Chinese "slaves" forced to counterfeit software

NEWS Asia's so-called Snakehead mob bosses are smuggling illegal immigrants into the US and forcing them to pay their debt by pirating software. The US Customs Service has arrested front man, Hung Lin Wu, who allegedly ran two Los Angeles businesses that were part of a major software piracy operation. A detective in the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department's high tech crimes unit said: "There's no denying the link between Asia and the software piracy problem." According to a recent filing with US District Court in California, Wu's two businesses, OSE Optical and Go-Go Trading, were fronts for an international piracy operation. Wu was caught with 387,000 counterfeit CDs, 48 rolls of shrink wrap and a CD replicator, which can create several thousand CDs per day and costs over $1m. According to an investigation by a US magazine, Smart Reseller, in a typical deal, Snakeheads demand $30,000 or more to sneak a person from Asia to the US. Once the illegal alien sets foot on American soil, the $30,000 smuggling fee comes due. To pay off the debts, some immigrants become indentured slaves in the Snakeheads' piracy operations and many work long hours stuffing counterfeit manuals and software into boxes. The US economy loses 130,000 jobs annually to piracy, and costs developers and resellers worldwide about $11bn in lost revenue each year. North America, Asia and Western Europe account for 80 per cent of counterfeit software.