Sony: PS3 hacker on the run in South America

George ‘Geohot’ Hotz is the hacker who very publicly breached the PlayStation 3’s security, and is now lined up for a date with Sony’s lawyers. Or, he would be … if he wasn’t currently gadding about South America somewhere.

According to Sony, the much-admired/maligned hacker is attempting to escape his date in court and failed to hand over various devices to Sony for inspection, despite a court telling him to do so. The company’s also claiming Hotz lied to the court about having a PlayStation Network account. In short, someone‘s in the shit.

Here’s an extract from court documents Sony just filed:

“Over the last several weeks. Hotz has engaged in a campaign to thwart jurisdictional discovery at every turn – regardless of whether the Court has ordered such discovery or not. Most seriously, 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.”

Hotz bolting to South America comes after the hacker asked for donations to help him in his legal fight against Sony. And all along I thought this story had peaked in weirdness when Hotz challenged Sony to a rap battle on YouTube:

Shows what I know.

[Via VGHQ]