Unauthorized Copying Gets Illinois Man Two Years in Prison
By Andrew on Monday, August 6th, 2007 at 12:07 AM PST In Game Related Laws, Gamer Life
If any of you were wondering, starting an online website to sell illegal copies of video games and movies will get you two years in jail.
Timothy W. Hall plead guilty to all counts against him in federal court after being arrested last year. According to an InfoWorld article, in May of last year, an undercover FBI agent placed an order on Hall’s website, which was Morbidbackups.net, for 70 Xbox games and 48 episodes of the tv show 24. The order came three months later, and contained 83 unlabeled DVDs with the games and movies on them.
What does not make sense is that Hall acknowledged in his guilty plea that he had received approximately $266,000 in illegal online sales, yet he only had to pay a fine of $1,200. Sure, he has to spend two years in prison, but it does not seem to fit somehow.
And I thought this kind of thing only happened in China. He wasn’t the brightest in the bunch for setting up shop online.
via InfoWorld
$266,00 in sales minus $1,200 plus 2 years in jail plus all the interest that can be made on the 266k while waiting.. man that sounds like a damn good career move. I’m ann honest guy and not a criminal, but I’d spend two years in the clink for that much money.
“$266,00 in sales minus $1,200 plus 2 years in jail plus all the interest that can be made on the 266k while waiting.. man that sounds like a damn good career move. I’m ann honest guy and not a criminal, but I’d spend two years in the clink for that much money.”
You obviously don’t have much experience with federal criminal cases. Most likely the defendant agreed to surrender his ill-gotten gains in the plea agreement. Otherwise federal prosecutors would have petitioned the court to sieze it as the proceeds of crime.