U.S. Department of Justice - CyberCrime.gov Archived

Copyright Cases - U.S. v. Zheng (N.D. Cal.) (Jin) (Operation Cyberstorm)


August 29, 2005

Department Of Justice
Northern District of California
United States Attorney
11th Floor, Federal Building
450 Golden Gate Avenue, Box 36055
San Francisco, California 94102
Tel: (415) 436-7200

Silicon Valley Pair Sentenced to Year in Prison for Trafficking in Counterfeit Software

Defendants in "Operation Cyberstorm" Investigation Sold and Possessed Counterfeit CDs Worth Over $500,000

SAN JOSE - The United States Attorney's Office announced that Perry Zheng, 51, of Cupertino, and William Jin, 44, of Sunnyvale, California, were sentenced today in federal court to a year and a day in prison by United States District Court Judge Ronald M. Whyte for trafficking in counterfeit computer software. Pursuant to the plea agreements, Judge Whyte also sentenced the defendants to forfeit $27,550 of proceeds from their criminal activities, pay $387,228.80 in restitution to Microsoft Corporation, and to serve e years of supervised release. The defendants have been ordered to surrender to begin serving the sentences on October 25, 2005.

On May 9, 2005, both defendants pleaded guilty../assets/applets/2003_11_21_Chan_Plea.pdf to a superseding information charging trafficking in counterfeit computer software products in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2320(a). In pleading guilty, defendants admitted that they possessed and sold approximately $531,961 worth of counterfeit Microsoft computer software products as operators of PTI, a San Jose-based software distribution business. That figure includes approximately $27,550 worth of counterfeit products defendants sold to undercover law enforcement officers; $387,000 worth of counterfeit products it sold to other software businesses; and $116,000 worth of counterfeit products found in a storage locker during the execution of a search warrant in 2002.

The guilty pleas resulted from the "Operation Cyberstorm," a two-year undercover investigation into software piracy and related crimes conducted by agents from Federal Bureau of Investigation, Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigations, and REACT Task Force in San Jose, working with the U.S. Attorney's Office's Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property (CHIP) Unit. Christopher P. Sonderby, Chief of the CHIP Unit, is the Assistant U.S. Attorney who prosecuted the cases.

Further Information:

A copy of this press release and related court filings may be found on the U.S. Attorney's Office's website at www.usdoj.gov/usao/can.

Further procedural and docket information along with electronic court filings for criminal cases filed since February 2005 are available at https://ecf.cand.uscourts.gov/ (click on the link for "to retrieve documents from the court.") Judges' calendars with schedules for upcoming court hearings can be viewed on the court's website at www.cand.uscourts.gov.

All press inquiries to the U.S. Attorney's Office should be directed to AUSA Christopher P. Sonderby at (408) 535-5037, or Luke Macaulay at (415) 436-6757 or by email at Luke.Macaulay3@usdoj.gov.


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