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<< Previous   of   Next >> Associated Press  (click to enlarge) Los Angeles County Sheriff Deputies Val Rosario (left) and Darren Harris examine counterfeit Microsoft registration hologram stickers that were seized following an 18-month undercover investigation in this November 2001 file photo in Whittier, Calif.   ADVERTISEMENT   CONTACT THE HERALD Mike Benbow, Business Editor benbow@heraldnet.com   Published: Saturday, February 9, 2008 Microsoft diligent in detecting piracy Associated Press SEATTLE -- Near-perfect knockoffs of 21 different Microsoft programs began surfacing around the world about a decade ago. Soon, PCs in more than a dozen countries were running illegal copies of Windows and Office, turning unwitting consumers into criminals and, Microsoft says, exposing them to increased risk of malicious viruses and spyware. The case began to turn in 2001 when U.S. Customs officers seized a shipping container in Los Angeles filled with $100 million in fake software, including 31,000 copies of the Windows operating system. From there, Microsoft pushed the investigation through 22 countries. Local law enforcement officials seized software, equipment and records, and made arrests. A court in Taiwan handed down the last of the major sentences in December. Microsoft estimates the retail value of the software the operation generated at $900 million. "That is a tremendous accomplishment," said James Spertus, a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles who later led anti-piracy efforts for the Motion Picture Association of America. "There are only going to be a few cases like this a decade." Now Microsoft is eager to talk about taking down that operation -- responsible for about 90 percent of the fake software the company found between 1999 and 2004, more than 470,000 disks. But Microsoft hopes would-be pirates will think twice if they know how far it will go to protect its computer code. The pirates mimicked complex holograms stamped onto disks and packaging materials embedded with the kind of tiny safety threads used in making money. It took experts with microscopes to notice that disks printed with codes used by legitimate software factories lacked certain minuscule, unique smudges. "The copies were so good, we went to tremendous forensic and scientific lengths to establish that the counterfeits were, in fact, counterfeits," said David Finn, an associate general counsel at Microsoft. Without a solid lead on the source, Microsoft continued to gather string. Members of its 80-person worldwide anti-piracy team made test buys to see if retailers were selling fake disks, knowingly or unwittingly, and worked leads back up the black-market supply chain. The seizure of the container in Los Angeles led to Taiwan, where the Ministry of Justice raided Chungtek Hightech, recovering an estimated $100 million more in software and equipment. Months later, Taipei city police and the criminal investigations branch of the national police hit a related manufacturer in the same industrial complex, seizing another $126 million in phony software. Records found there led to a packing, storage and shipping center in China's Guangdong province, and back to distributor Maximus Technology in Taiwan. As a result, four people in Taiwan and one in China were sentenced to time in prison. Matching the Taiwanese counterfeits to copies found around the world, Microsoft gave law enforcement agencies ammunition for raids and criminal cases in the U.S., the U.K., Italy, Canada, Germany, Singapore, Australia, Paraguay and Poland. Dozens of distributors, middlemen and retailers were convicted, including 35 people in the U.S.

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