Ricky Handschumacher’s first step on a path that would earn him millions of dollars in stolen cryptocurrency and a run-in with the law happened during a game of Halo 3.

His Xbox screen went black for a few minutes while he was playing the futuristic first-person shooter game that pits humans against aliens. When it returned to normal, he had been killed. He was the victim of a form of videogame cheating called “standbying.”