Sony has won a court order granting them limited access to search PS3 hacker George Hotz’s PayPal records, according to a Wired report. In an effort to further tie the case to California, Sony contests that Hotz accepted donations for his efforts from residents of the state.

In essence, the subpoena gives Sony access to comb through transactions posted on Hotz’s personal PayPal account — geohot@gmail.com — January 1, 2009, from February 1, 2011. Donations made prior to or after that timeframe will not be implicated in the search, nor will transactions made outside of CA.

This comes amid Sony’s most recent data mining attempt which included collecting a record of all IP addresses that visited Hotz’s website — geohot.com — over the past couple months.

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