The United States Department of Justice has shared some news regarding Team-Xecuter, which doesn't appear to be a good sign for the company. Gary Bowser, known on GBAtemp as garyopa, Max Louarn, and Yuanning Chen have all been arrested in Seattle, Washington. The US Government classifies these men as "leaders of one of the world's most notorious videogame piracy groups", and will be facing a federal indictment charge, for the selling of illegal hardware that facilitates piracy.

“These defendants lined their pockets by stealing and selling the work of other video-game developers – even going so far as to make customers pay a licensing fee to play stolen games,” said U.S. Attorney Brian Moran for the Western District of Washington. “This conduct doesn’t just harm billion dollar companies, it hijacks the hard work of individuals working to advance in the video-game industry.”

The FBI has also been involved, with each defendant to be charged under 11 felony counts, ranging from wire fraud, trafficking circumvention devices, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. One of the defendants, Louarn, has not yet been extradited, though Bowser has, where he was seen in the court hearing that took place today.

In September 2020, Louarn and Bowser were arrested abroad in connection with the charges in this case. The United States will seek Louarn’s extradition to stand trial in the United States. Bowser was arrested and deported from the Dominican Republic, and appeared today in federal court, in New Jersey.

Each defendant is charged with 11 felony counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to circumvent technological measures and to traffic in circumvention devices, trafficking in circumvention devices, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Source

 

[Kei00]

Thanks to a bug, SX modchip firmware has been dumped. And thanks to another bug in their firmware update procedure, you can now write your own code:

https://gbatemp.net/threads/sx-modchip-firmware-has-been-dumped.575204/

 

[Qwertindo]

SOME good news for modchip consoles.

 

[White_Raven_X]

Console hackers are shocked after DOJ arrests prominent mod-chip makers

https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstec...-doj-arrests-prominent-mod-chip-makers/?amp=1

 

[janobi]

Good write up and information from ars.

 

[G33ksquad]

The ars writeup was indeed very well done. For those wishing the worst on TX I doubt it will be that bad, charging people on crimes like piracy and console hacking doesn't ever end in serious sentences, I did research on this for my masters degree in relation to time served for computer related crime, Roman Selesnev didn't really even get what I would view as a long sentence. I had to review census data and try to gather if a persons income related to their crime and or sentencing for any type of computer crime, the answer was no, but I had to check.

 

[Skelletonike]

Didn't know about that Ars website. The article was pretty well written and was an interesting read.

The ars writeup was indeed very well done. For those wishing the worst on TX I doubt it will be that bad, charging people on crimes like piracy and console hacking doesn't ever end in serious sentences, I did research on this for my masters degree in relation to time served for computer related crime, Roman Selesnev didn't really even get what I would view as a long sentence. I had to review census data and try to gather if a persons income related to their crime and or sentencing for any type of computer crime, the answer was no, but I had to check.

Well, from what I gathered, they weren't arrested solely because of piracy related issues. Regardless, they will have to pay a hefty sum one way or another.

 

[Legendaykai]

sorry but the sxox team knew what they were doing when they started this so i have no pity.
dont do the crime if you dont intend to pay for your crimes.
(and just incase if anyone thinks im part of Nintendo's report team I'm not)
Not that i wouldn't refuse doing so mind you.

 

[realtimesave]

A lot of people seem to have that misunderstanding.
The temp is not a place for piracy, sure, it was for a short while (roughly a year maybe two). Let's say for example that GBAtemp had roms from 2002 up to 2003, we are currently in 2020. That's 17 years without offering roms versus that one or two years.

I have been a member of the temp for quite a bit and a follower for even longer. I have been anti-piracy for several years now, since I believe if you can afford other tertiary goods, you should also buy your own games. Being anti-piracy, however, does not make me dislike CFW, I love fan translations and I quite liked how some of the 3DS's ones could be used with actual physical games.



Tl;dr, the temp is not for piracy.

duh. I have used gbatemp since the beginning when it was a little tiny website for sharing files and we used to talk on IRC.

 

[smf]

charging people on crimes like piracy and console hacking doesn't ever end in serious sentences,

You don't lock clever people up for a long time, you hire them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Abagnale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Mitnick

For two reasons, one you can get them to pay their debt to society by doing good work. Secondly you don't want clever people in prison teaching the other inmates....

 

[jojo319]

I am really curious how much money is involved. It has to be millions if Uberchips settled for 2 million. There are 2 possibilities as I see it: 1) Their "team" is decimated to the point where SXOS just withers and dies on the vine, or 2) The business was worth SO much money, that someone steps in to fill the vacuum. If there was enough money to get the Fed's involved, it has to be significant. I would be shocked if someone with deep pockets doesn't step in to keep it going. It's no different than breaking up a drug cartel really. If demand is there, someone is going to be willing to take the risks.

 

[FAST6191]

You don't lock clever people up for a long time, you hire them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Abagnale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Mitnick

For two reasons, one you can get them to pay their debt to society by doing good work. Secondly you don't want clever people in prison teaching the other inmates....

Are the guys they managed to pinch as good as those though?

I have read both of their books detailing their exploits (Ghost In The Wires being a great read, catch me if you can... you can probably get away with seeing the film and maybe one of his talks)... Mitnick more than Abagnale doing the bleeding edge stuff, Abagnale then being a serious practical type (equally rare and valuable compared to a booksmart type that might be having to learn to think like a criminal with the limitations put upon them), both showcasing social engineering at its finest however.

Compared to what I have seen from those that were pinched... not seeing it as much. Not to mention I have tried teaching embedded computer hacking for a fair few years now -- with all of us sitting in a nice comfortable houses on nice comfortable office chairs, with computers free do so whatever we like with, all the sleep, food and whatever we need (aka anything but prison) it has a vanishingly low take up and eventually joining the hacker set able to hold their own rate even among the self selected.

On the other hand we did see all those gangs take up tax return fraud so stranger things have happened.

 

[ConsumerOfDucks]

there is little need to get scared and hide in your bunker. Unless you sell hacks, you cant get arrested. Team Xecuter was selling tools advertised for piracy and were closed source, they werent angels pushing forward the homebrew scene, they were hindering it by blocking it behind a paywall and making the whole scene look bad by encouraging piracy. there is a reason most homebrew is not allowed to be sold or is open source

 

[chrisrlink]

i hope gary said something like "how do you enjoy being nintendo's bitch?" to the Agents arressting him.....i would

 

[nachuz]

i hope gary said something like "how do you enjoy being nintendo's bitch?" to the Agents arressting him.....i would

"how do you enjoy being gateway's bitch?" is also a question I would ask, but to you

 

[godreborn]

too bad there wasn't a youtube series of people destroying their true blue dongles. you know that they were going to come out with yet another dongle right before the full hack of the ps3 was released, but people with a conscience told them to go fuck themselves and released it for no profit.

 

[smf]

Are the guys they managed to pinch as good as those though?

I don't know who did what, so I can't answer that. Prisons are a very inefficient way of dealing with criminals though, so longer sentences are generally reserved for those who are a danger to the general public.

 

[G33ksquad]

You don't lock clever people up for a long time, you hire them

For two reasons, one you can get them to pay their debt to society by doing good work. Secondly you don't want clever people in prison teaching the other inmates....

Absolutely, this has been the case with many individuals, end up consulting for the department of defense in some form or another. The Mitnick story is crazy, and I like his book, opened my eyes to social engineering tactics.

 

[ConsumerOfDucks]

guys the people arrested literally put antipiracy in their software. Nintendo does not brick your switch if you hack it, Team Xecuter does if you try reverse engineer or mod their code. Use atmos instead and rejoice that the criminal organization no longer makes the whole scene look bad. Xecuter was a million dollar company that started out in early 2000s, not some indie homebrew community

 

[FAST6191]

guys the people arrested literally put antipiracy in their software. Nintendo does not brick your switch if you hack it, Team Xecuter does if you try reverse engineer or mod their code. Use atmos instead and rejoice that the criminal organization no longer makes the whole scene look bad. Xecuter was a million dollar company that started out in early 2000s, not some indie homebrew community

If Atmosphere or some others gave us USB, XCI, easy installs, nice cheats and all the other stuff then nobody would have been using TX gear for anything other than some kind of easier install.

 

[pofehof]

If Atmosphere or some others gave us USB, XCI, easy installs, nice cheats and all the other stuff then nobody would have been using TX gear for anything other than some kind of easier install.

The first three of those are piracy related and Atmosphere is strictly anti-piracy (out of the box).