Florida woman imprisoned for massive Microsoft license fraud scheme

A Florida reseller, Heidi Richards, was sentenced to 22 months in prison and fined $50,000 for operating a years-long scheme that purchased tens of thousands of genuine Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity (COA) labels, transcribed their product key codes into spreadsheets, and sold those keys in bulk worldwide, receiving over $5.1M in wire transfers; the prosecution emphasized that COA labels may not be sold separately from the licensed software or hardware they accompany.