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The person in question is a Serbian and Italian citizen called Martin Marsich, who ended up being busted by the FBI no less, at a San Francisco airport on Wednesday, 08 August 2018. I'd normally try to sneak a joke in here somewhere but as you're soon to find out - Marsich's predicament is definitely nothing to joke about.
EA's lawsuit says Marsich is guilty of hacking into their servers and stealing $324,000, with the official text accusing him of "intentionally accessing a protected computer without authorization to obtain information for the purposes of commercial advantage and private financial gain", among other things. If Marsich ends up guilty, he's is looking at a maximum sentence of five years and a $250,000 fine.
What Marsich did though is pretty clever, as he used an exploit to get access to NBA Live 15 backend, from where he used a secret access token to cross over to FIFA 18 servers. Once inside, he distributed more than 17,000 copies of FIFA 18 to various EA accounts and an undisclosed amount of in-game currency to 8,000 accounts.
Marsich is said to have sold these on black market websites, although it isn't disclosed how many of these accounts were actually directly his and how many may have been his associates. On the other hand, we're likely to find that out as we're sure EA won't be hiding this one behind closed doors.
After all, this is not the first time EA has pursued someone who stole from them, although we truly hope that this story has a more positive ending than the horror story surrounding Anthony Clark. In case you don't remember, EA sued Clark and his group for similar fraud, confiscating almost $3 million from their accounts but Clarke took his own life not long after.
FIFA 18, the most important secondary game in the world
