Nintendo Hacker Possessing Child Porn Gets Prison Sentence

A 21-year-old hacker from Palmdale, California, was sentenced to three years in prison due to his schemes of leaking secret information on Nintendo and possession of child pornography.

The US District Court of Seattle pronounced the sentence for the hacker on 1st December 2020.

Ryan S. Hernandez, who also goes by Ryan West or, as his online name specifies, “RyanRocks,” had a case filed against him in 2016.

Hernandez was a minor and used phishing techniques to gain access to confidential information on a then-unreleased Nintendo.

The FBI contacted his family in 2017, and Hernandez promised not to engage in hacking related activities again.

However, he was still active as a hacker from 2018 to 2019 and leaked malicious and confidential information during that time.

In 2019, the FBI performed a search on Hernandez’s house and confiscated numerous electronic devices.

These devices contained data on not only Nintendo and other gaming devices but also videos of minors engaging in sexual acts.

From 2018-2019, he hacked into multiple servers of Nintendo and those of other video games and consoles. He shared his conquests and leaked the information in an online chat forum called “Ryan’s Underground Hangout.”

Hernandez has been sentenced to three years in prison, followed by seven years of supervised release. He has also been registered as a sex offender.

He has to pay a total of $259,323 to Nintendo to make up for the damage that he has caused to the company.

The leaked information from Nintendo contained a lot of upcoming game designs and plans. The early prototypes of Pokemon Diamond and an unused Animal Crossing villager.

Nintendo has suffered numerous cases of information leaks in the past few years. The most significant of them included source code and development assets.

Source: U. S. Department of Justice

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