Grant Gross
Senior Writer

Three indicted for ‘massive’ software, music piracy

news
Oct 13, 20052 mins

Five people arrested for their part in scheme to illegally copy 325,000 software and music CDs

Three California men were indicted Wednesday for their alleged participation in a “massive” software and music-CD copying scheme, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California.

Arrests in the scheme to illegally copy 325,000 software and music CDs were part of the largest CD manufacturing seizure in the U.S., the U.S. attorney’s office said. The indictments follow the arrests of five people and searches of 13 locations in California and Texas on Oct. 6.

Two of the suspects were involved the large-scale replication of Symantec Corp. antivirus software, U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan’s office said in a press release. All three were also charged with illegally copying Latin music, the office said.

Indicted late Wednesday were Ye Teng Wen, also known as Michael Wen; Hao He, also known as Kevin He, both of Union City, California; and Yaobin Zhai, also known as Ben Zhai, of Fremont, California.

The three were charged in two separate indictments for conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and traffic in counterfeit labels; criminal copyright infringement; trafficking in counterfeit labels; and aiding and abetting, according to the U.S. attorney’s office. Wen and He were charged in a 10-count indictment, and Zhai was charged in a seven-count indictment.

Replicators can use sophisticated equipment, sometimes including silk-screening machines to copy artwork on CDs or DVDs, to make tens of thousands of counterfeit CDs or DVDs, the U.S. attorney’s office said. A counterfeit-music CD found at a retail store last month in Chicago came from two of the people arrested in this operation, law enforcement said.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America both praised the antipiracy operation. Law enforcement officers “successfully toppled a highly sophisticated pirate network capable of generating millions of dollars in illegal proceeds,” said Mitch Bainwol, the RIAA’s chairman and chief executive officer, in a statement.

Wen, He and Zhai are scheduled to make their initial court appearance on the indictment Oct. 27. Zhai was released Wednesday on a $150,000 bond. Wen and He were released on Oct. 6 on $75,000 bonds.

Grant Gross

Grant Gross, a senior writer at CIO, is a long-time IT journalist who has focused on AI, enterprise technology, and tech policy. He previously served as Washington, D.C., correspondent and later senior editor at IDG News Service. Earlier in his career, he was managing editor at Linux.com and news editor at tech careers site Techies.com. As a tech policy expert, he has appeared on C-SPAN and the giant NTN24 Spanish-language cable news network. In the distant past, he worked as a reporter and editor at newspapers in Minnesota and the Dakotas. A finalist for Best Range of Work by a Single Author for both the Eddie Awards and the Neal Awards, Grant was recently recognized with an ASBPE Regional Silver award for his article “Agentic AI: Decisive, operational AI arrives in business.”

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