Mitchell was able to fence a portion of the stolen e-booty for £53,000, and would have made an estimated total of £184,000 had he succeeded in off-loading the rest at the same rate.
This begs the real question, who on God's green earth is paying tens of thousands of pounds for play-money chips on a Facebook based poker site? Is lording your super-stack over your Facebook friends really worth the outlay of cash?
Wouldn't it be more fun to spend the money on, say, real poker chips at a casino?
As it turns out this wasn't Mitchell's first foray into the world of electronic crime. He'd received a 40-week suspended sentence in 2008 for hacking into a municipal government website and changing his personal details, benefiting himself £3,498.
Mitchell was also juggling a gambling addiction with his propensity for law-breaking, according to his lawyer, and was dropping £1,000 a day through online gambling sites. Mitchell cited this as a factor in his motivation to commit the fraud.
Mitchell's in for a sad surprise when he gets to prison. They don't use play-money chips to keep track.
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