Pokémon fan arrested for selling hacked Sobble
Captured.
The Pokémon series has always encouraged players to look after their Pokémon, raise them right, and defend them against the clutches of Team Rocket.
The Pokémon series does not suggest you should genetically modify your Pokémon friends and then sell them for money. Nintendo isn't particularly keen on you doing this either.
Which brings us to today, and the arrest of a 23-year-old Japanese man for allegedly hacking and selling a Sobble.
Asahi News (via Kotaku) reports that the unnamed man was caught selling the modified Sobble to another player for 4400 yen (about £30), and subsequently gave a confession.
But it goes beyond Sobble. The man, who is currently unemployed, is said to have made 1.1m yen (about £8k) selling thousands of such modified creatures. It's likely this which caught the authorities' attention.
Today, Japanese police proudly displayed the computer used to modify the Pokémon in question:
Only last week, The Pokémon Company issued a sternly-worded warning to hackers of Pokémon Sword, Shield and cloud-based storage service Pokémon Home.
"We have confirmed that some users are playing Pokémon Sword Shield and Pokémon Home using illegally modified data," the company wrote. "We will regularly monitor and respond to fraudulent and annoying acts so that our users can enjoy themselves with peace of mind. We look forward to your continued support of the Pokémon series."