AfterDawn: News

More software counterfeiters plead guilty

Three more software counterfeiters have pleaded guilty to charges of piracy and agreed to forfeit over $1 million USD in cash and computers. Each faces up to three years in prison.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the three men, Thomas Rushing III, 24; Brian Rue, 29; and William Partridge, 24; brought in $2.5 million USD in revenue over the last 28 months however the courts said it was closer to about $1.2 million USD.



The men used a few different online shops including valuesoftwaresales.com, esoftwarevalue.com, allsoftwaredownload.com, and priceslashsoftware.com to sell counterfeit copies of Adobe Photoshop and Flash which are normally very expensive programs and are usually in high demand.

The DOJ press release says the three pirates promoted their businesses heavily using ads on search engine market share leader Google.

The three have so far plead guilty to 32 felony counts of software counterfeiting, piracy and copyright infringement. The counterfeiters were arrested after a lengthy investigation by the Business Software Alliance and Adobe.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 25 Aug 2008 10:55

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• 13 comments

• 7thsinger

  Oops.
  
  Quote:The DOJ press release says the three pirates promoted their businesses heavily using ads on search engine market share leader Google. Not really the smartest way to go about selling pirated copies, is it?

  25.8.2008 11:24 #1

• varnull

  Commercial scale piracy and no jail time eh? These guys must have paid their taxes and have money behind them. Unlike some poor guy in Louisiana who was probably just trying to rebuild his life and home by saving his neighbours and other poor locals some money and gets a year banged up for his troubles..
  
  Do I dare to say it.. yeah why not.. You know what I'm thinking

  25.8.2008 11:33 #2

• DVDBack23

  Originally posted by varnull: Commercial scale piracy and no jail time eh? These guys must have paid their taxes and have money behind them. Unlike some poor guy in Louisiana who was probably just trying to rebuild his life and home by saving his neighbours and other poor locals some money and gets a year banged up for his troubles..
  
  Do I dare to say it.. yeah why not.. You know what I'm thinkingHey Jan, they are actually facing 3 years in prison, they have not hit sentencing yet. I will update the article :)

  25.8.2008 11:37 #3

• 7thsinger

  Quote:they have not hit sentencing yet. I will update the article :)
  Please do when you find out. I'd be curious to see what the get tagged with all in all.

  25.8.2008 11:41 #4

• varnull

  Yup.. there are a lot of these commercial pirates about. You could accuse me of similar with my supplying of xp disks to people with oem machines where they got no disk when they bought the computer (I believe people are entitled to a real xp or fista installer disk when they buy the rubbish) and recover their unique details and write them on a sticker on the side/base.. or somewhere. All I ask for that is a replacement blank disk, but I'm pretty sure the copyright nazis would say I'm doing M$ out of some profit somewhere.. ;)
  
  (btw.. anybody having troubles with sp3 requiring reactivation and getting an "invalid key" fire me a pm.. I have the cure)
  

  
  
  Free open source software = made by end users who want an application to work. An engineer with a single tool in his toolbox is an idiot, not an engineer

  25.8.2008 11:48 #5

• lynchGOP

  Sucks to be them. Their penalty is going to be stiff. No daylight for a while.

  25.8.2008 13:34 #6

• ikari

  Originally posted by varnull: Yup.. there are a lot of these commercial pirates about. You could accuse me of similar with my supplying of xp disks to people with oem machines where they got no disk when they bought the computer (I believe people are entitled to a real xp or fista installer disk when they buy the rubbish) and recover their unique details and write them on a sticker on the side/base.. or somewhere. All I ask for that is a replacement blank disk, but I'm pretty sure the copyright nazis would say I'm doing M$ out of some profit somewhere.. ;)
  
  (btw.. anybody having troubles with sp3 requiring reactivation and getting an "invalid key" fire me a pm.. I have the cure)Really? An OEM machine would have a Valid Key Code on the PC right? As long as you weren't providing a disk with a forged Key Code, I would think that would be okay. The person should be entitled to install the software without buying the disk again.
  
  But then again, that my common sense talking. :-(

  25.8.2008 15:25 #7

• CF01

  i dont belive u should make money off other ppls stuff therefore i am happy these guys were caught

  25.8.2008 18:09 #8

• DRokKer

  would those same guys have been charged if they simply sold the information telling people how to get the same software from the internet themselves? or even the equivalent opensource software e.g. Gimp or open office.

  25.8.2008 18:46 #9

• susieqbbb

  i hate to burst your bubble..
  
  But the sites listed here sell virus loaded software as well.

  26.8.2008 00:55 #10

• DRokKer

  Originally posted by susieqbbb: i hate to burst your bubble..
  
  But the sites listed here sell virus loaded software as well.??? who's bubble are you bursting? please be more specific.

  26.8.2008 06:09 #11

• duke8888

  Originally posted by varnull: Commercial scale piracy and no jail time eh? These guys must have paid their taxes and have money behind them. Unlike some poor guy in Louisiana who was probably just trying to rebuild his life and home by saving his neighbours and other poor locals some money and gets a year banged up for his troubles..
  
  Do I dare to say it.. yeah why not.. You know what I'm thinking
  They will get jail time as soon as they face the judge:
  
  Sentencing for all three defendants is scheduled for Dec. 19, 2008

  28.8.2008 10:50 #12

• duke8888

  Quote:Quote:they have not hit sentencing yet. I will update the article :)
  Please do when you find out. I'd be curious to see what the get tagged with all in all.They will get 5 years each as the sentence guidelines included prior criminal records and the dollar amounts involved over a million so they can expect at lease 5 years.

  28.8.2008 10:53 #13