A Florida woman is facing time behind bars for harvesting Microsoft product key codes and reselling them at lower prices.
On Tuesday, the Justice Department announced 52-year-old Heidi Richards had been sentenced to 22 months in prison for selling the unauthorized product key codes through her e-commerce company, Trinity Software Distribution.
Richards trafficked in Microsoft certificate of authenticity (COA) labels, which are typically found on software product boxes. The labels can also contain a product key to activate the software, such as Windows, making them quite valuable to illicit resellers.
Richards “paid co-conspirators millions of dollars for thousands of genuine, standalone Microsoft COA labels at prices significantly lower than the retail price of the associated software,” the DOJ said. “Richards and her employees harvested product key codes from the labels, then sold them in bulk to her customers,” which violates a law prohibiting the trafficking of standalone COA labels.
According to the unsealed indictment, Richards sourced unauthorized COA labels from “a variety of sources in and outside of the United States.” One vendor, dubbed “Company A,” appears to be SnagMedia, which Microsoft sued in 2017 for selling unauthorized software.
Richards resold the harvested product key codes “at prices significantly lower than Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Prices.” The indictment says Richards bought COA labels for Windows 10 Pro, Windows 10 Home, and Office 2019, including “OEM” versions of software, originally meant to be preinstalled on PCs.
The court document also suggests Richards may have exploited a loophole by sourcing the COA labels from “Microsoft Authorized Refurbishers,” who can preinstall the company’s software on refurbished devices. During the conspiracy, which lasted from 2018 to 2023, she sent wire transfers and payments totaling $5,148,181 to accounts under the control of Company A.
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The case appears to shed light on the shady gray market for Microsoft software sales, where vendors can sell Windows and Office programs at steep discounts. You’ll see these sales advertised online, but the activation keys don’t always work, and Microsoft might pull the plug.
As for Richards, she was arrested in January 2024. A jury found her guilty, and the court ordered her to pay a $50,000 fine in addition to the prison time. Trinity Software Distribution didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
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I’ve been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, where I cover satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I’m currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country’s technology sector.
Since 2020, I’ve covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service, writing 600+ stories on availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over the expansion of satellite constellations, fights with rival providers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I’ve combed through FCC filings for the latest news and driven to remote corners of California to test Starlink’s cellular service.
I also cover cyber threats, from ransomware gangs to the emergence of AI-based malware. Earlier this year, the FTC forced Avast to pay consumers $16.5 million for secretly harvesting and selling their personal information to third-party clients, as revealed in my joint investigation with Motherboard.
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