A hacker has been jailed for two years after being found guilty of stealing a sizeable amount of poker chips from Zynga.
The British hacker, Ashley Mitchell, pleaded guilty to all the charges after he had attempted to sell £7.4million of chips using dummy accounts. The venture made him around £53,000 that he used to fund an escalating gambling addiction.
Sentencing Judge Philip Wassall told Mitchell, “People rely on the security of systems and anyone who comes before the courts who has gone through these security systems from their own ends can expect custody.
“The sentence has to reflect the impact on public confidence in security systems and online business when someone breaches security in this way.”
The event had already completely sold out the day before it began and in addition to the $100,000 guaranteed poker tournament, there were a number of seminars hosted by Annie Duke and Ali Nejad.
The tournament itself saw two flights of 250 players with the top three from both moving on to the final table. Shirley Richards, Hugh Davies, Alfred Calimbas, Dave Bille, Casey Connor, Howard Lee, Robb Jones, Robert Holmes, Aaron Alanen and Charles Milham, made up the table and taking home the biggest share of the prize pool was Aaron Alanen.
It was noted that the event was a success and it’s likely that this will become a regular fixture on the gaming conference calendar as Zynga continues to make waves in the online gambling industry.
