A Florida woman has been sentenced to 22 months in prison for conspiracy to traffic thousands of stolen Windows 10 and MS Office keys via their Certificate of Authenticity stickers

A Florida woman has been sentenced to 22 months in prison for conspiracy to traffic thousands of stolen Windows 10 and MS Office keys via their Certificate of Authenticity stickers | PC Gamer Skip to main content Open menu Close main menu PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES US Edition UK US Canada Australia Subscribe Sign in View Profile Sign out Search Search PC Gamer Games Hardware News Reviews Guides Video Forum More PC Gaming Show PC Gamer Clips Software Codes Coupons Movies & TV Magazine Newsletter Affiliate links Meet the team Community guidelines About PC Gamer PC Gamer Magazine SubscriptionWhy subscribe?Subscribe to the world’s #1 PC gaming magTry a single issue or save on a subscriptionIssues delivered straight to your door or device From$1Subscribe now Don’t miss these Gaming Industry New York sues Valve for ‘letting children and adults illegally gamble’ with loot boxes AI Microsoft banned the word ‘Microslop’ in its Copilot Discord server, then began restricting access after users started posting ‘Microsl0p’ and other funnies Hardware UK games collector raided by police after purchasing £10,000 worth of hardware, including old dev kits, disposed of by Sega Hardware Valve wins lawsuit against Rothschild and associated entities, with a jury agreeing they violated an anti-patent troll protection act Memory ‘As DRAM prices continue to rise, protecting product authenticity has become increasingly important’: Corsair changes Vengeance DDR5 packaging in bid to deter scams Platforms The New York Attorney General’s Office has flipped at least one Counter-Strike knife skin on the Steam Marketplace for purposes of state Visual Novel Only 50 floppy disks of this prototype Japanese visual novel were ever produced, and one just got destroyed in transit: ‘Today, an important piece of history has been lost forever’ Third Person Shooter Arc Raiders promises severe repercussions for cheating after Marathon twisted the knife on its recent woes: ‘Serious infractions now carry stricter consequences’ AI Microsoft uses plagiarized AI slop flowchart to explain how Github works, removes it after original creator calls it out: ‘Careless, blatantly amateuristic, and lacking any ambition, to put it gently’ Security Google says it’s disrupted a super-serious ‘global espionage campaign’ that uses *checks notes* Google Sheets to covertly intercept telecoms data Fanatical coupons AI Anthropic says it has identified thousands of ‘fraudulent accounts’ taking Claude and ‘extracting its capabilities to train and improve their own models’ Gaming Industry Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney voices support for $900 million Steam lawsuit: ‘Valve is the only major store still holding onto the payments tie and 30% junk fee’ Microsoft promo codes Storage A UK redditor flew to New York City to buy 280 TBs worth of HDDs to avoid ‘literally ridiculous’ pricing, declares it was ‘worth it in the end’ PopularNEW: PC Gamer Clips!Resident EvilArc RaidersBest PC gearGame Quizzes Software Operating Systems Windows A Florida woman has been sentenced to 22 months in prison for conspiracy to traffic thousands of stolen Windows 10 and MS Office keys via their Certificate of Authenticity stickers News By Andy Edser published 3 March 2026 Schemes I did not know existed: Example One. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Microsoft) Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter PC Gamer Get the PC Gamer Newsletter Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Want to add more newsletters? Every Friday GamesRadar+ Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you’re going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them. 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From first-look trailers, interviews, reviews and explainers, we’ve got you covered. Signup + Once a month SFX Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month! Signup + An account already exists for this email address, please log in. Subscribe to our newsletter The US Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida has announced the sentencing of a 52-year-old woman after she was found guilty of “conspiring to traffic in illicit Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity (COA) labels.”Heidi Richards, a resident of Brandon, Florida, was sentenced to 22 months in US federal prison for her part in the scheme, alongside a $50,000 fine.Richards operated an e-commerce business called Trinity Software Distribution, which the Attorney’s Office claims was used to purchase millions of dollars worth of genuine, standalone Microsoft COA labels at prices significantly lower than the the retail price of the associated software (via Bleeping Computer). Related articles Microsoft says sure, it’ll hand over your encrypted data to the FBI: ‘The lesson here is that if you have access to keys, eventually law enforcement is going to come’ Crypto scammer who reportedly stole at least $73 million through social media, calls, and dating services sentenced to a ‘statutory maximum of 20 years in prison’ The US gov shut down a $160 million smuggling operation trying to get Nvidia H200 chips into China and also, err, says the GPUs won’t be restricted anymore COA labels are small stickers carrying Microsoft product key codes, which can then be used to activate products sold as physical media including Windows 10 and MS Office, as was the case here.Richards, along with her employees, were said to have harvested the product key codes from tens