Software engineer jailed over MI6 leaks

A British software engineer who worked for the UK's Secret Intelligence Service MI6 has been handed a one year jail sentence for attempting to sell top secret material.

Daniel Houghton was sentenced Friday but was released immediately after having already spent 184 days in custody, according to a BBC report.

The former MI6 employee was caught with 7,000 top secret files on a USB stick and more documents stored on his hard drive.

He had attempted to sell the documents for £2 million ($3.3 million) to Dutch agents; however the would-be buyers thought it was a hoax.

Houghton was haggled down to £900,000 shortly before being arrested in March.

According to the report, the software engineer, who was paid £23,000 per year, told the court that "voices" directed him to steal the information.