PSN Status Offline Had Kid Calling 911, Lizard Squad Arrested After Police Caught Him For Fraud

Having the PSN status offline was apparently enough for one kid to call 911 to demand that they do something about those nefarious Lizard Squad hackers pulling off that DDoS attack on Christmas day. Although the two events are not connected, police identified some of the hackers and at least one member of Lizard Squad was arrested.

In a related report by the Inquisitr, even after the Lizard Squad DDoS attack was called off, Xbox Live and PSN still had troubles throughout the holiday weekend. Sony engineers admitted they were having difficulty getting the PlayStation Network back up, and as of New Year’s Eve, the official Sony PSN status page still lists “heavy network traffic,” although it’s still online at the moment.

“Some latency may be experienced due to high volume. Should you continue to experience problems after PSN services are fully restored please refer to Contact Support.”

When the PSN status first went offline, a caller to Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office 911 system had an interesting conversation that went like this.

Dispatcher: 911, what’s your emergency?

Caller: Do you know what’s going on with PlayStation 4 and Xbox Network being down?

Dispatcher: Um…. no?

Caller: It’s been down since Christmas. I heard they arrested two people so far!

Dispatcher: Last time I checked that wasn’t an emergency. Try going outside or read a book.

Fortunately, this kid will not have to worry too much about hackers taking Xbox Live and PSN down anytime soon. British police had one member of the Lizard Squad in custody on Monday. 22-year-old Vinnie Omari has already posted bail and publicly shared a search warrant which showed that police were looking for any evidence related to “email addresses, usernames, passwords, documents containing names associated with Paypal fraud.” They were also looking for evidence for anything related to the “hacking of the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live systems over the Christmas period.”

According to a press release by the Thames Valley Police, the interesting part is that they had this member of the Lizard Squad arrested on suspicion of fraud by false representation and Computer Misuse Act offenses, not specifically because of the Xbox Live and PSN hack.

“The arrest yesterday (12/30/2014) is in connection with an ongoing investigation into cyber fraud offences which took place between 2013 and August 2014 during which victims reported funds being stolen from their PayPal accounts.”

The FBI may have another member of Lizard Squad in their grasp soon. Another member identified as “Ryan” is apparently a Finnish teenager named Julius Kivimäki.