Hacker Bails To Avoid Hard Drive Seizure

The lawsuit between Sony and PS3 celebrity hacker Geohot has taken an interesting turn. According to new court documents provided by the hardware giant, George Hotz has fled to South America in order to avoid a court-ordered seizure of his hard drives.

He couldn't look more guilty if he tried.

Update: Apparently he's just taking a holiday that was paid for months in advance, and will soon return refreshed and reinvigorated to take on Sony's suit. Thanks ODB.

New paperwork filed by Sony state that George Hotz (aka Geohot) has gone to ground in South America after a Californian judge ordered him to turn over his hard drives for investigation. Here's the full skinny:

After Magistrate Judge Spero ordered an inspection of Hotz’s devices and ordered Hotz to appear at a deposition in California, SCEA learned that Hotz had deliberately removed integral components of his impounded hard drives prior to delivering them to a third party neutral and that Hotz is now in South America, an excuse for why he will not immediately provide the components of his hard drives as requested by the neutral.

Hotz’s attempts to dodge this Court’s authority raise very serious questions.

They certainly do. Despite a deeply terrible rap, Hotz has managed to attract a loyal following of sympathisers who will wonder whether their trust has been seriously misplaced. Just what is on those hard drives? We assume that they're probably at the bottom of the River Amazon by now.

Sony has also reportedly found evidence that George lied about not signing up to a PSN account, meaning that he could be legally bound by the Sony terms of service after all. This is not looking good for the inestimable Mr Hotz.

Naturally we'll keep you posted with the latest on this increasingly bizarre situation. [VGHQ]