A former college baseball player from Virginia managed to get his hands on Nike merchandise worth over $80,000 for free after having found and exploited a loophole in one of the company's websites.


Through his association with a number of professional athletes, the 25-year-old Brad Stephenson discovered that Nike put at their disposal so-called "elite athlete accounts", from which they could order goods and not be charged for it.

Stephenson discovered a way to have himself listed as a guest of the account holders and went on a shopping spree that lasted 5 months.

According to the SFGate, he compromised 12 accounts, and via them ordered a total of $81,419.58 in merchandise was ordered and shipped to a number of addresses in Virginia, Florida, Arizona and North Carolina.

According to the federal indictment, the legitimate account holders confirmed they did not authorize anyone to access or place orders on their Nike accounts.

Most of the stuff he got he gifted to others. He kept some of it, and some he sold via eBay.

When the Secret Service came to his home to arrest him, they found - and seized - 231 pieces of Nike merchandise, worth over $17,000.

He was charged with computer fraud, but it's impossible to tell what his sentence will be, as he has struck a plea deal with Nike and will help them patch the hole that allowed him to do all this.

Likely muzzled by the deal, he declined to describe how he managed to access the accounts. Still, it seems that we might eventually know what exactly happened, as he had purportedly just finished writing a book about it.