Ashley Mitchell stole £7 million ($11.4 million) in virtual currency from Zynga Poker and has now been sentenced to two years in jail, the Guardian reports.

Ashley Mitchell stole £7 million ($11.4 million) in virtual currency from Zynga Poker and has now been sentenced to two years in jail, the Guardian reports.

"He made determined and repeated efforts to attack Zynga's systems. He succeeded and transferred 400bn chips and sold them to realise a substantial profit." James Taghdissian, representing prosecution said.

Mitchell, a 29 year old gambling addict living in Paignton, Devon logged on to Zynga's mainframe, stole the identities of two Zynga employees and transferred the virtual currency to himself. He sold the stolen chips to other Facebook users, over the course of two months ending with a total profit of £53,612.

"Gambling had complete control of his life." said Ben Darby, defending Mitchell.

The prosecution for the case estimated that the total damages to Zynga were $12m (£7m). "That is what they estimate they would have lost if all the chips were successfully sold on." Taghdissian said.

It was clear something nefarious was going on as early as August 2009 when large amounts of virtual chips went missing. Investigators initially suspected the two Zynga employees, but later determined that their account had been hacked. Mitchell was finally identified after using his neighbor's unsecured wifi networks and logging into his own facebook account during one of the hacks.

"It was clear there had been a systematic approach adopted in probing and accessing Zynga. Checks on [Mitchell's] bank account showed at this time he bought items including a Rolex watch and was also spending money on online gambling." He had only sold about a third of his total chips before he was caught.

Mitchell admitted his crimes and was, today, sentenced. He also has a 30 day suspended sentence for hacking into the computers from where he previously worked