ESA Initiates Police Raid Against Console Modder

Donkey Konga writes "A San Diego man was arrested after a raid turned up over a thousand counterfeit games, modded consoles and mod chips. Frederick Brown 'had allegedly built up a thriving business selling counterfeit games and installing mod chips, having advertised his services on Craigslist and other web sites. He allegedly sold pirated games from his Vista, CA residence as well, including both discs and hard drives preloaded with games that he would install into customers' Xboxes and Xbox 360s.' After the ESA learned of his activities, they contacted San Diego law enforcement and the San Diego Computer and Technology Crime High-Tech Response Unit led the raid on his home. '"CATCH was very receptive to the evidence we brought them and were able to put the investigation together in very short order," ESA VP Ric Hirsch told Ars.' Brown now faces 10 felony counts related to selling pirated games and modding consoles."

Vista residence?

[matt me]

You can live inside an operating system? Now that's virtualisation. It must be hell.

I wonder when car manufacturers...

[Red Mage 13]

Will take note of this, and start raiding Autozone. Although on the plus side, if they started going after modders, there would be fewer cars with really unnecessary spoilers...

The dummy turned off UAC

[Anonymous Coward]

Never had a chance.

"You door is about to be kicked in, Cancel or Allow?"

Bully for the police!

[jollyreaper]

Have to nip these little hooligans in the bud! One day they're modding consoles, the next they're building suicide vests for bombers. It's a slippery slope, I tell you!

He's not the only stupid one

[Jaqenn]

Advertising on Craigs list is pretty dumb. I have a story that may match it:

In my little college town, there was a guy who owned his own small business, doing mostly PC repairs / upgrades. He acquired a reputation in my geeky-friend circle as being a little shady and a lot overpriced.

Apparently he also started modding XBoxes on the side. I met a neighbor that had one that he'd worked on, and as a result of the mod you'd get an extra splash screen when booting your XBox. I'm futzing the details, but the splash screen said something like this:

This console modded by Bob's Smalltown PC Shop!
I'll mod your console too for $35!
Contact me at 1234 Main St, (999)-999-9999.

I was dumbfounded that he'd leave such evidence on something that he had to have known was illegal. It made me want to buy one and forward it to Microsoft just for spite, because it seemed a tragic injustice that someone could do something so stupid and never have to deal with the results.

I never got around to it, though, because then he skipped town without paying the last X weeks of back wages to his employees. As far as I know no-one ever found him, but I didn't pay much attention after the first bit of news.

Re:Okay...

[tsa]

So in principle I am not allowed to use a door as a table in the USA. Great law. I'm glad I live in Europe.

Re:Vista residence?

[MorePower]

I'm still trying to figure out why the European Space Agency went after him.