Former Jagex dev sentenced to prison for stealing $400K in RuneScape gold from players

An eight-year legal saga finally closed this week as Andrew "Mod Jed" Lakeman, a former Old School RuneScape developer, was sentenced to three years in prison — suspended for two years — for stealing over $400,000 worth of in-game gold and items from player accounts.

Lakeman joined Jagex as a content developer for OSRS in 2015. He used other employees' credentials to manipulate the game's appeals and account recovery systems, quietly draining items and gold from players' inventories and selling them online. Jagex caught on in 2018, realizing the losses weren't a glitch but deliberate theft. The company quietly tightened OSRS security without tipping off most of the dev team — Lakeman walked into the trap, was fired, and reported to police, who arrested him in 2019. In 2022 he won a minor procedural point through an unfair dismissal counter-complaint, though his financial award was slashed and his bid to be reinstated at Jagex was rejected. Earlier this year, Lord Justice Popplewell ruled that Lakeman could be sued for theft of digital assets like RuneScape gold, which set the stage for this sentencing. Detective Constable Andrew McKeane of the Cambridge Constabulary put it plainly: "Just because it's virtual, doesn't mean he shouldn't face the full force of the law."

The case is one of the most significant criminal prosecutions involving virtual game assets in the UK, and McKeane's statement signals that law enforcement is paying attention to digital-world crime as online economies grow. OSRS has a notoriously active real-world trading scene, making in-game gold genuinely valuable — which is exactly what made Lakeman's scheme lucrative enough to sustain for years. Former OSRS developer Mat K discussed the broader saga in a 2021 podcast episode, giving the community its first detailed look at what had happened behind the scenes.

Despite the grim chapter, Jagex and OSRS are in strong shape. The studio held its biggest live event ever — the Deadman All Stars esports tournament in Chicago this June — and OSRS now boasts a larger player base than the original RuneScape ever did. For the community, the sentencing closes a long-running wound.