http://www.gamespot.com/all/news/news_6089247.html
My name is muttbunch and I am a Gamespot subscriber, which means I don’t know if you’ll be able to access this link or not. But if you can, read it and weep–or rejoice, depending upon your inclinations. That’s some serious time this joker got, not to mention the fines…
(Let me know if you can’t access it and I’ll post the main points of the story here.)
They sold $500,000 worth of pirated games? What kind of idiot pays for warez?
Well, Razor1911 finally got caught. That group was around for freaking ever. That’s a hell of a lot to pay for video games.
Am I missing something? I don’t understand this part.
Razor1911 members also posed as customers of Cisco Systems in order to falsely place massive game orders.
How does posing as Cisco customers allow you to make large false orders? I don’t think you can order games through Cisco. I mean we’re talking about the networking hardware vendor, right?
I think so. I didn’t get that part, either.
Man, $700k… just think how many cr4X0r3d copies of Metal Gear Solid 2 and Tony Hawk he’s gonna have to sell to pay all that back!
Will he be appearing in Pepsi ads soon?
The group is still around, it’s just that a large part of their low level staff and a number of their senior staff were busted a couple years back along with basically everyone involved with DoD and RiSC. Nothing new, just a repeat of an endless cycle, there’s always members to take over the reigns, groups to merge, and so on.
As for selling the warez. The press release from the DOJ makes no mention of this, and it would be very unusual for such a large warez group to do this because of the attention and wrath such activities attract. I believe that Tor at Gamespot mis-read the press release and confused the purchasing of Cisco hardware by way of a hacked account of an existing Cisco customer with software. After purchasing the equipment using another persons information the hardware was mailed to a fake business the defendant had set up in the bay area and sold it by various means.
I love the undercover operation name - “Operation Buccaneer.”
I just love the idea of being approached by a man hocking Cisco equipment out of the back of his truck.
Yo, mistah. Got a Cisco 12800 router with up to 800Gb switching capabilities for yah, cheap!
It’s not that unusual for used Cisco gear to be available cheap. There certainly was a glut of the stuff after the dot.bomb hit.
Thanks GMicek, that makes a lot more sense.
Interesting article. As someone else said, I don’t expect them to disappear entirely.
The group is still around, it’s just that a large part of their low level staff and a number of their senior staff were busted a couple years back along with basically everyone involved with DoD and RiSC. Nothing new, just a repeat of an endless cycle, there’s always members to take over the reigns, groups to merge, and so on.
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Staff? Do they have a dental plan?
What the hell kind of slacker PR reps send beta code to fictitious magazines?
Hell, now that I’m a freelancer, I have trouble convincing some of the PR n00bs that I’m actually reviewing the products that I truly am writing about, even though I’ve been doing this for eons. Yet these guys were able to scam A-list titles before release. Weird.
As the saying goes, the most effective “haX0rs” are those with the best social enginering skills, more often so than even technical skills.
Razor’s not dead - they’ve had 3 releases in Feb already.
jesus, you guys sure do know a lot about this “stealing” business. this stuff doesn’t make it to my newspaper. fess up, all of you! :P
Razor1991 is a stupid warez release name. It’s gotta be a 3-letter acronym. My favorite as of late is LoL, who I think released that West Wing Tom Chick was in.
I’m starting a release company, either called FaT or CuM. Ohhhh, yea!
Warez only applies to software. LoL isn’t a warez group. They are a “capper/encoder release” group :-)