Man pleads guilty in $100m pirated software case

Chinese national Xiang Li has pleaded guilty in the US to selling around $100m-worth of pirated software via a series of Internet sites.

Li offered over 2,000 different cracked computer software products from websites including crack99.com, cad100.net and dongle-crack-download.com.

He has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit criminal copyright violations and wire fraud, and is thought to have netted around $60,000 from the sale of the software, according to US prosecutors.

According to documents from the Department of Justice the websites sold industrial software packages developed for a range of applications - including engineering, manufacturing and facility design, space exploration and aerospace simulation and design amongst others - with retail values ranging from a few hundred dollars to over one million dollars.

Li and conspirator Chun Yan Li, who remains at large in China, sold the software at prices ranging from $20 to $1,200, according to the DoJ. Software pirated from around 200 companies were sold by the criminals over a period between 2008 and 2011, including the likes of Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Ansys and Rockwell Automation.

Last year a US national and conspirator in the case - former NASA employee Cosburn Wedderburn - pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement as a purchaser of the software. All told more than 300 individuals and organisations bought copies of the cracked software.

Li was arrested in Saipan, China, in June 2011 after an 18-month undercover operation in which law enforcement agents carried out controlled purchases of pirated software.

He faces a maximum statutory sentence of 20 years in prison and fine of up to $500,000 under US law.