poker room, they’re usually interested in taking cash – or at the very least, chips with real value. But one gambling addict has been caught stealing 400 billion play money chips from an online poker game – chips that have absolutely no monetary value.

Ashley Mitchell, a 29-year-old from Paignton, Devon in the United Kingdom, managed to hack into two accounts controlled by Zynga employees, and transfer the virtual chips into his Zynga Poker account. However, the chip theft was no joke; Mitchell then turned around and sold the chips to other Facebook users, netting £53,612 (approximately $87,000) in profits.

The sale of the chips took place over the course of two months. According to prosecutors, the total damages to Zynga were £7 million (around $11.4 million), based on the total value of all the chips stolen by Mitchell.

The case first came to light when the chips suddenly went missing in August 2009. At the time, suspicion centered around the two Zynga employees who held large amounts of chips, but no longer had them in their accounts. But after investigators looked into the matter, it soon became apparent that their accounts had been hacked, and they were not to blame for the theft.

Eventually, Mitchell was caught hacking into the Zynga servers while using an unsecured wifi network and while logged into his Facebook account, making him quite easy to identify.

Mitchell pled guilty to the crime, and was sentenced to two years in jail.

According to Mitchell’s lawyers, Mitchell was an addicted gambler. During the trial, evidence was presented that showed he had bought several expensive items thanks to his gambling winnings; he had also spent some of the money gambling online.

Zynga Poker is one of a number of games developed for Facebook that allow users to interact with their friends on the social networking site. Zynga games such as Mafia Wars and Farmville are extremely popular, but have caused some controversy, both due to the fact that they are similar to previously existing games, and because they often require players to recruit friends to participate in order to fully unlock game features.