Hacker who stole Nintendo secrets & had child porn to pay $250,000+

A California man is facing some serious charges as he has pleaded guilty to hacking Nintendo servers while also possessing child pornography.

21-year-old Palmdale, California man, Ryan Hernandez, has pleaded guilty to charges laid against him for both hacking Nintendo systems and stealing company secrets as well as downloading and possessing child pornography. According to the US Department of Justice website, Hernandez used a "phishing technique" to steal the credentials of a Nintendo employee, which gained him access to Nintendo's servers, where he downloaded confidential files.

The files contained explicit information about Nintendo's coming console, upcoming games, developer tools, and more. The FBI contacted Hernandez back in October 2017, and gave him a warning, Hernandez promised to stop any further hacking attempts and acknowledged that he understood the consequences if he continued to do so. Hernandez continued his malicious online activity throughout 2018 and 2019, continuing to hack Nintendo servers and bragging about his wrongdoings on Twitter and Discord.

In June 2019, FBI agents searched Hernandez's home and gathered numerous electronic devices and computers. On these drives, they found "thousands of confidential Nintendo files" and "more than one thousand videos and images of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct, stored and sorted in a folder directory he labeled "Bad Stuff."

Hernandez is now facing a maximum of 5 years in prison for computer fraud and abuse and 20 years in prison for possession of child pornography. Hernandez has also agreed to pay "$259,323 in restitution to Nintendo for the remediation costs caused by his conduct".