The Italian police have arrested 9 fraudsters who were trading in retro games on a large scale. It involves almost 50 million euros.
Retro games of all kinds are experiencing a kind of renaissance, and many people want to play the old titles from long ago. Now, the Italian police have arrested a group of fraudsters who were trading retro games on a large scale. It involves 12,000 consoles and nearly 50 million euros.
Thousands of consoles with pirated games without an official license
What was discovered? The Italian police uncovered a trade in retro games valued at approximately 47.5 million euros, and now nine pirates face up to eight years in prison (via gamesradar.com):
Around 12,000 consoles, on which more than 47 million pirated video games were illegally stored, were seized, with an estimated value of more than 47.5 million euros.
Alessandro Langella, head of the Turin division for economic crime
According to investigators, this involves “fake video game consoles from China,” which were supposed to be sold later on Amazon. These are the devices that usually have thousands of ROMs pre-installed, but are not officially legal.
In total, this is said to be about 47.5 million euros: This estimate includes both the value of the consoles themselves and the theoretical licensing costs for the games that the individuals did not pay.
Additionally, the police stated that the consoles did not meet European technical and safety standards and therefore should not have been sold on the European market at all.
Another gamer found a retro treasure in his basement and shared it with the community: Some users immediately noticed a special handheld that could today be worth nearly 1,000 euros: “I should clean my basement more often” – Gamer finds a small treasure from Nintendo while cleaning
