A Transnational Piracy Gang Was Uncovered Through International Cooperation. Microsoft Initially Estimated that Damages Reached Above NT$ 50,000,000,000.

The 9^th Investigation Brigade of Criminal Investigation Bureau announced yesterday that they uncovered a large-scaled international counterfeits sale network. With the cooperation of the police in China, Hong Kong, Canada, Brazil, and India, the police from Taiwan smashed an international counterfeiting gang, which took “Bao Cheng International Co., Ltd.” in Taiwan (transliterated from “寶成國際有限公司”) as the headquarter and specialized in pirating Microsoft’s software. The police found that the said gang received orders in Taiwan and established factory in Guangzhou, China for manufacture. The finished products were then exported from Hong Kong as genuine software, whose marketing network pervaded Asia, Europe, America, and even Africa. The initial estimate showed that the said gang’s sale amount might exceed tens of billions of NT dollars and its profits might reach one billion.

According to Criminal Investigation Bureau’s estimation, this gang has operated for around ten years, and it has sold software whose value reached above tens of billions. In addition to the counterfeit software, such as Window 98, Window 2000, XP, and Office 2000, this gang also counterfeited Symantec’s anti-virus software and the ink cartridges of HP and Epson. Manager Wei Bo of Anti-Counterfeiting Department of Microsoft Asia indicated that the estimated damages in the past ten years exceeded NT$ 50,000,000,000. (2003.12)

CYJ/CCS