GTA 6 Hacker Arion Kurtaj Moved to Prison, Retrial Set for November 2026

Arion Kurtaj, the hacker behind the September 2022 GTA 6 leak, has been moved out of the secure hospital where he'd been held since 2023 and into a standard prison. He faces a retrial in November, the same month GTA 6 launches.

What's Reported

The story comes from BBC News cyber correspondent Joe Tidy, who posted it on July 14. Tidy said he had spent weeks trying to get it confirmed with police after images apparently showing Kurtaj posting from prison began circulating, and that police would not confirm it and reporting restrictions had slowed the process.

So: credible, named, well-sourced reporting, and not officially confirmed. We're tagging it Rumor for that reason, not because we doubt it.

What's Confirmed

These details are established from Kurtaj's 2023 proceedings:

1. In September 2022, roughly 90 videos of GTA 6 in development were posted to GTAForums. Rockstar confirmed the footage was genuine.
2. Rockstar told the court the breach cost the company $5 million and thousands of hours to recover from.
3. Kurtaj was a member of the Lapsus$ group, which also breached Nvidia, Uber and others.
4. He carried out the Rockstar hack from a hotel room while under police protection on bail, using a phone, the hotel TV and an Amazon Fire Stick.
5. In December 2023 a court ordered him detained in a secure hospital indefinitely, after an assessment found acute autism and that he continued to express intent to return to cybercrime. He could only be released when doctors judged he no longer posed a risk.

That threshold has now reportedly been met.

What It Means For Your Money

This isn't just a crime story. That 2022 dump is the origin point for a large share of the "GTA 6 money method" content circulating today.

Here's the problem with all of it. The footage was real, Rockstar said so. But it was a work-in-progress build, and it is now four years old. Rockstar has had four more years to cut, redesign and rebuild everything in it, across two release-date changes. Features get removed from games constantly.

A money method sourced from that build isn't intel. It's a four-year-old snapshot of a game that no longer exists in that form.

What We Actually Know Now (Updated September 2026)

When this article was first published, the confirmed GTA 6 money file was nearly empty. That is no longer true.

The Extended Look on August 27 and 70+ confirmed details from creator previews at Rockstar North have since confirmed a significant number of real mechanics. Three separate money types (Cash on Person, ATM Card Balance, BuckMe Digital). A full car theft progression system with scanning, tiered tools, and damage-based value loss. Specialized fences handling different categories of stolen goods. A six-vector police identification system where every escape has a cleanup bill. A Criminal Profile that permanently tracks your behavior and can break irreversibly. Cash-gated story missions. An 80-hour campaign with chapter structure.

Interestingly, the August 2026 CyberLeek leaks showed many mechanics from a much newer build, and the Extended Look confirmed the majority of them. The resolution table in our full leak tracker grades every leaked mechanic against official footage. Fifteen major mechanics, all but one confirmed.

The point still stands, but the framing has shifted. The 2022 leak footage was real but old. The 2026 leak footage was real and current. And the Extended Look confirmed enough that you no longer need to plan on leaks at all. Plan on what Rockstar actually showed.

The Trial Timing

The retrial landing in the same month as the launch is a coincidence. The reminder is not.

Kurtaj's 2022 breach cost Rockstar $5 million. The 2026 CyberLeek operation ran a nine-day campaign with a memecoin, paid polls, and a $165,000 ad rate card attached to stolen footage. Take-Two has since filed sealed subpoenas targeting two specific Discord users, and the investigation is described in court filings as "rapidly evolving."

Two separate leak cycles. Two separate legal responses. Both landing in the same window as the biggest entertainment launch in history.

The Day-One Money Plan goes out to subscribers shortly before November 19, built on what's actually confirmed by then.

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Also worth your time:

How to Make Money at Launch in GTA 6

Every New GTA 6 Detail After the Extended Look

The GTA 6 CyberLeek Leaks: What Was Real (Full Record)

GTA 6 Money Systems: Every Confirmed Detail

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