Legal Question in Criminal Law in California
My minor child was the victim of an XBox and email "hack". The thief has access to much of his personal information. Xbox has yet to recover his account and it has been over 2.5 months. I have invested more than 60 hours trying to resolve to no avail. Have contacted the FTC and local police to report the theft, and the three credit reporting agencies to put a protective alert on his credit until he reaches 18 years. I am going after a subpeona for the Xbox fraud records in order to sue the offender. Am I entitled to punitive damages resulting from the loss of his monies, loss of his time on his equipment and loss of my time trying to resolve the matter?
2 Answers from Attorneys
*You* are not entitled to anything. Your son is probably entitled to compensatory damages, but only from the hacker and those who knowingly used his information. My sense is that you hope to recover from the manufacturer and/or the service, but that is unlikely unless the product or service was defective. That someone was able to hack your son's account does not imply that the manufacturer or the service did anything wrong.
Whether your son can recover punitive damages will depend upon whether the hacker et al. can be found and brought to trial. (There is a very good chance they are in other countries, making it impractical to sue them in the U.S. unless the amount they stole was quite large.) It will also depend upon their wealth.
You can ask for anything you want. What you win depends upon what claims and causes of action you can actual prove in court with admissible and credible evidence. I wish you well, but such cases are technically difficult to prove, and you have to ask yourself what likelihood there is of locating and serving the defendant, let alone being able to ever collect anything on a judgment. Doing it yourself obviously avoids substantial legal fees that would be generated, but you'll have to research and learn all the things you must do when in pro per.
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