A 16 year old Japanese teen was arrested today by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police. His charge: hacking into the South Korean game company NEXON, which owns and operates the popular Asian MMORPG Mabinogi.

Allegedly this misguided, malevolent cyber-criminal broke into the data-banks of NEXON and stole over 36 million yens' worth (~$325,000 USD) of virtual Mabinogi game-world currency. This game-world currency can buy all manner of items in the Mabinogi game, but also can be translated and converted into real world money -- so this will undoubtedly add to the severity of the crime come court time for the teen. The actual hacking itself does not seem to have been all that difficult, from the reports -- the 16 year old just used some hacking-o-matic software he downloaded from somewhere to take some user ID and password credentials from a former NEXON employee, and then from there, it was a simple matter of creating a new game account, and crediting his account with the virtual kilobyte stacks of in-game cash.  

It didn't long for his actions to be uncovered by NEXON staff. At the point he was found out, he had only spent about $5,500 USD worth of game currency on books and software.

What motivated him to do this?

The teen somehow became obsessed with an expensive gothic-style dress worn by a princess in the game. “I originally wanted the dress worn by the princess,” the teen was quoted as saying, “but I just ended up racking up a bunch of game points.”

Perhaps this Japanese teen would get along quite well with this Dutch teen, who was nabbed in November for stealing a bunch of game-world cash for some digital furniture.