Selling Hacked Pokemon Can Apparently Land You In Jail

Last week, The Pokemon Company issued a rather stern warning to would-be Pokemon Sword and Shield and Pokemon Home hackers. The company, it seems, has had enough of hacked Pokemon finding their way onto the global trade system and into Pokemon battles (where they presumably steamroll the competition), and detailed some increasingly severe consequences for those who are caught hacking. As it turns out, hacking Pokemon could lead to even more harsh penalties beyond those detailed by The Pokemon Company last week, as one Pokemon hacker has apparently landed themselves in jail.

That's according to Japan's Ashai News (as reported by Kotaku), which claims that a 23-year-old man in Aichi Prefecture has been arrested for supposedly selling hacked Pokemon. Specifically, police accuse the man of violating Japan's Unfair Competition Prevention Act, and apparently the sale of a hacked Sobble is what ultimately landed our unfortunate hacker in hot water.

According to Ashai's report, the arrested man is accused of selling the hacked Sobble to another player from Kyoto for 4,400 yen, which is about US$42. He has reportedly confessed to the crime, but apparently this wasn't his only infraction. He's also accused of operating this hacking scheme for a year, earning a grand total of 1.15 million yen – $10,900 – selling hacked Pokemon.

With that detail out in the open, it's clear that our suspect might guilty of more than simply hacking Pokemon to net some competitive wins he doesn't deserve. The idea that he was selling hacked Pokemon to others and profited so much from them certainly seems to elevate this crime beyond what The Pokemon Company was warning against last week.

So, obviously, this is a bit of a special case and most normal hackers probably don't have to worry about their actions eliciting such a response from their local police. Still, the fact remains – hacking Pokemon is probably something you should avoid doing, even if you actions aren't going to land you in the slammer for an evening.