Florida woman sentenced for Microsoft COA label trafficking scheme

According to Bleeping Computer, a Florida woman has been sentenced to 22 months in prison for her role in a large-scale, multi-year scheme involving the trafficking of thousands of stolen Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity (COA) labels.

Heidi Richards, 52, who operated Trinity Software Distribution, was also fined $50,000. COA labels are used to authenticate software and contain unique product key codes for activation. Prosecutors stated that these labels have no independent commercial value and cannot be legally sold separately from the software or hardware they are meant to accompany.

However, Richards and her associates acquired tens of thousands of genuine Microsoft COA labels between July 2018 and January 2023. Instead of selling them with the intended software, they extracted the product key codes and sold them illicitly to customers worldwide, generating over $5.1 million.

Source: Bleeping Computer