The Los Angeles Times has an article on a Syrian Pirate Hacker who would charge $2 to break the security code for Grand Theft Auto IV.

From the LA Times:

Small, thin and pale, with a reddish beard, Abdul-Rahman Mahaini estimates that he has stolen millions of dollars’ worth of software, hacking his way into the most complex programs in the world.

For a few bucks, the Syrian programmer will unlock the security codes for any program you send him via e-mail or online chat. But don’t ask him to break into your ex-girlfriend’s e-mail account or steal sales data from your competitor.

After all, the 26-year-old insists, he’s an ethical pirate, a devout Muslim who prays five times a day and breaks into software only because his country is under U.S. sanctions and he has little choice.

Mahaini’s life revolves around a software shop that he runs on Bahsa Street, Damascus’ computer market. The business is a hive of awkward, chatty and bespectacled young men asking one another for obscure software programs and the codes and serial numbers to unlock them. Their voices quiet when a stranger enters.

They seem to orbit around Mahaini and his band of deputies — a kind of cyber-Robin Hood and his Merry Men who steal from the information haves and redistribute the loot to the have-nots.

“If you try to deprive me,” he says, “I will take it from you.”