A reportedly reformed hacker was arrested by Dutch authorities earlier this week and accused of being one of the leaders of the infamous hacking group ShinyHunters. The FBI claims he’s been involved since last year and was likely involved in the Rockstar Games data breach that previously revealed non-public information about GTA Online’s finances.
On September 28, as spotted by Rockstar Intel, the Dutch National Police shared a statement online confirming that it had arrested a 24-year-old man from Amsterdam following an investigation into the hacker group ShinyHunters. The group has allegedly hacked over 100 businesses and organizations, including the FBI, Rockstar Games, and Ticketmaster.
While the DNP didn’t share the hacker’s name, Reuters has since reported that the arrested man is Pepijn van der Stap, the offensive cybersecurity lead at Amsterdam-based Neo Security. After previously being convicted and charged with criminal offenses connected to hacking, Van der Stap had claimed to be reformed and began working at the firm earlier this year. However, in a statement provided by the FBI, it claims Van der Stap has been working as one of the leaders of ShinyHunters since 2025.
In April, ShinyHunters was the group behind a data breach of Rockstar Games. The group allegedly tried to extort Rockstar for money in order to stop it from sharing the confidential info it had stolen. Rockstar didn’t pay the ransom, and the group eventually released the data, which ended up revealing some interesting facts about how popular GTA Online is and how much money the live-service game makes. In fact, the data was so positive that Take-Two (Rockstar’s parent company) saw its stock price go up. According to the leaked data, GTA Online makes over a million dollars every day.
ShinyHunters has denied that Van der Stap was involved with the group and suggested that Dutch police were incompetent.
Following Van der Stap’s arrest, the FBI assistant director of its Cyber Division, Brett Leatherman, warned members of the ShinyHunters group to give themselves up now before they get caught.
“Now, to the remaining members of ShinyHunters: You’ve heard about the arrest of your colleague,” said Leatherman. “We’re confident you’ve seen or heard things in recent days that the public has not. Other groups believed anonymity, or their friends, would protect them, and they were wrong. Arrests have a way of changing who is willing to talk, and seized infrastructure has a way of showing us who’s left. The longer you stay in this, the more we learn about you. You know how to find us, and we know how to find you. I suggest you reach out first while the choice is still yours.”
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