Gloucestershire IT pro faces court over £30k Amazon voucher theft allegations

A 23-year-old Gloucester IT worker is to stand trial after allegedly stealing more than £30,000 worth of Amazon vouchers before selling them on eBay. Jack Walden, of Cranham Close, Abbeymead, appeared before Cheltenham magistrates on 6 January facing three charges: two of fraud and one under the Computer Misuse Act. …

[Anonymous Coward]

The Cotswolds

A right den of thieves and villains.

[DJV]

Re: The Cotswolds

But their stone walls are extremely pretty!

[Rameses Niblick the Third Kerplunk Kerplunk Whoops Where's My Thribble?]

Re: The Cotswolds

Great, thank you. Now all I can hear in my head is Alec Guinness saying "The Cotswolds. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious."

That's going to keep me distracted all day now.

[TimMaher]

Re: The Cotswolds

Great. Thank you @Thribble.

Now I’m going to have to spend the rest of the day hunting down Alec Guinness quotes and immersing myself in IMDB.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: The Cotswolds

When I saw the headline, the thing that immediately came to mind was if he was working for a certain well known secret employer in that country, which on further reading, it would appear not to be the case.

[Cederic]

seems to be working

Although there are often frustrated calls for updates to the Computer Misuse Act, claiming that it's outdated and that it doesn't account for modern technologies, it does generally seem to work reasonably well.

Someone does something obviously naughty, gets prosecuted, receives appropriate sentence.

I'm not going to pretend that it shouldn't be updated, but hope that any changes retain the primarily proportional and balanced implementation we have now.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: seems to be working

Don't mistake lack of appropriate punishment from the judiciary for a failure in the law they so often fail to enforce sufficiently. Assault or robbery get light or suspended sentences (especially if committed against emergency services personnel, it seems) but being rude to the judge in court gets you sent down for Contempt.

It is not the law that needs adjusting, it is the people involved in trying the cases and sentencing the criminals who need to be addressed.

[Cynic_999]

Re: seems to be working

The problem is that the proposed updates to the Act are unlikely to make it any more effective in prosecuting wrongdoing, but instead will allow it to be used to further erode our privacy, and to prosecute people who are doing things that are merely inconvenient to government authorities. As you correctly point out, the existing Act is perfectly adequate, and I have not heard of any example of an action that would be seriously wrong but which could not be prosecuted due to a limitation in the present computer misuse Act.

[Brad16800]

Found an issue with gift cards at the company I worked for about 10 years ago that essentially let me make them with any amounts. Did the right thing and reported it as any retail staff could also do the same, wasn't even any record in the logs and very simple a non-IT staff member would have figured it out. Literally showed them a blank card then the process any cash register could use to put any amount on them, took about 20 seconds.

Result, nothing changed. Decided to move on a few months later. Sometimes they don't want to know I guess. Still my morals were untarnished.

[Grease Monkey]

He may walk away with a suspended sentence. But I suspect he'll also be hit with an order to pay back the value of the goods. And making the payment is often a condition of the suspension of the sentence.

IOW words pay back £30K plus within a certain time or go to jail anyway.