US Judge Orders Bail Payment at $750K in Cryptocurrency for Alleged EA Hacker

[fitload]

A man who was accused of illegally accessing the secure network of well-known gaming company Electronic Arts (EA), has been ordered by a US federal court to pay the equivalent of $750,000 in cryptocurrency for bail.

Martin Marsich, a 25-year-old Serbian and Italian national whose last known residence was in Udine, Italy, was arrested at the San Francisco International Airport on August 8 while boarding a flight to Serbia.

He made his first appearance in federal court on August 9. He is charged with “illegal intrusion” into the Electronic Arts internal computer network, which gave him access to 25,000 customer accounts.

Martin Marsich was alleged to have used some of the information he obtained from the computer system to obtain in-game currency, which is used to buy and sell in-game items. He is accused of selling access to online games on black market websites, and the losses sustained from closing the compromised and stolen video game accounts are tallied at approximately $324,000, according to the gaming company.

EA spokesman John Reseburg said Friday that EA works hard to protect its players and took steps to mitigate the problem as soon as it discovered the intrusion. No player data was exposed, he said. According to the FBI’s affidavit, the hacker sold the stolen accounts over the dark web or online black markets.

Marisch apparently has access to a large sum of cryptocurrency, enabling him to potentially foot the bill for what seems to have been a cyber-robbery gone wrong.

However, Marisch’s case may be the first incident of someone paying for bail in cryptocurrency directly without converting it first.

Read More: https://news.bitzamp.com/us-judge-orders-bail-payment-at-750k-in-cryptocurrency-for-alleged-ea-hacker/cker/[/url]