Virtual Facebook Thief Jailed For Two Years

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A British hacker has been jailed for two years after becoming a multimillionaire by breaching the service’s security featured. Ashley Mitchell, 29 of Devon, managed to break into Zynga’s main servers, steal the account details of two staff members and transfer poker chips worth over £7 million to his own account.

These chips were then cashed in to buy even more poker chips on different gambling sites, as Mitchell developed a £1,000 per day gambling habit. The prosecution stated that other than splashing out on a Rolex watch, Mitchell didn’t enjoy any benefit from the heist, as he promptly lost most of the money gambling and setting up his own Facebook poker game (which didn’t enjoy mich success).

Mitchell’s sentence was extended due to his previous attempts to hack into the computers of Torbay Council. While user’s accounts weren’t affected by the heist, it’s good practise to make sure that your passwords are secure, and that you’re taking precautions to shield yourself from similar scams on social sites.