The 18-year-old Lapsus$ hacker who played a critical role in leaking Grand Theft Auto VI footage has been sentenced to life inside a hospital prison, according to a report from the BBC. A British judge ruled on Thursday that Arion Kurtaj is a high risk to the public because he still wants to commit cybercrimes.
In August, a London jury found that Kurtaj carried out cyberattacks against GTA VI developer Rockstar Games and other companies, including Uber and Nvidia. However, since Kurtaj has autism and was deemed unfit to stand trial, the jury was asked to determine whether he committed the acts in question, not whether he did so with criminal intent.
I had PTSD after being held in a psychiatric ward for a few days. Granted this was in the US (in a major Texas city), but if the UK’s mental health is anything like the US, that kid’s never coming out.
I have ptsd from my experiences with nhs mental health services. This kid is going to be destroyed. My heart goes out to them, this is so incresibly unjust.
It’s been a while and my PTSD was milder so it’s pretty much gone at this point, but it really sucks how bad emergency mental health services are. It meant I learned the wrong lesson from being hospitalized: never tell someone if you’re suicidal because they might call 911 instead of helping you find a better place to stay. I’ve heard there are a lot of good mental health hospitals in the US, but they tend to be (even more) expensive and are almost never the emergency care facilities.
Not sure if the UK has a similar situation, where the good places aren’t covered or are on extremely long wait lists, and the shitty, abusive places are the places people usually get sent, but I feel bad for him. He should be given a job and a therapist, not a psych ward where the nurses are jaded and probably not paid enough to give a shit while the doctors are either burned out or trying to make the best of a shitty situation.