Hacker Steals $12 Million Worth of Zynga Poker Chips

Gamasutra reports that a 29-year-old British man has been convicted of hacking into Zynga's game servers and helping himself to 400 billion virtual poker chips. "'The defendant sold around one third of the 400 billion poker chips, and looking at the auction history where one can purchase such items, he was selling them for around £430 ($695) per billion,' said prosecutor Gareth Evans, according to a report from local newspaper Herald Express. Sold legitimately through Zynga, the full amount of chips would have brought in some $12 million. The prosecutor estimated that if Mitchell sold all of the virtual chips on the black market, he would have made a fraction of that, around £184,000 ($297,000). Evans admitted that valuing virtual currency can be difficult and that the company was not actually deprived of tangible goods, but he said that the theft could still affect the developer by indirectly causing legitimate online gamers to stop playing Zynga Poker or its other games."

My sister stole 13 million worth of my monopoly $

[Rivalz]

I was selling my physical monopooly currency to her for $100,000 for every 100 monopoly bucks.
Sadly my news article never earned quite as much attention as this when I submitted it to /.
I hope to one day throw her in prison, even tho she has admitted to damaging my business model my lawyer is skeptical of a positive outcome at trial.
Something about suing a minor looking bad to the jury.

Re:Prediction

[somersault]

A lot of currency is already "virtual", ie there is no gold or even paper currency there backing it up.

Re:Prediction

[c0lo]

Yes, I know... And this is scary: the fact Zynga can function as a "private mint", yet having their currency treated as it would be an official banknote (traded on black-market, valuated against real-world "virtual currency"... that is dollar... obtaining a conviction of a person for "stealing them"?).
Do you think Zynga will take care of the "inflation rate" on their currency? Do you think it is far the moment the "real-world persons" will start to be interested in different "virtual currencies"? How long 'til "real-world money" laundering/tax evasion and other schemes will get too tempting for the "Zynga's virtual economy" to refuse?
Being both virtual, how long 'til the financial will start trading real stock for "private virtual currency"?