The lawyer of a man accused of attempting to firebomb several synagogues in New Jersey is saying that his client suffers from mental illness and was unduly influenced by video games. The 19-year-old man, Anthony M. Graziano of Lodi, N.J., pled not guilty to first-degree attempted murder, bias intimidation and aggravated arson for two attacks on synagogues in the area. Graziano was in court today seeking a reduction in his $5 million bail. Superior Court Judge Liliana DeAvila-Silebi cut the bail in half because Graziano is "destitute."

Former Alorton, Missouri police chief Michael Baxton Sr. pled guilty on Thursday in federal court to two felonies after an FBI sting caught him stealing five game systems. His bad. According to the U.S. attorney's office, an investigation of "systemic corruption within the Village of Alorton by various public officials" brought Baxton down. Charges against other officials in the town may be forthcoming.

What started out as a robbery to pay for a tattoo ended with the death of a 7-year old girl and her uncle, according Marion County, Indiana prosecutors. Two defendants, 22-year-old Michael Bell Jr., 25-year-old Jeremy Priel, are accused of collaborating in a plot to obtain a PlayStation 3 console that Bell wanted to trade for tattoo work, according to court documents charging the two men with murder.

California has launched a new eCrime unit to combat various online crimes. The new law enforcement unit created by California Attorney General Kamala Harris and announced Tuesday, aims take on various "cyber crimes" such as email scams, online fraud, piracy, child pornography, and real-world theft of computer gear by organized crime.

"Today's criminals increasingly use the Internet, smartphones, and other digital devices to victimize people online and offline," Harris said while unveiling the unit in the Silicon Valley city of San Jose.

Crime is taking a bite out of retailers' fairly decent sales numbers for the holiday season so far, according to trade group the National Retail Federation. According to estimates from the group, around 40 percent of theft is caused by organized crime rings, "returns" fraud, and shoplifting. Crime has costs U.S. retailers tens of billions of dollars already according to the group.

Psychiatrists who Norwegian courts assigned to assess accused mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik have come to the not-so-shocking conclusion that he is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. After interviewing him 13 times, they say he was in a "psychotic state" during and after the two separate attacks in late July that led to the deaths of 77 people and injured 151. The report is preliminary and still needs to be reviewed by a panel of forensic psychiatrists.

The Texas family court judge who was shown whipping his teenage daughter in a YouTube video has been suspended by the Texas Supreme Court. The seven and a half minute video was from a 2004 incident. It showed Judge William Adams viciously beating his daughter with a belt because she downloaded illegal music and games from the Internet. In rendering its decision, the court did not detail the reason for the order of suspension that was made public Tuesday.

A temporary Zynga employee was arrested this week for allegedly stealing $100,000 in merchandise. 21-year-old Keith Brown of San Ramon, California was arrested on Tuesday, according to District Attorney’s Office spokesman Omid Talai. He stands accused of stealing laptop and desktop computers and software valued at approximately $100,000 between Oct. 31 and the date of his arrest. Zynga security took him into custody and brought him to police, Talai said.

A man threatened to blow up his local game store yesterday after they informed him that they had sold out of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, according to police in Aurora, Colorado. Aurora Police Det. Bob Friel said that 31-year-old Lomorin Sar was arrested early Tuesday morning after he threatened the employees at the Best Buy at North Salida Court.

A teen murderer and rapist who confessed his crime in World of Warcraft to a friend (because he thought it would be safe to talk there) has been sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole for 10 years by a court in British Columbia. The 16-year-old, Kruse Wellwood, raped and murdered a classmate named Kim Proctor, who rejected his advances.

A Texas Family Court judge is now under investigation by the state's top law enforcement agency - the Texas Rangers - after a video surfaced of him beating his 16-year-old daughter Hillary Adams for downloading music and games from the Internet. The video was shot in 2004, but someone claiming to be his daughter posted the video on YouTube on October 27. The Aransas County Court-at-Law Judge William Adams was running for re-election.

A Tennessee man has been sentenced to 27 years in prison for killing his infant son because he bothered while playing a video game. Nineteen-year-old Andrew Keith Johnston pled guilty Monday to second-degree murder for the October 2010 death of his one-month-old son William.

The U.S. Attorney's office announced that a 29-year-old man from Washington D.C. has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for his part in an armed robbery of an Oxen Hill, Maryland GameStop. Terrence Terrell Conner was sentenced on Monday for "obstructing commerce by robbery" and "using a firearm during a violent crime." Conner pled guilty to all charges for a lighter sentence.

Police are actively looking for an African American male who stole nearly $4,000 in Madden NFL 12 video games from an Orange Park, Florida Walmart. The incident happened at the Walmart on County Road 220 on the afternoon of August 31. The suspect has been at large ever since, but police are showing off surveillance footage (to your left) from the store in hopes of apprehending him.

Kyoto police have arrested 50-year-old Japanese man Hiroyuki Kaneda for allegedly stealing an eight-year-old boy's game software and game machine and selling it. According to an Andriasang report, the theft allegedly took place in late May at a local supermarket.

The Umatilla, Florida Chief of Police has found himself in hot water this week over playing video games on the only computer in the office - among a litany of other complaints from his subordinates, who painted him as a bit of a tyrant. Police Chief Doug Foster, who has run the Umatilla Police Department for 19 years, has also been accused of using meetings to treat officers harshly, has made his staff run personal errands, took away officers' shotguns, neglected department vehicles, and required officers to submit a list of medication they were taking.

Law enforcement in Lubbock, Texas are on a manhunt for three suspects that they claim have stolen more than $13,000 in video game hardware from local Wal-Mart stores. The suspects allegedly stole Nintendo DS and DSI handheld games from the two local Walmarts (one at 1911 Marsha Sharp Freeway and another at 6315 82nd St).

The suspects are described as a white or Hispanic male, a Hispanic male, and a white or Hispanic woman. They were last seen driving away from the scene in a "black SUV, possibly a Chevrolet Trailblazer or Jeep Cherokee."

The Georgian teen that murdered his great grandmother and injured his grandmother with a sword after being told to stop playing video games and do his chores, will be tried as an adult, according to a Reuters report. The 15-year-old's name was also released, along with the names of the victims in the incident. The 15-year-old has been identified as Gevin Prince, and the 77-year-old great-grandmother who died from multiple stab wounds has been identified as Mary Joan Gibbs.

A Carlisle, Pennsylvania, lawyer blamed his addiction to video games for sloppy legal work that inevitably resulted in a three-year suspension of his ability to practice law in the state. 43-year-old attorney Mathew Eshelman claimed that he immersed himself in video games to fight job stress and problems at home.

A 14-year-old from Douglasville, Georgia is now in the custody of Douglas County Sheriff’s office after fatally stabbing his 77-year-old great grandmother and wounding his 55-year-old grandmother with a sword, according to multiple media reports. The incident occurred at around 5:00 p.m. on Monday at a home on Spring Ridge Drive in Douglasville. When the great grandmother told the teen to stop playing video games and do his chores, he apparently got a 3-foot sword and attacked the 77-year-old woman, who later died from multiple stab wounds.

The New York Times is reporting that minions of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il have found an interesting way of earning some much needed cash - MMO's. According to South Korean authorities, their neighbor to the North has created an army of young hackers and unleashed them on South Korea's most popular MMORPG's. This group is finding ways to exploit systems, gather in-game credits and convert it all back to cold hard cash.

According to Southern Chinese news agency Sanxiang City News a couple sold off their three children to fund their obsession with playing online games at Internet Cafes. The couple met in 2007 and quickly bonded because of their hobby. A year later their gaming was already getting in the way of being parents. In that year the couple had their first child - a son. Days later they left the young child home alone while they went to play online games at an Internet cafe 30 km away.

A year later the bad parenting escalated to unimaginable levels. In 2009 the 21-year-old couple had a baby girl. It was at that point they came up the idea to sell her for $500 USD. When that worked for them the couple sold their first child for $4,600 USD. Finally the couple has a third child, which they sold for another $4600 USD. Keep in mind that the couple did all this to fund their Internet cafe activities.

Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian man who has been arrested for killing over 76 people in a bomb attack in Oslo on Friday and a subsequent mass shooting at a political youth group retreat, claims in an exhaustive manifesto that he trained for the attacks using Modern Warfare 2. That claim comes from a 1500 page manifesto entitled "2083 – A European Declaration of Independence," which is making the rounds today (you can find a copy of it here via this blog).

In it, Breivik complains about the "rise of cultural Marxism/multiculturalism" and "Islamic colonization and Islamisation of Western Europe." He goes on to lay out how "fellow patriots" can combat the situation - and most his solutions end with violence.

Tim Langdell, the owner of Edge Games and the litigious defender of the trademark "Edge" has taken a serious thrashing in the UK courts at the hands of Future Publishing over its popular gaming publication, Edge Magazine. The company took Langdell to court in 2010 over breach of contract, breach of copyright, and misrepresenting the brand as belonging to Edge Games, causing brand confusion.

While the blow-by-blow is entertaining, it is also long-winded and mentally taxing to read as Langdell bobs and weaves in court, taking great liberties with the truth. If you are interested, Rock, Paper, shotgun offers an in-depth accounting of the court battle.

Two women are going to prison for a September 2010 crash that took the life of a prominent Relic Entertainment developer, injured his pregnant wife and killed two passengers in the woman's Chevy Blazer. The two women were found guilty of three counts of vehicular homicide each, with the driver Jordyn Weichert sentenced to eight years in prison and the passenger Samantha Bowling receiving a five year sentence. Wood was the lead developer on Company of Heroes Online.

The accident happened on Highway 20 near North Whidbey, Washington on September 3, 2010. According to police reports, Weichert tried to remove her sweater while driving her Chevy Blazer, and asked the passenger, Bowling, to steer. This lead to the confusion that caused the driver to lose control of the vehicle, which veered to the left and into oncoming traffic.

A Charles County, Maryland public schools administrator pled guilty in federal court Tuesday to embezzling federal funds to buy $100,000 worth of video games, cameras and laptops. According to the Washington Post, 41-year-old Rhayda Barnes-Thomas of Accokeek may face up to 10 years in federal prison. She is scheduled to be sentenced next month.

Since 2006 Barnes-Thomas was a "Title I specialist" for the Charles school system. This year, the district received $2 million through the program to support low income students. The school district serves 26,000 students.

Two men from Pueblo, Colorado were arrested on Saturday after pawning a large cache of video games to buy some heroin, according to the The Chieftain. The men were jailed after one of them admitted to stealing games from a local K-Mart so they could buy drugs. Nineteen-year-old Shane Michael Santarelli was arrested after police stopped the car he was riding in, according to a report by police officer Donnie Lambert.

Police were looking for the vehicle after an employee of the Kmart store at 3415 N. Elizabeth St. called them  about a man who was putting DS video games into a cooler. The man then left the story without paying for the games, meeting another man, 25-year-old Robert Gene Poirier, at his car. The employee followed the men to several pawnshops in the area.

A Wadsworth, Illinois man who used video games, an Xbox 360 and cash to entice (and ultimately)molest several teen boys has been sentenced to 26 years in prison, a fine and the stigma of having to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. Castration wasn't on the table. Twenty-year-old Joseph Wojdyla was sentenced by Judge George Bridges for sexually abusing two boys. Wojdyla committed unspecified sexual acts with a 13-year-old boy during a year-and-a-half period and a second 12-year-old boy. Wojdyla also took inappropriate photos of the two boys and saved them on his cellphone. Wojdyla was 17 when he committed the acts.

A Canadian teenager was brought to justice by an Xbox 360, Guitar Hero, and an uncle who was already in trouble with the law. The combination has landed the unnamed teenager from Saskatoon, Canada in jail, according to a CBC report. Police had their suspicions that the young man had committed a murder so they approached his uncle to take him down. The murder in question took place in 2009; police allege that the boy murdered 16 year-old Charlotte Jolly with a stolen rifle after a fight in an alley.

The uncle was more than happy to participate in the sting because police promised to drop a drunk driving charge for his help.

A Greece, New York (a small town northwest of Rochester) has been indicted this week on 19 charges alleging sexual abuse of a 12-year-old boy he met online through Xbox Live. A Monroe County grand jury indicted 19-year-old Greece resident Richard J. Kretovic on nine counts of first-degree criminal sexual act, nine counts of second-degree sexual abuse and one count of endangering the welfare of a child.

Kretovic was arrested April 19 on one felony charge of first-degree criminal sexual act and a misdemeanor of endangering the welfare of a child. At the time of his arrest, local police urged parents whose children might have been in contact with Kretovic to come forward. The charges delivered by the grand jury dealt only with one child, according to Assistant District Attorney Jason MacBride. MacBride added that the investigation is continuing.