The CEO of an online gaming company has been cleared of unlawfully accessing and downloading data from his former employer’s database.
Fredrik Gereon Ljungcrantz had left Evoke Gaming Ltd in 2016, after three years as sole call centre manager, to take up a job at Stay Gaming Group NV, working at Staybet.com, owned by his best friend.
Together, the two were in the process of setting up a new business, Magic Holding Ltd.
Following Ljungcrantz’s departure, Evoke registered a sharp decline in sales deposit and gaming revenue, with an auditor subsequently testifying that net gaming revenue had dropped from €12.9 million in 2015 to €9.9 million the following year.
Evoke followed up rumours that Ljungcrantz was in the process of setting up his own business, and in April of 2016, its top officials warned him that he would face legal repercussions if he took any type of intellectual property from the company.
When spam emails landed at Evoke’s alias email [an address that is used internally for IT testing and is not in the public domain], the company called in the police.
Searches at Staybet.com addresses as well as Ljungcrantz’s shared apartment yielded business cards referring to the suspect as Staybet’s CEO.
While cooperating with investigators, Ljungcrantz denied sending those spam emails, claiming that, “any other employee could have access to their clients’ database”. Moreover, the emails had been sent in June 2016, when Staybet had 3,040 affiliates sending out promotional mail.
Charges were issued against him for computer misuse as well as operating a gaming business without a licence.
The court, presided by magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech, heard how investigators had seized a USB stick, containing a list of customers, from the accused's residence.
However, that data had merely been handed over to a court IT expert, without it being received under oath.
This meant that such data could not be taken cognizance of by the court, since it failed to satisfy the “best evidence requirement.”
Information given to the expert, including keywords, the USB and spreadsheets, could only be classified as hearsay evidence, the court said.
No audit had been conducted to assess whether the accused had ever logged into Evoke’s system and/or downloaded data, the court noted.
As confirmed by Evoke officials when testifying in the case, “anyone within the company” had access to the database, not just the accused and his team.
“This is precisely why the court encounters difficulty in understanding how no efforts were made to establish, through an examination of the IT system in operation, who were the people who could have not merely accessed the data, but downloaded it.”
Nor had the prosecution proved that the accused had operated a gaming company without a licence since Stay Gaming was an intermediary, providing adverts and promotion to licenced website Aspire Global.
Staybet.com was not an entity which could be granted a gaming licence, the court concluded, based on evidence put forward.
The court thus cleared Ljungcrantz of all criminal liability, observing that, “in the realm of criminal proceedings, there is no place for hypothesis and suppositions but proof beyond reasonable doubt, a threshold which for reasons already mentioned, has not been reached.”
Lawyer Giannella DeMarco was defence counsel.