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For Immediate Release |
U.S. Department of Justice
United States Attorney
Northern District of Illinois Press Contacts: AUSA Lisa Griffin |
CHICAGO A Massachusetts man was sentenced to 18 months in federal
prison for leading an international computer software piracy ring whose
members and associates conspired to infringe the copyrights on thousands
of software programs worth over $1 million, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United
States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, announced today.
Robin Rothberg, 34, of Newburyport, Mass., was sentenced yesterday in U.S.
District Court in Chicago. Rothberg was one of 17 defendants indicted in
May 2000 for conspiring to pirate copyrighted software through an international
organization known as Pirates with Attitudes, an underground
group that disseminated stolen copies of software, including programs that
were not yet commercially available. Those programs were available to the
defendants through a hidden Internet site that was located at a university
in Quebec, Canada. Twelve of the defendants, including an Aurora, Ill.,
man, were members or leaders of Pirates with Attitudes. The remaining five
defendants were employees of Intel Corp., who supplied computer hardware
to the piracy organization in exchange for obtaining access for themselves
and other Intel employees to the groups pirated software.
Fourteen defendants, including Rothberg, pleaded guilty in the case, and
he became the 12th of those to be sentenced. A 15th defendant, Christian
Morley, of Salem, Mass., was convicted of conspiracy after a jury trial
last year and he was sentenced last month to two years in prison. The two
remaining defendants, Mark Veerboken and Kaj Bjorlin, are fugitives believed
to be living in Belgium and Sweden, respectively.
This is one of the most significant investigations of copyright infringement
on the Internet ever conducted by the FBI, and one of the first to be prosecuted
under the No Electronic Theft, or NET Act, which
penalizes copyright infringement, even in the absence of a profit motive,
Mr. Fitzgerald said. He announced the sentencing with Thomas J. Kneir, Special
Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
In sentencing Rothberg, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly said that he
had engaged in organized theft and played a supervisory role
in the conspiracy. On April 19, Judge Kennelly sentenced 11 other defendants,
many of whom cooperated with the government and received sentences ranging
between three and six months of either community or home confinement, combined
with up to five years of probation, fines of up to $5,000, and 200 hours
of community service. Thomas Oliver, of Aurora, was sentenced to six months
of community confinement with electronic monitoring, three years of probation,
and a $5,000 fine. In addition to Morleys two-year prison term, another
defendant, Jason Slater, of Sunnyvale, Calif., was sentenced to eight months
in prison, followed by six months of community confinement. At the April
19 sentencings, Judge Kennelly described the conspiracy as an elaborately
organized and longstanding theft scheme.
Two remaining defendants who pleaded guilty and are cooperating, Steven
Ahnen, of Sarasota, Fla., and Justin Robbins, of Lake Station, Ind., are
scheduled to be sentenced on Aug. 28. The Pirates with Attitudes, or PWA,
were an underground group of individuals who met and communicated with each
other over the Internet, and whose sole purpose was the unauthorized distribution
of copyrighted software. PWA members set up private Internet sites around
the world to which members uploaded stolen software and from which, in return,
they were permitted to download software programs. PWA members and leaders
communicated with each other in real time on private Internet Relay Chat
(IRC) channels known as #tude and #pwa. In those
channels, leading members met to vote on inviting new members to join, as
well as promoting existing members to more senior positions. PWA members
also communicated using group e-mail addresses provided by Rothberg.
PWAs members were assigned specific roles, including, for example,
crackers, who stripped away the copy protection that often is
embedded in commercially-released software (such as valid serial number
requirements, built-in time limitations, and hardware-based copy protections
that limit the computers on which particular programs will run); couriers,
who transferred software to PWA, packagers, who tested and prepared
programs for release by couriers, and suppliers who funneled
programs from major software companies to the group.
PWA maintained numerous File Transfer Protocol (FTP) sites for the transfer
of software files and stored libraries of pirated software on each of these
sites. These sites, also known as warez sites, were configured
so that they were accessible only to authorized users entering through known
Internet Protocol addresses. Members of the public did not have access.
During the conspiracy, which extended approximately from 1996 to 2000, PWA
was operating 13 different FTP sites. One of those, Sentinel, which was
the focus of the indictment, was PWAs longest-running site and one
of its most reliable. It first came on line in late 1995 and was in operation
until the FBI took it down in January 2000.
Through a confidential informant, the FBI was able to gain access to Sentinel
and viewed an index of thousands of pirated software titles, all of which
were copyright protected. Investigators then traced the server that was
being used to support the site to the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec,
Canada, where individuals were using the server without the universitys
knowledge or authorization. Once confronted by the Royal Canadian Mounted
Police and the FBI, these individuals cooperated and provided information
about Sentinel. Rothberg controlled access to Sentinel, and over the course
of its operation, he allowed more than 100 users to download the pirated
software available there. Users were required, in return, to either upload
software or otherwise contribute to PWAs activities in order to maintain
their access.
A significant portion of the software available on Sentinel consisted of
high-priced utilities, but there were also thousands of examples of every
kind of software on the market: operating systems, applications like word
processing programs, data analysis programs, communications programs, graphics,
and games including, for example, programs published by Microsoft, Adobe,
Norton, Oracle, IBM, Lotus, Macromedia, and Novell. Over the course of Sentinels
operation, in excess of 30,000 different software programs were pirated
and uploaded to the site.
Also as part of the conspiracy, former Intel Corp. employees Brian Riley,
Tyrone Augustine, Brian Boyanovsky and John Geissberger, arranged in December
1998 to supply hardware for the operation of Sentinel. At that time, Sentinels
storage capacity was insufficient for the number of software programs being
uploaded by PWA members, and Rothberg met the Intel employees on the Internet
and learned from them that they could provide hardware for a piracy site.
Rothberg, Boyanovsky, Riley and Augustine agreed that Intel employees would
be given access to the software available on Sentinel in exchange for sending
Intel hardware to the site operators in Canada to expand Sentinels
storage capacity. Another ex-Intel employee, Gene Tacy, configured servers
within Intel to make the software available to other employees. All of the
illegal activity by the five Intel workers was done without Intels
knowledge or consent.
The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Lisa Griffin and
James Conway.
# # # #
United States v. Rothberg, et al., 00 CR 85
Convicted members of Pirates with Attitudes:
Robin Rothberg, also known as Marlenus, (9/11/67), 34,
of Newburyport, Mass.
Diane Dionne, aka Akasha, (4/11/61) 41, of West Palm
Beach, Fla.
Steven Ahnen, aka Code3, (4/13/58) 44, of Sarasota, Fla.,
Christian Morley, aka Mercy (4/13/73) 29, of Salem, Mass.
Justin Robbins, aka Warlock, (2/10/76), 26, of Lake Station,
Indiana.
Jason Slater, aka Technic, (4/28/70) 31, of Sunnyvale,
Ca.
Todd Veillette, aka Gizmo, (11/21/59) 42, of Oakdale,
Conn.
Thomas Oliver, aka Rambone, (7/14/65) 36, of Aurora,
Il.
Mark Stone, aka Stoned, (3/24/66) 36, of Fountain Valley,
Ca.
Jason Phillips, aka Corv8, (11/9/70) 31, of Plano, Tex.
Former Intel employees also convicted of the conspiracy:
Brian Riley, (1/31/70) 32, of Portland, Oregon.
Tyrone Augustine, (5/13/71) 30, of New Rochelle, New York.
Brian Boyanovsky, aka Boynger, (6/26/75) 26, of Aloha,
Oregon.
John Geissberger, (5/15/62) 39, of Knoxville, Tennessee.
Gene Tacy, (11/13/74), 27, of Hampstead, New Hampshire.