14 DAY TRIAL // The United States Department of Justice has announced that the members of two different Android app piracy groups have pleaded guilty to distributing illegal copies of copyrighted applications.
One of the groups is the one behind the Appbucket Group, which is said to have reproduced and distributed over one million copies of copyrighted Android apps between August 2010 and August 2012. The pirated applications had a retail value of more than $700,000 (€506,000).
Thomas Pace, 38, one of the members of the Appbucket Group, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement on Tuesday. He will be sentenced on July 9, 2014.
Last month, two other members of the group – Thomas Dye and Nicholas Narbone, who’s said to be a leader of Appbucket – pleaded guilty to the same charge.
The second piracy group is the one called SnappzMarket. Authorities say 22-year-old Kody Jon Peterson of Clermont, Florida, and his fellow conspirators reproduced and distributed copyrighted Android applications with a retail value of over $1.7 million (€1.2 million).
Peterson pleaded guilty on Monday to one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement. He and his group are said to have distributed over one million copies of Android apps between May 2011 and August 2012.