DEFENDANT ORDERED TO PAY $10 MILLION RESTITUTION TO MICROSOFT
FOR PIRATING SOFTWARE

United States Attorney Jane J. Boyle announced that Inder Deot, age 46, was sentenced Friday by the Honorable United States District Judge Jerry Buchmeyer to eight months imprisonment and ordered to pay $10 million in restitution to Microsoft Corporation, following his guilty plea last November to Conspiracy to Commit Criminal Infringement of a Copyright, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Sections 371 and 2319. Deot is a resident of San Jose, California.

In papers filed in court, Inder Deot admitted that from March 1996 through May 1997, he was involved in a conspiracy to replicate, manufacture, and distribute counterfeit Windows 95 and Windows Office 95 software programs. During one six-month period, Inder Deot along with other conspirators, distributed more than 200,000 units of these counterfeit software programs, during which time the retail value of the sales exceeded $41 million.

Specifically, during the spring of 1996, Inder Deot was recruited by another Texas co-conspirator to participate in a Microsoft software pirating scheme. Inder Deot agreed to serve as the middleman in the conspiracy and his role was to facilitate the shipment of CD-ROMs between the replicator/distributor in Texas and the packager in California. Inder Deot worked with fellow conspirator, Tin One Suen, a/k/a Kevin Suen, to find a source that could provide counterfeit manuals, written materials, packaging materials, certificates of authenticity and trademarks that could accompany the CD-ROMs so that they would appear to be identical to legitimate Microsoft products.

In late 1998, Tin One Suen pled guilty to violating federal criminal copyright infringement laws in relation to his involvement in this Microsoft software pirating conspiracy. Suen was sentenced in April 2001 to 27 months imprisonment and ordered to pay $14,296,000 in restitution to Microsoft Corporation.

This case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Erin Nealy Cox, one of the district’s designated Computer and Telecommunications Coordinators, who is part of the Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property (CHIP) Unit that was established in the Dallas United States Attorney’s Office. This highly specialized CHIP Unit is one of ten units throughout the country that focuses on prosecuting a vast range of computer crimes including computer intrusions or “hacking,” copyright and trademark violations, trade secret theft/economic espionage, theft of computer and high tech components, fraud and other internet crimes such as child pornography trafficking and sexual exploitation of children. The CHIP Unit also focuses on cybercrime prevention by working with representatives from local industry to anticipate future trends, identify vulnerabilities and ultimately stop cybercrime before it occurs.

U.S. Attorney Boyle praised the investigative work conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

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