Mark Ptashne Sentenced for Selling $2M in “Cracked” Software

March 12, 2010

Mark Ptashne of Winchester, California has been sentenced by a federal court in Boston, Mass., to six months in prison for criminal copyright infringement.

Between 2001 and 2007, Ptashne was accused of selling more than 3,000 copies of “cracked” software — software which has been modified by removing protection methods. Prosecutors alleged that the software Ptashne sold during that period had a combined retail value of more than $2 million. Along with the six month prison term, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Mark L. Wolf sentenced Ptashne to three years supervised release and ordered him to pay a $20,000 fine and to forfeit a further $26,700. BSA assisted the DOJ and FBI in its investigation as the case involved numerous software titles from 13 different BSA member companies.

“Congratulations to United States Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz, Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Bookbinder, and Special Agent Warren T. Bamford and his team in the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Successful investigations, prosecutions and convictions, like the ones seen in this case, help people become aware of the serious problems that software piracy can pose,” said Paul Fournier, Manager of Internet Investigations for Business Software Alliance. “Sentences like the one received by Ptashne are more common than many people would like to think and should serve as a word of warning to others selling fraudulent software.”