The City of London Police (CoLP) played the central UK policing role in the arrest and investigation of the perpetrator of the September 2022 Grand Theft Auto VI leak — one of the largest data breaches in video game history. The force, headquartered in the historic Square Mile of London, is the national lead force for fraud and economic cybercrime in England and Wales, hosting both Action Fraud and the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (City of London Police, 2023). Its specialist cybercrime capabilities, coupled with cross-jurisdictional liaison with the National Crime Agency (NCA) and United States federal law enforcement, placed it at the operational heart of the response to the breach of Rockstar Games' internal systems.
On 18 September 2022, a user operating under the alias "teapotuberhacker" published roughly 90 videos containing approximately 50 minutes of work-in-progress GTA VI footage on the GTAForums website (Wikipedia, 2026). The hacker, who simultaneously claimed responsibility for the Uber security breach of the preceding week, asserted that the material had been exfiltrated directly from Rockstar's internal Slack workspace and threatened to publish source code, build artefacts, and proprietary assets unless a deal was reached with Take-Two Interactive (Wikipedia, 2026). The incident triggered immediate corporate countermeasures — DMCA takedowns, social media lockdowns, and emergency liaison with law enforcement — and prompted what Take-Two later described as a "network intrusion" costing the company approximately US$5 million and thousands of staff hours to remediate (Wikipedia, 2026).
On 22 September 2022, just four days after the leak surfaced publicly, officers of the City of London Police arrested a 17-year-old boy from Oxfordshire on suspicion of computer misuse offences (BBC News, 2022). The arrest formed part of an investigation supported by the National Cyber Crime Unit (NCCU), a division of the NCA, and was coordinated with American federal law enforcement agencies — reflecting both the transnational character of the Lapsus$ hacking collective with which the suspect was associated and the international corporate footprint of Take-Two Interactive (Wikipedia, 2026; BBC News, 2022).
Several aspects of the CoLP's operational role merit emphasis:
In mid-2023 the suspect stood trial at Southwark Crown Court on twelve offences, including six counts of computer misuse, three of blackmail, and two of fraud (BBC News, 2023). He was deemed unfit to plead due to autism; under the procedure for unfit defendants, the jury determined that he had committed the alleged acts rather than rendering a conventional guilty verdict (BBC News, 2023; The Guardian, 2023). In December 2023 the court placed him under an indefinite hospital order on the basis that he constituted a continued high public risk, having expressed an intention to resume cybercrime upon release (BBC News, 2023). The investigation has since been cited as a benchmark case for UK cybercrime enforcement, illustrating both the speed with which the CoLP can act on time-critical digital intrusions and the legal complexities introduced by neurodivergent defendants in serious cybercrime prosecutions.
The CoLP-led investigation underscored three policy themes. First, the value of UK forces maintaining specialist cyber units capable of rapid response to corporate intrusions. Second, the importance of inter-agency cooperation — between CoLP, the NCA's NCCU, and US federal partners — when confronting threat actors operating across borders. Third, the case demonstrated that even highly resourced corporate targets such as Rockstar Games remain vulnerable to determined intruders exploiting comparatively modest equipment, reinforcing arguments for stronger insider-threat controls and continuous security monitoring.
BBC News (2022) Teenager arrested in Oxfordshire on suspicion of hacking. London: BBC.
BBC News (2023) GTA 6 hacker Arion Kurtaj given indefinite hospital order. London: BBC.
City of London Police (2023) About us: National lead force for fraud. London: City of London Police.
The Guardian (2023) Teenage Lapsus$ hacker sentenced over GTA 6 leak and Nvidia breach. London: Guardian News & Media.
Wikipedia (2026) Grand Theft Auto VI. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_VI (Accessed: 14 May 2026).