James Delahunty
17 Sep 2004 15:16
11 people from across the United States were indicted on Wednesday for piracy offenses, following massive piracy busts. It was the largest seizure of counterfeit Microsoft products so far with the estimated value of the Microsoft products reaching $80 million. The series of raids came from a two year investigation into a US-wide piracy ring. Another $7 million worth of pirated Symnatec and Adobe software was also uncovered. ‘Operation Digital Marauder' involved the use of three search warrants and eleven arrests in Washington, Texas and California.
The suspects were allegedly involved in illegal media replication, printing of counterfeit documentation and distribution of counterfeit software. Some Microsoft products found included Microsoft Office, Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server. Tobias Grace and Sanh Thai, two of the suspects, allegedly ran a counterfeit site in Los Angeles where they illegally copied Abode and Symnatec products. The FBI raided the site and seized the equipment in April this year. They contacted a San Francisco printer, Thanh Tuong, who copied the software documents from Microsoft and other products. These documents were delivered to a number of customers, including Arnica Grace, Tobias Grace's sister, for distribution in Texas.
Microsoft has been aware of the scam for about three years now, as people had called for tech support, to find out that they had purchased the pirated software. Company investigators assisted the FBI in its investigation. Tobias Grace was alleged to have illegally obtained goods from Microsoft workers who abused Microsoft's internal ordering systems to obtain the products for virtually nothing.
Source:
The Register