A former Jagex employee has been convicted after stealing virtual "gold pieces" from players' accounts in the online game Old School RuneScape and selling them on the black market for cryptocurrency. Andrew Lakeman, 32, who worked at the Cambridge-based games developer from 2015, exploited his internal access to raid 68 player accounts, taking hundreds of billions of in-game gold pieces. The case is notable because prosecutors first had to establish, via a Court of Appeal ruling in January, that virtual in-game wealth counts as "property" under the Theft Act 1968, a decision with potential implications for future prosecutions involving digital assets.

Jagex first spotted suspicious account activity in 2018 and, after setting a trap involving an unannounced curfew on account recovery, traced the thefts to Lakeman's devices; the matter was referred to Cambridgeshire Police in 2019 and he was arrested that July. He later pleaded guilty to unauthorised computer access, theft by an employee and acquiring criminal property, with investigators finding he had banked £364,829 from crypto dealers and had discussed further illicit plans with his wife. At Cambridge Crown Court, Lakeman, now of Chathill, Northumberland, was given a three-year prison sentence suspended for two years, with police warning that the justice system must keep pace with emerging crimes involving virtual worlds.