Dutch Police Arrest Suspected ShinyHunters Leader Tied To Rockstar Games Breach
The arrest is the first concrete law enforcement move against the group behind a run of high-profile corporate extortions, including the breach at the studio releasing GTA6.
Reporting from 1 source: GIGAZINE.
Dutch police said they arrested a 24-year-old man suspected of leading ShinyHunters, the hacking group behind a 2024 Ticketmaster data theft and an April 2026 breach at Rockstar Games, which is preparing Grand Theft Auto VI. Rockstar has said only low-importance corporate information leaked and that players were unaffected. The group also extorted Checkout.com, Canvas, and stole FBI employee data in late September 2026.
The man Dutch police arrested is 24 years old, and investigators describe him as the person believed to lead ShinyHunters, a group active since around 2019 to 2020. ShinyHunters built its pattern out of stealing large stores of confidential data and demanding ransom for its return or silence. Its targets have included Ticketmaster, where roughly 560 million people's personal information was taken in 2024, and Checkout.com in November 2025, which refused to pay and said it would put the money into security research instead.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.