Former RuneScape Dev Sentenced for £364K Theft

Andrew Lakeman, a former developer for the popular online game Old School RuneScape, was sentenced on September 3, 2026, for stealing virtual items and gold worth hundreds of thousands of pounds from players. The 32-year-old, known in the gaming community as "Mod Jed," received a three-year prison sentence suspended for two years at Cambridge Crown Court after pleading guilty to charges including unauthorized computer access and theft by an employee. The case stems from events that began in 2018 when Jagex, the company behind RuneScape, noticed suspicious account recovery activity. Valuable in-game items and gold were being removed from player accounts. After the activity briefly stopped, it resumed later that year, prompting the company to suspect an insider was responsible. Jagex launched a covert internal investigation, modifying its firewall and account recovery processes without informing the wider team to avoid alerting the perpetrator. The investigation traced the illicit activity to devices and an address linked to Lakeman, who had been a content developer at Jagex since November 2015.