Zynga has only been trading since 2007 yet had sales of $850m last year, and 72 million users. Mitchell had stolen the identities of staff members at Zynga in order to access the digital chips used in virtual poker. There is a market online in these tokens, and Mitchell pocketed around £50,000 ($80,000) before being found out. What is not made clear in the reporting was that the black market value of stolen digital currency like this is very low: Mitchell's $80,000 income was from selling tokens with a face value of $4 million.
Zynga claimed the losses were greater as Mitchell had stolen far more than he had been able to sell. and their lawyers called for a stiff sentence. Mitchell didn't help himself by breaching the terms of an earlier suspended sentence, imposed for hacking in 2008. Behind the headlines, though, he is unlikely to be languishing in jail. Skills such as these will have been noticed by both the government and private online security companies. It is said to be common for this type of 'black hat' operator (a rogue hacker who is in it for profit) to be recruited into a new 'white hat' role, working to make the internet a safer place. White hats conduct penetration testing for clients and help identify security weaknesses - something that Ashley Mitchell has shown himself expert at.
Mitchell's hacking identity was hidden at first as he accessed Zynga's network by using two unsecured wireless networks belonging to his neighbours. Police origially showed up at his street in Paignton and took away computer equipment belonging to people in houses nearby. Eventually the trail led to Mitchell, as he had rashly used his own Facebook profile in one of his hacks.
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