6 Men Admit to Running a Global $100M Software Piracy Ring; Wired.com, 12/17/15

Andy Greenberg, Wired.com; 6 Men Admit to Running a Global $100M Software Piracy Ring:

"On Thursday the Department of Justice announced that it’s reached plea agreements with all six individuals charged in a six-year massive fraud scheme, which prosecutors say sold more than 170,000 copies of Adobe and Microsoft programs including Windows, Office, Photoshop, and Creative Suite, complete with valid registration codes and even physical certificates of authenticity. The men, who were tracked by investigators at the Department of Homeland Security, offered those pirated copies of the software at a discount through sites including Amazon, Overstock, eBay, Craigslist, and in some cases their own individual websites. Five of the convicted men face up to five years in prison (the sixth faces just three years) and up to a quarter million dollars in restitution each.

“It appears to be one the biggest software piracy cases, if not the biggest, the department has ever handled,” US Attorney Tammy Dickinson told WIRED in a phone interview."