A 51-year-old Canadian hacker pleaded guilty last week to conspiracy to circumvent technological measures and trafficking in circumvention devices for his role in a hacking group that sold Nintendo piracy tools.
As TorrentFreak reports, Gary Bowser (presumbaly no relation to the current Nintendo of America president or Nintendo character) was arrested last year for working with the hacking group Team-Xecuter. It has a long history of tangling with Nintendo and other major gaming companies for offering hardware and software that bypassed Nintendo DRM.
After extradition from the Dominican Republic in 2020, Bowser initially denied any wrongdoing, but has since taken a plea deal with the US government and now faces up to 10 years in prison and a $4.5 million fine. According to TorrentFreak, court documents reveal that Team-Xecuter, “earned at least tens of millions of dollars from the sale of its piracy-enabling devices, from which Bowser took around $320K per year.”
Bowser, also known by the nickname GaryOPA, was the operator and writer of the website MaxConsole.com, which reviewed Team-Xecuter hardware and other hacking tools. The US Department of Justice, however, alleges that Bowser was more than just a writer, having advertised and trafficked circumvention devices while maintaining regular contact with resellers throughout the world.
Along with Bowser, the US government also filed federal charges against Team-Xecuter members Max Louarn, a 48-year-old French national from Avignon, and Yuanning Chen, 35, from Shenzhen, China.
“These defendants were allegedly leaders of a notorious international criminal group that reaped illegal profits for years by pirating video game technology of U.S. companies,” Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian C. Rabbitt of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said last year. “These arrests show that the department will hold accountable hackers who seek to commandeer and exploit the intellectual property of American companies for financial gain, no matter where they may be located.”
