Bootleg Windows, Office scheme crashes, triggers 22-month lockup for Florida woman

A Florida woman will spend nearly two years behind bars after being found guilty of fraudulently acquiring Microsoft certificate of authenticity (COA) labels and selling them in bulk. Heidi Richards, 52, operated the company Trinity Software Distribution (Trinity) and, according to court documents, acquired Microsoft COA …

[WolfFan]

So… she gets a two-year vacation in Club Fed (when Wesley Snipes was in Club Fed for tax evasion, he at the Club Fed at Eglin Air Force Base, in the Florida panhandle; among the lowlights of his time in durance vile was that he, and the others in that Club Fed, had to be grounds staff at the officer’s golf course at the base. And could use the course when the officers weren’t using it. Those Feds, they’re harsh.) and she pays $50k… and, unless there’s something not mentioned in the article, keeps a whole lot of cash from selling tens of thousands of copies of various MS crapware. Sounds like a deal to me…

[david 12]

Sounds like a deal to me

Well, if you like the idea of goal / jail, you know how to get there. I've heard that people are fighting to get in.

[bloggsy]

Any chance you could write in ENGLISH!

[Expect Great Things]

His Majesty’s English

We’re looking for the King’s English here. (Not yet determined whether the king in question is Charles or Donald.)

[heyrick]

22 months and a 50K fine?

If she paid $5M for the labels, how much did she make? Because if she pocketed a couple of million, two years and a slap on the wrist fine is nothing. Just think how long it would take to make that sort of money doing a regular job...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 22 months and a 50K fine?

That's what happens when financial penalties don't keep pace with inflation.

A while back some guy here got the electric chair and a $1000 fine.

[JLV]

Re: 22 months and a 50K fine?

> got the electric chair and a $1000 fine

In that order? If it’s Florida they probably fried him before siccing collection agencies.

[BobChip]

$ 1000 AND electric chair?

Sounds like the perfect get-out for non-payment.........

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 22 months and a 50K fine?

I wonder if all the details are now with the IRS...

Oh Wait. Since Elongated Muskrat ran DOGY the IRS is now running on a skeleton staff especially where fraud is concerned once the amount gets into the millions.

Defraud your boss of $50 and it is pokey for you. Make it $50 Million and they tell you not to do it again and let you go with a slap on the wrist.

In Trump's USA, The rich get richer and richer while the poor starve to death having to make a choice between medicines or food on vastly reduced state benefits. The Big Beautiful Bill cave the rich tax cuts and the poor| SFA.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 22 months and a 50K fine?

> the IRS is now running on a skeleton staff especially where fraud is concerned once the amount gets into the millions.

The IRS exists to collect taxes and spend it on more tax collectors :]

[Pete Sdev]

Re: 22 months and a 50K fine?

$5 million for Microsoft COA labels between 2018 and 2023

If we assume a 100% markup, that would be ~ $333K each (3 people are named in the article) per annum, before taxes and business expenses. Not too bad.

I wonder who is losing out in this scheme - I'd guess the OEMs purchasing bulk licensing from MS from which some of fall off a back of a lorry.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 22 months and a 50K fine?

Wasn't it one person, with 3 additional aliases? Or did I miss something?

[cyberdemon]

People will buy Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity stickers?

I normally stick them on rubbish bins, along with "Designed For Microsoft Windows" labels

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: People will buy Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity stickers?

Suggest attaching them to a memory SIMM, then you can legitimately sell the memory leaving to the user to decide what to do with the attached COA and activation key…

This case revolves around MS’s determination to prevent people exercising their right to sell stuff they have purchased, because MS want people to think their software is somehow “special”..

[Bebu sa Ware]

MS want people to think their software is somehow “special”..

Definitely "special"

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: MS want people to think their software is somehow “special”..

In the days before video calls visually reveal who was talking with a thick border, a rather self-aggrandising colleague rounded off a chest-thumping monologue with "...because we're special!". Cue someone anonymously muttering a retort of "yeah, special needs"

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: People will buy Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity stickers?

I've seen loads like this on ebay in the past - sold with "untested" DIMM or 2.5" hard drive, or some other small piece of probably-faulty technocrap, with a note that the hardware woudn't actually be sent unless the buyer requested it in some cases. Don't know whether this still goes on.

There are also various websites which sell keys which appear to be of somewhat grey providence.

[Roland6]

Re: People will buy Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity stickers?

>” There are also various websites which sell keys which appear to be of somewhat grey providence.”

And which MS want people to believe are selling keys illegally… hence why MS are wanting customers with resealable keys to trade them in for 365/Azure discounts and why MS are harassing the brokers who buy such keys and (legally) repackage them into bundles for resale.

A problem (for you and me) is MS seem to have (deliberately) reduced the amount of information about their differing licences and because MS don’t want to support resale, all you have to go on when buying is what the seller tells you, so when you get a digital key it is only after you have activated it can you determine what the key actually licences. So I have a bunch of digital keys for which the (pdf) receipt is the only proof I have of “ownership”. However, because a broker can subdivide enterprise keys into smaller lots, I have receipts giving me differing rights to use the same activation key (i.e. On one receipt I purchased a licence for 6 systems, on another receipt I purchased a licence for 3 systems, both have the same MAK key, provided the broker has kept allocation records it can all be legal, however less professional brokers may keep no records and over sell individual MAK keys…). Hence as a buyer you are taking a gamble and MS want it to be a gamble to encourage people to shun the second user market and pay full price. For my third sector customers that presents a problem, yes Charity Digital and the Microsoft Non-profit scheme give access to Microsoft’s non-profit 365 subscriptions but not to discounted on-premise licenses. With Server 2019/2022 I was able to pick up a bunch of OPEN licences (now discontinued) as these were discounted due to the licence limitation they were for non-profit and education businesses. With WS2022/25 there was a “small enterprise” licensing scheme under which MAK keys could be purchased in bundles of 3~20 licences (hence why you will see this number a lot, but details of the scheme seem to have been obfuscated).

[ecofeco]

Re: People will buy Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity stickers?

Oh. My. God.

Insanity.

[MachDiamond]

Re: People will buy Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity stickers?

"Oh. My. God.

Insanity."

For a business, having at least the look of being legit can be important. For personal home use, WGAF.

[Joe Gurman]

Providence? That’s in Rhode Island.

I think your autocorrect is unfamiliar with “provenance.”

[Bill Gray]

Re: Providence? That’s in Rhode Island.

Probably it's familiar with both. All the words I jest rote hear are spelled the write weigh. Otto correct put read lions under nun off them.

[parrot]

Re: Providence? That’s in Rhode Island.

Autocarrot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Providence? That’s in Rhode Island.

Autocourgette

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: Providence? That’s in Rhode Island.

Little Red Autocorrect

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: People will buy Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity stickers?

Akin to car "ringing" kits where a pile of rust with a vin plate attached was sold, where only the vin plate would be sold so people could sell some low spec car as a highly sought after variant, old fords were prime for this iirc due to the vin plates being riveted on, ditto old BMC minis IIRC as well...

[CrazyOldCatMan]

Re: People will buy Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity stickers?

where a pile of rust with a vin plate attached was sold

Oi! Don't speak about the Morris Minor like that!

[davyclam]

Re: People will buy Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity stickers?

Provenance, but yeah.

[Jones]

Re: People will buy Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity stickers?

" their right to sell stuff they have purchased"

My understanding is you don't own Microsoft Office/Windows software, you have licensed it from them. It's not yours.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: People will buy Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity stickers?

But you do own the licence? So if you own it, why can you not resell it?

I think the position in the EU is different: https://www.clarionsolicitors.com/articles/reselling-used-software-licences-new-ruling-from-the-european-court

[Jones]

Re: People will buy Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity stickers?

interesting read VoiceOfTruth... but for me it raised more questions than answers. OEM, perpetual, SaaS, country/region, there doesn't seem to be a blanket answer, its more case specific. Certainly doing millions in license sales will no doubt provoke interest from the MS legal team. But selling you're old copy to a neighbor would probably fly under the radar.

Thankfully LibreOffice is all I ever really need.

[Eric 9001]

Re: People will buy Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity stickers?

Please treat your neighbor better than that - don't subject them to Microsoft software.

[Eric 9001]

Re: People will buy Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity stickers?

You don't own the license either, despite having paid a ridiculous sum for it.

As Microsoft controls the software, Microsoft owns you and you do what they command.

The EU may disallow restricting the reselling of software licenses, but as the EU doesn't control the software, there's nothing stopping Microsoft preventing resale in practice, by making licenses fail to redeem a few years down the line.

[MachDiamond]

Re: People will buy Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity stickers?

"But you do own the licence? So if you own it, why can you not resell it?"

There are lots of licenses these days where the license is non-transferable. I do that with photos I license. Apple, Amazon and others do that with music and video downloads.

You have to read the fine print and find out what you are buying and the permissions you are being granted.

[JulieM]

Re: People will buy Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity stickers?

The Law of the land gives you the right to sell a licence you have purchased.

[MachDiamond]

Re: People will buy Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity stickers?

"The Law of the land gives you the right to sell a licence you have purchased."

I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion. Your homework is to spend 5 hours this weekend reading EULA's. Those are contracts and you have agreed to abide by the terms in exchange for very little value received.

[Missing Semicolon]

Re: People will buy Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity stickers?

The EULA does not trump the law, much as Microsoft wish otherwise.

[Col_Panek]

Re: People will buy Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity stickers?

In the new USSA, the law Trumps YOU!

[BobChip]

Not owning "your" software

When I found out that I did not own my legal copy(ies) of MS Windows (AND that MS essentially "owned" my own home build PC), I was so acutely "distressed" that I switched to Linux. Oh, how I miss the sheer joy of paying the Microsoft tax and the "privilege" of being an involuntary part of the "greater MS family"! NOT.

[Bebu sa Ware]

Re: People will buy Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity stickers?

I normally stick them on rubbish bins, along with "Designed For Microsoft Windows" labels

Probably the best place for them.

All our DELL PCs came with the Win7 PRO sticker attached but given they were never going to run microslop I used to remove those stickers a keep them in an envelope. Turned out quite useful later when installing Win10 on the odd VM. Still have dozens of the now useless stickers. The original PCs would now be ewaste.

Reading the indictment Heidi appears to have paid $20-80 per COA (Windows, Office) so if you say $50 per COA so $5m works out to at least 100,000 COAs. It isn't clear how much her clients paid for licenses but $242,000 restitution was sought.

Doesn't seem too profitable on the face of it. I would wonder whether her operation was mostly a front for "unindicted co·conspirator 1" from whom she appeared to purchase the COAs.

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: People will buy Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity stickers?

Research Machines - Temp Agency Assemblers would plaster their toolboxes with damaged COA labels as decoration, until someone in manglement caught one of them doing this, an order went out unpeel all labels & transfer to a sheet of A4 paper, so they could be returned for credit to the tune of about £3K.

Then there was the TAA, that conspired to get a replacement HDD (Still wrapped in a sealed anti static bag) off the shop floor & dropped into a lavatory cistern for later retrieval. Unfortunately he wedged the cistern float & the cistern overflowed. The HDD was discovered, traced to who had booked it out & confirmed he had headed straight for the Gents after taking it, when the CCTV footage examined. He rapidly became a ex-TAA as he was fired, left without transport back to Scotland where he had been brought in from & his B&B accommodation no longer paid for.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: People will buy Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity stickers?

Years ago, a similar story happened in Temple, TX, where some thieves broke in to an electronics assembly factory, and stole a reel full of RAM. They attempted to sell this RAM to Texas Instruments, who somehow got a look at the serial numbers on the chips, contacted their distributor, and figured out who they actually belonged to. Police arrested the thieves VERY quickly.

As they say, criminology is the study of criminals who have gotten caught.

[CrazyOldCatMan]

Re: People will buy Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity stickers?

Police arrested the thieves VERY quickly.

Many years ago I was working at a place and we had *very* expensive RAM going missing from a cupboard that only IT had access to. Manglement had a pretty good idea of who was doing it. So they bought some SmartWater and marked all the stuff in the cupboard when said suspected perps were not in the office.

Sure enough, a week or so later some of the RAM and HDDs were missing. Old plod were summoned and pointed at said staff (both quite highly paid contracters - why the hell they would risk that is anyones' guess!)

Plod promptly got a warrant and raided their houses. Sure enough, bags of RAM & HDDs. Which, after testing, proved to be marked with the correct SmartWater. They both ended up with criminal records and deferred jail. The former making it really, really difficult to get new contracts, especially for the one that lost his security rating due to having a criminal record.

Both were bright people and must have known that they would eventually get caught - so why risk a lucrative career for some short-term gain?. It still baffles me.

[tychos nose]

Re: People will buy Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity stickers?

> dropped into a lavatory cistern for later retrieval

One kid at our school nicked some potassium from the chemistry labs and did the same. Icon illustrative of the results once all the oil had leaked out of the container.

[Roland6]

Re: People will buy Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity stickers?

Looking at current second user prices, I suspect it was more like $10 per (windows desktop/office) COA then reselling at $15~25.

[MachDiamond]

Re: People will buy Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity stickers?

"Doesn't seem too profitable on the face of it."

Maybe, maybe not. She may not have been suitable for any sort of employment.

Many criminals can spend more time and effort to steal £100 than they could have made at a real job. Go figure.

[Lazlo Woodbine]

Back in the day, I used to work in the returns department for a large UK PC assembler.

Whenever somebody returned a faulty PC (and many did), we used to steam off the COA sticker, attach it to a refund sheet, then send the month's worth of sheets to Thompson Litho in Germany via Fed Ex.

I seem to remember the cost for 24 delivery with insurance was about £50.

Then Bush invaded Iraq and the world became a darker place, and for some reason, Fed Ex now wanted £9,000 to send the same envelopes to Germany.

My boss decided it was much cheaper, and quicker, to put me in a taxi to Manchester Airport, fly to Kaiserslautern, taxi at the other end, and back again. All done in a work day.

Thanks George W...

[Gene Cash]

send the month's worth of sheets to Thompson Litho

Ok I'm dense. What was the purpose of this exercise? What did Thompson Litho do with that?

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Log the receipt of the COA's & authorise the issue of the credit (by Microsoft) I would think.

[Lazlo Woodbine]

Thompson Litho printed the COAs for the EMEA market, so they were licensed to process returns, checking each returned sticker was genuine, then processing a refund to the OEM...

[Lazlo Woodbine]

I see 3 people were offended by my story

Please grow up...

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember when El Reg's comments were actually about tech, and not an open opportunity to bash politicians.

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Why cant it do both?

[Col_Panek]

Because if we start in about American politicians/con men, we'd never get anything done.

[Lazlo Woodbine]

Ahh, the old butt hurt American joins the chat.

Why are politicians who start illegal wars exempt from "bashing"?

Also, it was totally relevant to my story, as the moment the Iraq War started, Fed Ex increased their insurance charges...

[Long John Silver]

Who needs packages and labels?

User-based, not reliant upon a 'cloud', Microsoft (MS) products circulate freely for people under the illusion that MS still vends software worth having.

Heidi Richards' clients have paid small sums for the convenience of not being more thoroughly ripped-off by MS and its middlemen.

[Eric 9001]

Re: Who needs packages and labels?

The products circulate proprietarily - as even if the software somewhat works without an internet connection - it still restricts the users and rips them off by at least wasting their time (if you've ever tried getting work done with microsoft products and also tried getting work done on GNU/Linux, you'll realize how much time Microsoft wastes).

[Anonymous Coward]

Hardly the crime of the century, is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hardly the crime of the century, is it?"

That's already been committed by M$ by marketing the stuff in the first place.

[david 12]

Win7 Starter

I was surprised that The Register published a picture of a COA label. Somebody could copy the product key.

Then I looked and saw Win7 Starter.

I'm a Windows / MS customer, but when my users asked, I had to tell them that even if I got 'Starter' free, I still wouldn't want it.

[Benny Cemoli]

Re: Win7 Starter

And if you didn't notice the last five digits of the product key have been erased/blanked out so even if you did want to use it you couldn't do so.

[Eric 9001]

Re: Win7 Starter

Such product keys are now no longer as harmful, as those can't be used to activate windows 10 or 11 anymore; https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/09/microsoft-says-you-cant-activate-windows-10-11-with-old-windows-7-8-keys-anymore/

But that only works out if GNU/Linux is installed instead.

Even on a shallow functionality basis, it seems GNU/Linux has more software compatibility than windows 7 now.

[Eric 9001]

Re: Win7 Starter

Nobody has ever got a copy of windows gratis - if somehow the direct license fee is avoided, the indirect windows tax on all hardware ensures you still pay.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Win7 Starter

The 'Starter' version was large-OEM only and had hardware stipulations which basically only allowed it to be installed on low-powered netbooks, as I recall.

Then tablets came along and wiped out the netbook market, and there were no more 'Starter' versions of Windows.

[BartyFartsLast]

Nice story, most of you missed a bit though.

The key phrase in the article was "vulnerabilities in Microsoft's supply chain" which suggests the licence stickers and keys were stolen goods or at best obtained fraudulently by the people supplying her.

Regardless of how you feel about MS, that's extremely dodgy and they'd be well within their rights to revoke those keys

[Marty McFly]

Re: Nice story, most of you missed a bit though.

Everything works out just fine though. "Vulnerabilities in Microsoft's supply chain" match up perfectly with "vulnerabilities in the code base." They effectively cancel each other out, so it is all good.

[Taliesinawen]

Trafficking in genuine counterfeit labels ?

If she bought genuine labels then they can't be by definition counterfeit:

(b) As used in this section—: ‘(1) the term “counterfeit label” means an identifying label or container that appears to be genuine, but is not;’

[achillesneil]

Jailed for selling excrement

Come on Windows is a joke. I wouldn't pay five pence to use that crock of shite.

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone I know (definitely not me) when I used to work for the local education dept, would take the OEM copies of Windows 98 that came with the PCs and flog them on flebay for about £10 a pop, and since we never activated the Windows 98 OS on the PCs as we used to wipe them and put NT 4 on as we had a MS volume license no one was the wiser.

[Anonymous Coward]

Better one

I had a friend who bought up a consignment of ex-business PCs, swapped bits about to get as many working ones as possible, flogged them on eBay and weighed in the leftover cases for scrap. They were all advertised as containing 100% authentic original software, guaranteed no pirate copies anywhere.

Which was true. However, not a single byte of the properly-licenced software was by Microsoft, or indeed any proprietary vendor .....

[The Oncoming Scorn]

"What I Wrote"

Good Morning Campers.

Heidi Hi, Heidi Gaol.

[Paul Hovnanian]

Windows stickers

I've always peeled these things off of PCs and laptops that I buy used when I'm installing Linux. I wasn't aware that this kind of market existed for them (assumed that keys submitted upon activation would be tagged as "used" in some cloudy database).

I've got a "Designed for Windows" sticker stuck to my toilet tank.

[Steve B]

If she paid $5m it highlights who is the real criminal.

Let's face it, ms are in a monopolistic situation.

Due to good marketing techniques the majority of pcs have to run a version of windows because the actual program or suite they want is cheaper or only runs on ms.

Despite this, ms have not yet, after four decades, succeeded in creating a fully working tested version!

Yet they still charge ott prices or "lease" the software.

And we let them!

What's even more ludicrous is that when they give up on one version to move to the next, we are made to feel guilty and expensively move up as their existing cr@p software will no longer have the weekly fixes required to edge it nearer to suitable for deployment.

[Mr. Byte]

Should have been rewarded

...for activities in the public interest. Fsck microsoft.