The United States Department of Justice published news that two members of Team Xecuter were arrested. Team Xecuter is a notorious video game piracy group that has been around since 2001. Recently, the team has been selling physical hardware to mod Nintendo Switch consoles. Each person faces 11 felony charges, including wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Though two key members of Team Xecuter have been taken into custody, a total of three people have been indicted. The three members are accused of leading a criminal enterprise that developed and sold physical mods to hack consoles and play video games illegally. The report suggests the overwhelming demand for Team Xecuter’s products was to play pirated video games.
Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian C. Rabbitt of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division spoke critically of the group, “[They] reaped illegal profits for years.” U.S. Attorney Brian Moran for the Western District of Washington elaborated further, “These defendants lined their pockets by stealing and selling the work of other video-game developers–-even going so far as to make customers pay a licensing fee to play stolen games.”
According to the report, Team Xecuter has over a dozen members located around the world. We last heard about lawsuits in May 2020 in two US States: Ohio and Washington. The Team Xecuter arrests so far concern Washington state, so it will be interesting to see if anything comes of the other lawsuit.
The Team Xecuter arrests are under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Homeland Security Investigations.
