Florida Woman Gets Prison Time For Illegally Selling Microsoft Product Keys (techradar.com)
- Reference: 0180916138
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/03/06/0147206/florida-woman-gets-prison-time-for-illegally-selling-microsoft-product-keys
- Source link: https://www.techradar.com/pro/florida-woman-given-major-jail-sentence-for-illegally-selling-microsoft-product-keys
> The indictment details how [52-year-old Heidi Richards] purchased tens of thousands of genuine COA labels from a Texas-based supplier between 2018 and 2023 for well below the retail value, before reselling them in bulk to customers globally without the licensed software. "COA labels are not to be sold separately from the license and hardware that they are intended to accompany, and they hold no independent commercial value," the US Attorney's Office wrote.
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> Richards was found to have wired $5,148,181.50 to the unnamed Texas company during the scheme's operation. Some examples include the purchase of 800 Windows 10 COA labels in July 2018 for $22,100 (under $28 each) and a further 10,000 Windows 10 Pro COA labels in December 2022 for $200,000 ($20 each). Ultimately fined $50,000 and given a near-two-year sentence, prosecutors had sought to get Richards to pay $242,000, "which represents the proceeds obtained from the offenses."
[1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-mdfl/media/1333961/dl?inline
[2] https://www.techradar.com/pro/florida-woman-given-major-jail-sentence-for-illegally-selling-microsoft-product-keys
Nice business model (Score:2, Insightful)
Spend 22 months in jail with free food and what not if caught and pay only $50,000. After wiring $5 million That's a sweet deal! Many would be tempted to go this route. Especially when getting jobs is becoming harder.
Re:Nice business model (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think it's that sweet. First, that's $50k on top of them seizing everything she has as the proceeds of a crime. Then, after almost two years of lousy meals in terrible circumstances, she goes back into the world as a convicted felon, and has an even harder time finding work.
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Could always run for president of the USA
You don't get to keep the money (Score:2)
The feds will track the money down and she won't get a dime of it.
Also American prisons are brutal. Intentionally so.
They are designed to inflict torture without getting our hands dirty. So we massively understaffed them with the lowest paid worst treated employees imaginable and provide them with food that wouldn't be considered edible by 16th century soldier and then we looked the other way when the inmates beat the shit out of each other.
Yeah I would cheerfully spend 22 months in a prison lik
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> Also what the fuck why isn't this just a contract dispute?
Because, as I understand it (from a comment above), the keys sold only worked for some of the people who got them. She was advertising them as legitimate, but would have known the source that she was getting them from was not authorized to provide the keys, and the chances of two people ending up with the same key, one a buyer of a Microsoft product, the other someone who bought the key from her, was large.
I don't think it necessarily warrants a
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$50K is the fine on top of everything she had to pay including forfeiture of proceeds and legal fees. For her, she also has "convicted felon" as part of her records now. Also prison might not be a white collar resort. It might be the "pound me in the " type described in Offce Space.
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> Spend 22 months in jail with free food and what not if caught and pay only $50,000. After wiring $5 million That's a sweet deal! Many would be tempted to go this route. Especially when getting jobs is becoming harder.
Yeah, "free food and what not" isn't really a thing in the US prison system, google "pay to stay" (aka "jail rent"). The vast majority of US states have some form of this (though it appears the subject of the fine article was convicted federally, and the feds do not yet impose this madness in federal inmates).
Was she wrestling a gator in the nude? (Score:1)
That's the only sort of story I want to hear about people from Florida. Did she have a bestiality farm in her basement? A Ferris Wheel made from used tampons? Come on, give me something Florida about this story!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Check this man's browser history
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I don’t want to . . . you first.
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One of the biggest contributors to the Florida economy is the scam industry, i.e. fraud, scams, embezzlement, blackmail, etc. Heck, they elect the biggest scammers and criminals to represent them in Congress (https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2014/mar/03/florida-democratic-party/rick-scott-rick-scott-oversaw-largest-medicare-fra/). If you've been scammed, it's very likely that the scam is run out of Florida. (Not to let the various foreign scammers off the hook or anything ....)
Re: (Score:1)
Well, the scam calls I get don't appear to come from Florida. They sound like they come from India, but who can tell with phones.
The last few I've gotten have all been about Medicare. I'm in my damn 40's!
So, will hey go after these next??? (Score:2)
Sites like [1]alibaba [alibaba.com] have thousands of listing for these things...
I will not be surprised if many are not even genuine stickers.
[1] https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/coa-sticker.html
No law was broken (Score:1)
This is one case in many, and an increasing number, of the government prosecuting people for making corporations unhappy. It's going to continue until there isn't even a pretense of a difference between the corporations owning you and the government owning you.
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> No law was broken
Not true. This would be like buying fake coupons from the printing company that makes the coupons for Whole Foods. It may be a coupon printed on the same press that made the real coupons, but its still fraud none-the-less.
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Were the product key labels fake? That wasn't stated in the brief, only that she was said to have "illegally trafficked MS product key labels".
It's more like someone purchasing a case of valid store product coupons for cheap, finding a way to market them to the public selling them for a bit more than she paid. Just look at what she was charged with, ie not providing the software with the product key labels.
This reminds me of when Microsoft send their goons after school districts across the US threatening l
Re: (Score:2)
I think the summary is not clear and people are drawing the wrong conclusions. Buying legitimate CoAs is not the core issue. The CoAs have product keys for Windows on them. She was not purchasing Windows licenses. She would then sell the product keys probably with the CoAs as proof of authenticity posing as a legitimate reseller. Now there is nothing illegal per se in buying the labels; however, there are very few legitmate reasons I can surmise why anyone would buy a label and not the license.
$5m paid, $242k revenue, doesn't add up (Score:2)
She must had been doing a lot of legitimate business for the amount paid and all these could had been accounting errors or excess licenses she was trying to get rid of.
Linux and Mac don't have product keys (Score:2)
Why do people keep torturing themselves with Windows, it's like they want to eat slop.
You can get windows keys off any public computer (Score:2)
If you run regedit, you can see the key of any facing computer and use it on your home computer.
The entire idea of keys is flawed. You can't actually use these and expect security. So Bill 'Bioterrorist/Scopex/Cancer meat/Brain on a Chip/Little kid banging Epstein' Gates is jailing others from his own mistakes?
Priceless
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This doesn't make sense to me either. Apparently the crime was not providing the software with those COAs, but that sounds like a contractual issue between Microsoft and her, not a criminal matter.
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I didn't bother to look up the case to see what charges were applied, but the most obvious one to me would be fraud (and interstate fraud at that, fraudulant wire transfer. etc.) If you ever look at those websites selling software keys, they always claim to be a 'license', which is it is not.
It would be interesting to see what would happen if someone started selling "Microsoft Activation Keys copied from acquired stickers." But then, why would anyone pay money for that instead of just using a free activati
Re: (Score:2)
Well, the linked indictment lists the crime as a violation of 18 U.S.C. 2318 (I wonder if that section symbol will come through) - Trafficking in Counterfeit Labels.
But what I find odd is that Microsoft did sue the Texas company that sold her the labels. That suit was in 2017, and the crimes Heidi was convicted of began in 2018. And the Texas company is listed as an unindicted co-conspirator.
But why? It seems to me like the Texas company was the real offender, especially after they got sued for wha
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I think the deal here is that she bought the labels... but did not have an actual license to go with them. Might as well be buying fake $20 bills.
This would be the equivalent of selling stolen cars, that you don't actually have a title for.
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Except buying stolen goods knowing they are stolen is a crime. From what we can tell she bought real labels. They were not tied to actual software. Selling the labels and advertising they went with software might be fraud but not buying the labels.
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Reading the article again and the summary, here’s what I think is the crime is: she purchased tens of thousands of physical labels. These labels have legitimate Windows product keys on them; however, she was not actually buying Windows licenses. Then she was selling the product keys as legitimate licenses. To a buyer, it would appear they were buying legitimate keys as a person having the physical labels is a sign they might be a legitimate reseller. Some if not most of the keys might have already bee
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So just to be clear, the issue may have been that her customers wouldn't necessarily have been able to activate Windows (or Office or some other Microsoft product) with the keys, or if they had someone who bought a Microsoft product from Microsoft would have run into the same issue because a duplicate of the key with it would have been sent, by her, to some other person?
If so, I kinda now understand. Until now I'd been wondering whether she had been doing the same thing as, say, those companies that sell pe
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Also there are not many legitimate reasons to buy just the labels especially since each is unique. For a box for a GPU, maybe there is a reason to buy a used one. A person buying hundreds of used GPU boxes is a slight red flag but not illegal per se.
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Whether the key can be used to activate the software is almost completely irrelevant. The implication, if not outright claim, was that she was selling licenses. Licenses are legal contract terms, and there is no way anyone buying these codes had a license from Microsoft.
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Yes, I was also wondering why the "Texas-based supplier" was not also dragged to court, as I think they should also not be allowed to sell it like they did.
I also assume those labels do not come with any further legal material - so you are left to find out the rules in the masterful maze of Microsoft documentation!
Not saying she did nothing wrong - but I can also see how this can very easily be a honest mistake to think that it is a legal way to sell what appears to be "legal" product keys.
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[1]18 U.S. Code 2320 [cornell.edu] defines "counterfeit mark" rather broadly. Included in the definition in (f)(1) is a "spurious ... label ... likely to ... deceive".
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2320