GTA 6 leaker Arion Kurtaj out of secure hospital, now in prison awaiting retrial

Arion Kurtaj — the hacker behind the massive 2022 GTA 6 leak — has been released from the UK secure hospital where he was held since 2023 and is now in a regular prison awaiting retrial, reportedly scheduled for November. BBC correspondent Joe Tidy broke the news on Bluesky, though the exact date Kurtaj was transferred back to prison remains unclear.

Kurtaj was 18 when he uploaded 90 GTA 6 development videos — over 50 minutes of unfinished gameplay — to GTAForums, more than a year before Rockstar released the first official trailer. He pulled off the Rockstar hack while under police protection at a Travelodge hotel, using only an Amazon Firestick, a TV, and a phone. A psychiatric assessment found he had "acute autism" and was "highly motivated" to return to cybercrime as soon as possible, which led the court to skip the question of criminal intent entirely — the jury only decided whether he had committed the acts. He was sentenced to a secure hospital indefinitely, until doctors cleared him as no longer a danger. Rockstar said the hack cost the company $5 million, and the leak is widely credited with accelerating the game's official reveal in late 2023.

Kurtaj has apparently been active on social media in recent months, posting from what he described as a smuggled burner Nokia phone. In those messages he called his hospital stay "amazing" — noting he could go fishing, cook his own food, and go shopping — and dismissed the charges against him as "bullshit." How he can now face retrial for crimes committed when his mental state required years of institutionalization is an open question; Tidy said on LinkedIn that police weren't forthcoming even about confirming the hospital release, describing it as "like getting blood out of a stone."

The retrial is currently pencilled in for November — the same month GTA 6 is set to launch on consoles, a coincidence that hasn't been lost on the community. At least one other underage member of the Lapsus$ group was separately sent to a youth rehabilitation centre; Kurtaj's case remains the most high-profile of the bunch.