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.

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.

Project Zomboid developer The Indie Stone can't seem to catch a break lately. The company recently suffered a serious setback in the development of its browser-based game when thieves broke into the residence of two of its developers and stole two laptops containing a large portion of recent code. The game's developers say that the code that was stolen represents the majority of the work accomplished since the last update. On top of the theft, the code was never backed up, meaning that the team will have to start from scratch.

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.

A new proposal before the City Council of Madison, Wisconsin has some residents and civil rights groups up in arms this week. An effort to collect the personal information of individuals who sell various used items (books, DVD's, music CD's, iPods, games, and more). Under the proposed Madison city ordinance, if someone sells items to a second-hand store they will have to provide personal information and a photo will be entered into a police database. Local business owners, civil rights advocates and the public are not pleased.

British police have arrested two men yesterday as part of a what is being called a trans-Atlantic investigation into cyber attacks committed by hacking groups Anonymous and LulzSec. According to a C&VG report, Scotland Yard has confirmed that it picked up two men (one 24-year-old, and another 20-year-old) from two separate UK addresses. Law enforcement took the men into custody and seized a computer.

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."

Oklahoma City police have arrested a 13-year-old boy in connection with the death of his nine-month-old baby sister after a questionable story of what happened to the child was told to the staff at a metro hospital. ER doctors became suspicious and called the local police. Officers were called to a metro hospital on August 16 after doctors noted that the baby's injuries were not consistent with an explanation given by the girl's parents.

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 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.

Bungie's IT guy, Jeff Fletcher, is an information specialist for the Halo creators during the day, but sometimes he's a gun-toting vigilante, according to this report from Seattle news station KING 5.

Wesley Snipes proves that you don't have to be free to do anything with his new iOS game, Julius Styles: The International. Snipes is currently serving three years in a federal prison for tax evasion, but that hasn't stopped him from being creative (Snipes' projected date from prison is July, 2013).