A 24-year-old Kentucky man is under arrest, charged with persuading an 11-year-old Texas girl to send nude photos of herself through her PlayStation 3.

As reported by Houston's ABC-13, police allege that Anthony Scott O'Shea's manipulation of his victim was managed entirely via the console. Sgt Gary Spurger told ABC-13:

He used the PS3 for everything, checked his email, played on the internet, on his PS3 and of course, played his games on PS3, but had no computer...

 

[O'Shea] asked for pictures of her breasts. She said no. He said friends do things for each other. You're on my friends list. If you don't, I'm gonna remove you, at which point she feels nervous and scared and sent the pictures.

Police say that Shea mailed the girl's pictures to others around the country. The suspect's bail is set at $300,000.

For its part, Sony provided investigators with technical assistance in the case.

In an opinion piece for Slate, game journo Leigh Alexander ties up the loose ends on the recent controversy surrounding RapeLay, a particularly despicable PC game which migrated from Japan to the retail pages of Amazon.com via a third-party merchant.

After the news broke. Amazon, which almost certainly was unaware of the game in the first place, quickly banished it.

Alexander views RapeLay and its ilk as a largely Japanese problem:

It's an old cliché that the more repressed a society, the more extreme its pornography—but more upsetting than RapeLay is the social environment that birthed it. The premise here is that a wealthy man is out for revenge against the schoolgirl who had him jailed as a chikan, or subway pervert. The epidemic of chikan is an enormous problem in Japan, particularly in major cities...

While the moral outrage from the New York City Council and Web sites... is obviously well-placed, there's little hope that legislation or activism can stem the perversion. Not only is RapeLay rooted in a social illness that's embedded in Japanese society, it's just one game in a niche industry that's more closely related to the porn business than to the video game world.

The owner of an independent video game shop in Missouri has been charged with molesting young men who came to his place of business.

As reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Leland Beasley, 41, operated the Gamestation Section 19 in Lemay:

Beasley... is being held on $250,000 cash-only bond... St. Louis County police believe Beasley had contact with at least 10 different teens at the shop between March 2006 and January...

PC gamers, if you've received an authentic-looking e-mail offer from Steam for a free download of Far Cry 2, don't click through.

The ad is not legit and the link does not go to Steam, but rather to the perhaps aptly-named ripway.com.

Here at GP we received two of these offers yesterday, and several members of the Joystiq crew received them as well.

We've notified Steam and we trust that they are taking the appropriate measures to shut down this apparent scam.

Apparently the corrupt Baltimore politics portrayed in the HBO series The Wire wasn't all that far from the truth.

State prosecutors charged today that Mayor Sheila Dixon (D) cashed in Best Buy gift cards donated for needy families for her personal use. Among Dixon's alleged purchases were a PlayStation 2, an Xbox 360 and a PSP. It's unknown whether she is a gamer herself or if the systems were given to others.

Dixon also faces charges of perjury and misconduct in office.

Via: Baltimore Sun

Thanks to: GP reader Dan Pittore