Two held for selling pirated Microsoft software products

“The complainant said Kumar,along with his associates,was involved in high-end counterfeiting and piracy of Microsoft software products by various means. It was also alleged that the suspect was obtaining counterfeited CDs,packaging material and fake Certification of Authenticity (COAs) from China. After obtaining the product key number by tampering genuine products,he was putting it on fake COAs before selling them in the market,” a CBI spokesperson said on Friday.

The Delhi-based company was also abusing the complainant’s “Microsoft activation downgrade programme”,which allows customers to downgrade their Windows Vista product to Windows XP,the spokesperson said.

The agency said the accused would submit the product keys of Windows Vista business and ultimate version of operating systems to Microsoft after obtaining them by fraudulent means like tampering the original products,and then requesting Microsoft to downgrade product keys of Windows XP operating systems.

“The accused would then put these downgrade product keys on the counterfeited software and sell it as original. The accused thus caused the offence of criminal breach of trust,cheating,counterfeiting and offences under the IT Act and Copyright Act,” the official said.

The duo was produced before the designated court and remanded to a day’s police custody.