Teen Steals Millions of MapleStory Users, Gets Busted

A 17 years-old Israeli teen was caught by the police forces after hacking the popular free MMO MapleStory for quite a few months now. The teen managed to interfere with the coding of the game and redirect players from the official server to a pirate one where everything was free.

Nexon, the developers of MapleStory (the MMO has about 50 million registered users, according to reports) complained to authorities several months ago, when everything started, which means that by now the teen managed to create quite a big hole in the developer’s pockets and, probably, a big smile on the faces of the users who got everything for free (MapleStory is not subscription-based, but based on microtransactions).

The youngster, however, started to brag about his work on different forums and soon police forces were able to locate him: he was living at home with his parents, who had no idea of what he was doing. After being arrested, according to Israeli publication Haaretz, the teen said “I wanted to prove I was Number 1”. And, let’s admit it – he did it for several months!