Earlier this year, we reported on how the competitive video gaming community E-Sports Entertainment Association (ESEA) secretly updated its client software with Bitcoin-mining code that tapped players' computers to mint more than $3,600 worth of the digital currency.

The site took full responsibility, blaming a rogue employee, and ended up immediately liquidating the bitcoins and donating the $3,713.55 to the American Cancer Society. For good measure, ESEA kicked in another $3,713.55.

But the story didn’t end there. On Tuesday, New Jersey announced that it had come to a $1 million settlement (PDF) with ESEA as a way to end a criminal case that state prosecutors had brought against the company.

“This is an important settlement for New Jersey consumers,” said Acting Attorney General John J. Hoffman in a statement. “These defendants illegally hijacked thousands of people’s personal computers without their knowledge or consent, and in doing so gained the ability to monitor their activities, mine for virtual currency that had real dollar value, and otherwise invade and damage their computers.”

Under the terms of the agreement, ESEA “has agreed to refrain from deploying software code that downloads to consumers’ computers without their knowledge and authorization. The company also must submit itself to a 10-year compliance program and create a dedicated page on its Web site that specifies what type of data it collects, the manner in which the data is collected, and how the information is used.”

The company must also pay $350,000 to the Garden State, with the remaining portion to be suspended and vacated if ESEA keeps up its end of the bargain within the next decade.

UPDATE Tuesday 7:47pm CT: Ars received an e-mail from Eric Thunberg, the head of ESEA, with an attached statement, and a message saying that the company had "no further comments at this time."

That statement, in part, reads: