The case of the hacker who was sentenced to pay Nintendo for the rest of his life

A man who was sentenced to prison for being part of a Nintendo hacking scheme will be required to pay the company 25 to 30 percent of his salary every month until he pays off his debt.

Gary Bowserwhose last name is real and not in “honor” of the villain of the saga Super Mario Bros., was arrested in October 2020 for his involvement in Team Xecutera group that created and sold chips that hacked into video game consoles, including the nintendoswitchallowing customers to get free games.

The 53-year-old subject pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges the following year, admitting at the time that had sold tools that allowed the famous Nintendo portable console to be hacked.

Bowser was sentenced to 40 months in prison and ordered to pay $10 million, but was granted early release for good behavior.

In an interview with youtuber Nick Moses, the subject explained that some of the reasons why he was released early were due to your age, health problems that limit your mobility and the fact that you were born in Canada.

While things seem to have turned out better than expected, Bowser hasn’t escaped the massive debt he owes Nintendo.

However, he assures that he will not have to “worry” about paying the fine since he has an agreement with the Japanese company, which is that it can keep part of his salary until he pays the 10 million dollars he owes.

A debt that will last a lifetime

The amount he has paid so far comes from monthly fees of $25 drawn from his income from his work in the library of the prison where he was held, which total $175.

Even though he could spend the rest of his life paying the company back, Bowser says he’s willing to.

“The agreement with them is that the most they can take is between 25 and 30 percent of your gross monthly income. And I have about six months before I start making payments.”explained the subject.

In the past, the hacker has said that he only received a small part of the “millions of dollars” generated by Team Xecuter.

It should be added that he was the only one of the three members of the group who was tried and sentenced in the United States. Another member, a Chinese national, was never arrested and the third could not be extradited to the United States.

Bowser was initially charged with 11 felonies for his involvement, including wire fraud, conspiracy to circumvent technological measures, circumvention device trafficking and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

At the moment, Nintendo has not ruled on the subject.

Nintendo, tough against piracy

Nintendo is known not only for its franchises and its innovation, and it has also become famous for harshly punishing anything that is considered piracy.

In 2019, the company sued the ROMUniverse site, where thousands of pirated games were uploaded to emulate.

The lawsuit was won by Nintendo, causing the site’s owner to pay $2.1 million and destroy all files uploaded to the site.

In addition to the above, it was learned that the company is looking to remove videos from youtubers that emulate their games on other platforms.