Former Nintendo Hacker Gets 3 Years in Prison... Mostly for Unrelated Offenses

Back in 2016, a dude named Ryan Hernandez managed to snag some Nintendo credentials with a pal and leaked information about the upcoming Nintendo console, what we now know is the Switch. Nintendo obviously didn't much care for this, and in 2017 he was caught by authorities.

Shockingly, however, being caught didn't seem to dissuade him, and he continued to do less-than-legal things while the trial was ongoing, and in 2019 an FBI raid of his place found a file called "Bad Stuff" that included "thousands of confidential Nintendo files" and, more importantly, more than a thousand images and videos of child porn.

Well, his trial just wrapped up with a guilty plea, and due to both the Nintendo and child porn thing, he's been sentenced to three years in prison. In addition, he's been told to pay Nintendo $259,323 “for the remediation costs caused by his conduct.” It's worth noting he's being sent to a prison for "inmates with cognitive challenges".

It's obvious at a glance that most of his prison sentence comes from the child porn rather than anything to do with Nintendo. I's also shockingly light, which is probably due to a combination of mental issues and the fact he didn't seem to be a "distributor" of anything. Still, Nintendo is probably chalking this one up as a win, since they've certainly not been shy about throwing their legal weight around against fans who cross their path.

Granted, comparing people creating fan works and emulators with a convicted owner of child porn isn't fair to the former, but the way Nintendo goes after them, I don't think the big N sees it that way. Regardless, Nintendo hasn't commented in the legal victory, perhaps because for them, this is merely another Tuesday.

Maybe not the right time for a Street Fighter reference.