Today, I received an email from a woman claiming to be the mother of the man who owns the account. What followed was a complex tale involving personal injury and loss. I have since been able to speak with the owner of the account, who I will call “Adam” to protect his identity (as you might imagine, there have been a number of threats sent via PSN) and have received confirmation that he owns the “KirmitTHEfrog” account and verified details of the story that give us confidence to share it with you.
On November 1, 2014, Adam, was in a head-on collision with another car. The 23-year-old has been convalescing at home for much of the time since.
Adam’s mother tells me that their home sees a lot of traffic with friends, their children, and friends of those children passing through. According to Adam and his mother, Adam was unaware of what was happening on his PlayStation account.
“At the beginning of November, [“Adam”] was hit by another driver head-on; the next couple of months he spent time recouping and finally returning to work where he spends a great deal of time to make up for lost wages and bills that piled up,” his mother told me via e-mail. “Gaming was not on his mind. We were not aware as people stopped by to visit him to see how he was doing that anyone was, as he says, ‘messing with his gaming account.’ His playstation was sitting there, kids played games, others watched movies; no one assumed one of them was ‘having a good time’ at my son’s expense. And perhaps no one would have known if it did not horribly go viral.”
We were able to see a copy of the police report from the accident to verify the details. “I am a lucky guy to be alive,” Adam told me. “I don't look at life quite the same anymore. So I guess I was too trusting when people came over to hang out. I was sleeping a lot so I would not notice.”
