When you are on the run from the U.S. Military, committing a major act of fraud and identity theft is probably not the brightest idea. The FBI says that they have apprehended an AWOL Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania soldier who pretended to be former Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. In an indictment unsealed on Monday,  investigators allege that 28-year-old Brandon Lee Price called Citibank in January and requested a change of address on Paul Allen's bank account - from Seattle, Washington to Pittsburgh.

A Spokane Valley, Washington area hang-out for teens was forced close after $14,500 worth of consoles, controllers, video games, petty cash, and other miscellaneous goods were stolen earlier this week. The business called Game On was burglarized on Monday night or early Tuesday morning, according to Spokane Valley Police. The burglar(s) apparently found a way into one of the establishment's windows. Local teens frequented the hang out because it provided them with a place to play games, take part in game tournaments, watch movies with friends, and more.

A Catholic priest from Kalispell, Montana has been accused of possessing child porn, but the whole story starts with a Nintendo DS. Police began the investigation into the 67-year-old Catholic priest name d Rudolph “Rudy” Carl Bullman after a woman who bought a Nintendo DS from him called police. She told them in October of 2011 that she found sexually explicit pictures of young boys on the Nintendo hand-held he sold her.

Enterprising criminals have apparently decided that former Megaupload users are as good a target as any, and have started sending fake demand letters to people under the guise of a law firm representing rights holders. So far, scammers are using two approaches to target file-sharers: the technical approach (malware and web browser redirects) and the pay-up-or-else-we'll-sue-you letter approach.

George Hotz may be best known as the guy that was sued by Sony for jailbreaking the PS3 and for jailbreaking the iPhone, but last week he was charged with a felony for something that didn't involve Electronic devices and hacking.

A man who stole some items of little value and murdered the man that owned them thought he got away with the crime. After allegedly shooting the man in the head, a Las Vegas man named Patrick Wilcock sold some of the items he stole at a local pawn shop. But police say that the one thing that may have uncovered the crime was a stolen PlayStation 3. The suspect stole it, along with some video games and other items not mentioned in the report.

Common sense dictates that you can't scream "fire!" in a crowded movie theater and that doing so isn't considered protected speech. In the wake of the recent Ohio school shootings, making public jokes about shooting up your local high school also falls under the purview of widely held common sense doctrine.

A horrible story out of China details a double murder that happened after a man found out he'd been sold a counterfeit iPhone. A man in the Zhenzhou, Henan province of north-central China spent $330 on a device that he thought was an Apple iPhone. Later he realized that the phone was a fake and was furious. The man, identified in news reports only as "Feng," was out for blood. He came across a gang of men trying to sell the same fake phone to a young boy. At this point he apparently lost all sense of self control and pulled out a knife.

Update: The FBI has issued a press release with more details on the arrests made so far. They name names and list all of the charges.

It's official: the U.S. government wants to extradite four members of Megaupload to the United States for a litany of charges including racketeering, copyright infringement and money laundering. On Friday U.S. prosecutors filed extradition requests against four New Zealand-based defendants - including founder Kim Dotcom.

In a shocking turn of events, Iran's highest court has overturned the conviction of alleged American spy Amir Mirza Hekmati, ruling that his death sentence cannot stand because it found "shortcomings" in his case.

Amir Mirza Hekmati, who is assumed to work for game developer Kuma Reality Games, was accused by the Iranian government of spying for the CIA. He was subsequently convicted of the crime and sentenced to death. Iranian prosecutors also alleged that Hekmati was training at US bases in Afghanistan and Iraq  prior to being deployed into Iran.

Megaupload Founder Kim Dotcom says that when all of the court room drama is over, his company will win the fight against the U.S. government. Speaking to TorrentFreak over the phone (because he is not allowed to use the Internet), Dotcom said that he was doing fine now that he is out on bail and catching up. Dotcom was released on bail February 22. During the interview he recalled the chaos of January 19 when New Zealand law enforcement invaded his home to arrest him.

A federal appeals court has concluded that a Florida man who refused to decrypt several electronic devices and was subsequently imprisoned, had his civil rights violated. This is the first time an appeals courts has ruled in favor of protections for encrypted devices and software. The court ruled in The United States v. Doe that the man's Fifth Amendment Rights were violated.

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."

Federal prosecutors have told the Associated Press that data from MegaUpload could be deleted as soon as Thursday, according to a report in CBS. This is particularly bad news for anyone that was using the service to back up files. Contrary to popular belief MegaUpload was used for other things besides sharing illegal files...

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.

On Monday federal prosecutors announced that a Los Gatos, California game developer pled guilty to several charges including conspiracy to commit mail fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit bank fraud. Speaking to the San Jose Mercury News, the former owner of UltraCade Technologies said that some of what the government announced on Monday was "inaccurate."

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.

Two prototype Razer Blade laptops have been stolen, according to the company that makes them, but they claim that the theft is unlikely to impact launch plans for what it calls "the world's first true gaming laptop." Razer revealed this morning that two prototype Razer Blade gaming laptops had been stolen from its R&D offices earlier this month.

The 31-year old Aurora, Colorado man arrested and charged for disorderly conduct earlier this week after allegedly threatening to shoot Best Buy employees and blow the place up over Modern Warfare 3 purchase problems says that he is shocked at how much attention his story has gotten on the internet and that the words he used were just a figure of speech.

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.

In the summer of this year law enforcement agencies in several European countries conducted raids and made arrests related to movie streaming links portal Kino.to and file-hosting sites such as Duckload.com. Duckload lost 400 servers to police, worth more than 2 million dollars in total. While police managed to nab most of the targets they were looking for one man managed to escape apprehension. The net has finally fallen on that man. After five months of evading police the man known believed to be Tim C has been arrested in Germany.

Two armed robbers managed to steal 6,000 copies of Modern Warfare 3 in France, according to multiple news reports. According to published reports (as translated by Eurogamer), at 8:00 AM on Sunday morning a car crashed into a van 10km southeast of Paris. The van was carrying unspecified video game cargo worth €400,000.

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.

TV Station KTLA reports on a tragedy that resulted from one man trying to stop a theft. Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies have arrested four teenagers as a result. The boys were arrested after a fight over a DS ended in a shooting that wounded one teen and killed an unnamed 29-year-old male. The shooting occurred just after 3:00 p.m. Monday at a shopping center where a teen met with four other teen boys to sell a Nintendo DS game system.