GTA 6 hacker Arion Kurtaj: from hospital order to November trial

Arion Kurtaj is the Lapsus$ member behind the breach of Rockstar Games that put 90 development clips of Grand Theft Auto VI online on September 18, 2022, posted to GTAForums under the name teapotuberhacker. He was 17 and from Oxford when the City of London Police arrested him on September 22, 2022, according to BBC News. He is now in prison, awaiting a new trial.

Rockstar Games acknowledged the attack on September 19, 2022. “We recently suffered a network intrusion in which an unauthorized third party illegally accessed and downloaded confidential information from our systems, including early development footage for the next Grand Theft Auto,” the studio said. In court, it put the cost of the incident at $5 million and thousands of hours of staff time.

A Travelodge room and a TV

Kurtaj had already been arrested over other Lapsus$ attacks. On bail, he had been put up by police in a Travelodge hotel, without his laptop. He got online with an Amazon Fire TV stick, the room’s television and a phone. On Rockstar’s internal Slack he wrote “I am not a Rockstar employee, I am an attacker,” PC Gamer reported from the hearing on August 23, 2023.

The December 21, 2023 order

The trial ran for seven weeks at Southwark Crown Court in London. After a psychiatric assessment, Kurtaj was ruled unfit to stand trial. He did not give evidence, and the jury only had to decide whether he carried out the acts, not whether he had criminal intent. In August 2023 the jury found he took part in the Lapsus$ attacks, Rockstar’s included.

On December 21, 2023, Judge Lees gave him an indefinite hospital order, keeping him in a secure hospital until doctors judge he is no longer a danger. The assessment read in court said he “continued to express the intent to return to cybercrime as soon as possible.” Some write-ups date the ruling December 22, 2023, but BBC News, Engadget and PC Gamer all reported it on the 21st.

Date	Step
September 18, 2022	90 GTA 6 clips posted on GTAForums
September 22, 2022	Arrested in Oxford, aged 17
August 2023	Jury finds the facts proven, Southwark Crown Court
December 21, 2023	Indefinite hospital order
July 16, 2026	Reported out of hospital, held in prison
November 9, 2026	Trial opening given by his lawyers

The November 2026 trial

PC Gamer reported on July 16, 2026 that Kurtaj had left the secure hospital. Joe Tidy, the BBC journalist who covered the 2023 trial, wrote that he is “in a normal prison awaiting retrial,” then scheduled for November.

Red Lion Chambers, the barristers representing Kurtaj, say the trial opens on November 9, 2026 at Woolwich Crown Court, Notebookcheck reported on October 10, 2026. That is 10 days before GTA 6 launches. No UK court has published the listing, and the charges are not public. Barring a postponement, Notebookcheck wrote, the court will this time rule on his guilt.

The 2022 files resurfaced on September 18, 2026 in a 192 GB batch traced to the same breach. No public source ties Kurtaj to CyberLeek, the account behind the August 2026 videos, which Rockstar Games answered with a letter to its community on August 26, 2026.