An ex-Jagex employee working for Jagex, the developer of Old School RuneScape, has been convicted for illegally acquiring virtual assets within the game. Andrew Lakeman was brought to justice for stealing virtual gold worth $400,000 and selling it on the black market.

Lakeman, known to the community as Mod Jed, is 32 years old and had been involved in the game’s development since 2015. Jagex launched an investigation in 2018 after noticing suspicious account recovery and the loss of valuable in-game items.

Internal Threat in the Virtual Economy

The economy of Old School RuneScape is managed through the Grand Exchange, which operates similarly to a real-world stock exchange system. In this system where players trade, stolen virtual items can directly lead to financial losses.

Although Jagex management initially thought this was due to a system flaw, in-depth investigations revealed it to be an internal threat. To protect player trust, the company updated account recovery processes and made hidden changes to firewall settings.

Thanks to these technical interventions, the IT team managed to trace the illegal activities directly to an employee nicknamed Mod Jed. Although Lakeman denied the accusations, claiming his account was hacked, Jagex fired him and reported the incident to the police.

The investigation revealed that Lakeman sold the stolen virtual gold and items on the black market for over $400,000. Additionally, it was determined that he had $493,000 in cash in his bank accounts, allegedly obtained from cryptocurrency sales.

Court Decision and Legal Process

Lakeman, who was arrested in July 2019, was sentenced by Cambridge Royal Court on September 3rd. The court sentenced the defendant to three years in prison, but suspended the sentence for two years.

In addition to the prison sentence, Lakeman was ordered to perform 150 hours of community service and a 25-day rehabilitation period. Detective Andrew McKeane of Cambridgeshire Police stated that the defendant knew his actions were wrong and that even though it took place in a virtual environment, this action constituted a theft crime.

The incident once again highlighted the importance of security measures taken by game developers against their own employees. Despite this major security breach, Jagex did not have to shut down its game servers. Do you think theft in the virtual world should be evaluated on the same level as mistakes in the real world?