Matching the Taiwanese counterfeits to copies found around the world, Microsoft gave law enforcement agencies ammunition for raids and criminal cases in the US, the UK, Italy, Canada, Germany, Singapore, Australia, Paraguay and Poland. Dozens of big distributors, middlemen and retailers were convicted, including 35 people in the US.
One was Lisa Chen, who according to a Customs press release arrived at the scene of the 2001 shipping container bust with additional counterfeit software in her vehicle. Chen was prosecuted by the Los Angeles district attorney's office as a major US distributor of the Taiwan-made fakes and received a nine-year prison term in November 2002. She has since been released, her lawyer at the time said.
Microsoft would not say how much it spent on the investigation or how many counterfeit copies of Windows and other programs were found in use on PCs.
After the raids in Taiwan, the number of high-end Microsoft counterfeits dropped -- but only for a while. A Chinese operation that stepped in cranked out an estimated US$2 billion in copies before it was brought down last July.
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