Once Half-Life: 2 was "Close" to releasing in 2003, a young Axel Gembe was REALLY REALLY desperate to play the next Half-Life game for at the time ( HL:2. ) He was so desperate to play it that he hacked into the internal servers of Valve (The Creators of the Half-Life Franchise,) and permanently borrowed (Stole,) gigabytes worth of files off of Valves internal servers. ( Somehow! Valve didn't notice till it was too late. )  anyways, out came the broken mess known by many as the Half-Life: 2 Beta... 

After the Beta leaked, which Axel Didn't Do (all he did was send it to his friends and family,) Gabe Newell tried finding the leaker to no avail, but then he read his emails and found an email from none other than Axel Gembe Himself, he explained that he didn't make the leak itself, but someone he sent the files to did, and then, he asked Gaben for a Job! yeah, for real, this was quite literally, THE DUMBEST THING EVER, considering he made valve loose thousands of dollars somehow, it would be dumb to then ask for a job after making a company nearly go bankrupt, but Gabe told him that they would send him to America to "Interview." him. yet as you could probably already tell, it was a setup to get him to America to get him arrested. but before he could get to America, he got arrested, and I forgot why,  I think he got like 2 years of probation, 

I am pretty sure this is the right story,

Starting Area Of Lost Coast.