GTA 6 Leaker Arion Kurtaj Moved To Prison As Retrial Looms

Arion Kurtaj, the hacker responsible for the massive 2022 GTA 6 gameplay leak, has been transferred from a secure psychiatric hospital to a standard prison ahead of a fresh criminal trial.

Kurtaj was convicted on multiple counts of hacking and fraud after infiltrating Rockstar's internal systems and leaking 90 clips of early GTA VI footage years before the game's release, alongside GTA V's source code. Because of his autism diagnosis and doctors' concerns that he posed a continued risk, he was handed an indefinite hospital order rather than a standard prison sentence back in early 2024. That arrangement has now come to an end.

A prison transfer, months in the making

Signs of a shakeup first surfaced back in March, when reporting emerged that Kurtaj had managed to smuggle a phone into the hospital and was bragging on Snapchat about how comfortable his stay had been. At the time, there was no official confirmation from UK authorities about what, if anything, would change as a result.

That confirmation has now arrived. BBC reporter Joe Tidy revealed that Kurtaj has been moved into a standard prison cell, where he'll stay at least until his retrial begins. Tidy noted that court-imposed reporting restrictions had prevented journalists from covering the move until July 14, when a High Court judge lifted those restrictions and cleared the way for the story to break.

What comes next

According to Tidy, Kurtaj hasn't seen the last of the courtroom. Doctors have now deemed him medically fit to stand trial, and he's set to face a traditional criminal trial in November. Given how his first brush with the justice system played out, the odds don't look to be in his favor this time around.