SCEA Accuses Hotz of Avoiding, Withholding in Jailbreaking Case

According to new court documents filed by Sony Computer Entertainment America, the company is alleging that PS3 jailbreaker George "Geohot" Hotz has "decamped" to South America to dodge court hearings. The company also alleges that Hotz deliberately removed undisclosed data from hard drives and other devices a California court ordered him to hand over to a third-party for inspection and data collection.

From the court documents:

"Though the evidence establishing personal jurisdiction is already overwhelming, SCEA has little doubt that there is much more. However, over the last several weeks. Hotz has engaged in a campaign to thwart jurisdictional discovery at every turn –regardless of whether the Court has ordered such discovery or not. Most seriously, after Magistrate Judge Spero ordered an inspection of Hotz’s devices and ordered Hotz to appear at a deposition in California, SCEA learned that Hotz had deliberately removed integral components of his impounded hard drives prior to delivering them to a third party neutral and that Hotz is now in South America, an excuse for why he will not immediately provide the components of his hard drives as requested by the neutral. Hotz’s attempts to dodge this Court’s authority raise very serious questions."

The document goes on to say that when SCEA requested that Hotz turn over the data he removed from the hard drives, his attorney said that he was "in South America."

You can read the entire document here (PDF).

Source: VGHQ by way of C&VG