US Nintendo Hacker Gary Bowser Released From Prison, But He Still Owes A Lot Of Money - Nintendo punishes hacker by taking 25-30% of his monthly income until his $10 million debt is paid off

Article / Archive

Nintendo Hacker Gary Bowser Released From Prison, But He Still Owes A Lot Of Money​

Nintendo will be allowed to take "25-30%" of Bowser's monthly income until his $10 million debt to the company is paid off.

Nintendo hacker Gary Bowser, who was sentenced to 40 months in jail for piracy and received a hefty fine of close to $15 million for his involvement in the hacking group Team Xecutor, has now been released from prison. Having served several months of his sentence, Bowser has been released early in part due to good behavior and time already served, but he is still legally obligated to pay Nintendo $10 million for his role in allowing Switch owners to hack their systems so that pirated games could be played on them.

As part of the consent judgment that Bowser agreed to, Nintendo will be allowed to take "25-30%" of his gross monthly income. Of the $10 million that Bowser owes Nintendo, he has only been able to pay $175 so far from his earnings while he was in prison. "I've been making payments of $25 per month, which they've been taking from my income because I had a job in federal prison. So far I paid $175," Bowser told Torrentfreak.

When Bowser was first sentenced, Nintendo's lawyer Ajay Singh said in a court transcript (via Axios) that the company wanted to "send a message" to other Switch hackers. "This is a very significant moment for us. It's the purchase of video games that sustains Nintendo and the Nintendo ecosystem, and it is the games that make the people smile. It's for that reason that we do all we can to prevent games on Nintendo systems from being stolen," Singh said to Axios last year.

Nintendo is notorious for going after hackers and software pirates of its video games, and in a more recent example, the company won a court case against Dstorage, a website operator that hosted pirated games on its cloud-storage site. The Paris Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Nintendo and has ordered Dstorage to pay over $480,000 in compensation to Nintendo, as well as $27,285 in legal fees.

 

[breadandcircuses]

I mean on one hand I feel bad for the kid because that punishment's absurd.

Yeah, if only he was 52, then it would be reasonable, right?

 

[Kendall Motor Oil]

Lego does the same shit. They're extremely anal about never allowing their product to be called "legos" ("lego bricks" is the proper term for the toy).

Probably loads of other companies as well but I really only know of Nintendo and Lego being extremely strict about the names of their products.

Doritos. The Dorito taco is called the Doritos Locos Taco. It sounds retarded using a plural but that's their trademark I guess.

 

[NickDigger]

Who cares, someone tell those discord faggots to release the rest of the 2TB gigaleak and satiate the 'tendies.

 

[Abbadon's Gate]

Yeah, if only he was 52, then it would be reasonable, right?

This is a dumb ass post and you should probably kill yourself.

 

[Also Not a Fake Name]

He should have faked his death.

I hear that’s what you should do when Nintendo gets aggro on you.

 

[Tim the Tranny]

How much does this guy make that they can take 30% of his income? And where does he live so I can never work there?

The law where I live is that money can be garnished at MAXIMUM 10% of your gross salary. I’m thinking civil though. Maybe it’s different if it’s criminal?

 

[Dysnomia]

Yeah poor kid.
View attachment 5069981

I was actually surprised it was an old guy. But I read the boomer was on the business end of things.

They lie and say the brick code is to "combat clones", but in addition to that being a retarded; sociopathic save, the guts of it reveal it's an anti-modder killswitch, and in the Gateway's case specifically, was to ensure nobody made a better launcher like Wood/YSMenu and emuNAND was left unmolested (too late!), and could be activated simply by using a region-free patch, mods, or something on your microSD corrupting. Their Switch OS made the anti-modding stance even clearer when they gave it an unironic EULA and licensing conditions explaining WHY they would have to brick your Switch if you violate the modding NAP. The fact the arrest notice describes this release specifically showcases this was easily Nintendo's final straw

The comments supporting these clowns in the third article you linked.

They're such hypocrites yet people still support them.

 

[Neil]

Nintendo really is the Japanese version of Disney. They've straight up ruined this dude for life, worse than what they did to the couple who ran EmuParadise.

And even if this dude ended up killing himself because of how financially fucked he is, Nintendo's fans would forget the minute they announce the next Mario Sports game (with 90% of its features missing and a pathetically tiny roster, but that's okay because they included fan favorite character Pinkie Kong from the Japan-exclusive Gameboy Color title "Mario Shuffleboard").

Nintendo fans are already going to forget when the new Zelda drops and start masturbating to how many sales records the game breaks.

 

[Troutsmacked]

That sentence is insane. Nintendo must have paid off the judge or something to get that judgement.

 

[Mothra1988]

Nintendo really is the Japanese version of Disney. They've straight up ruined this dude for life, worse than what they did to the couple who ran EmuParadise.

And even if this dude ended up killing himself because of how financially fucked he is, Nintendo's fans would forget the minute they announce the next Mario Sports game (with 90% of its features missing and a pathetically tiny roster, but that's okay because they included fan favorite character Pinkie Kong from the Japan-exclusive Gameboy Color title "Mario Shuffleboard").

Nintendo fans are already going to forget when the new Zelda drops and start masturbating to how many sales records the game breaks.

Yeah, they are consumer whore retards.

 

[Super Guido]

It's the purchase of video games that sustains Nintendo and the Nintendo ecosystem, and it is the games that make the people smile. It's for that reason that we do all we can to prevent games on Nintendo systems from being stolen,"

I don't think paying for games is what makes them smile, though.

 

[Eekum Bokum]

On one hand 10 million is pretty wild, on the other hand play silly games win silly prizes.

It's hard to have sympathy for a middle aged man who really should know better.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

Convicted console hacker says he paid Nintendo $25 a month from prison (archive)

As Gary Bowser rebuilds his life, fellow Team Xecuter indictees have yet to face trial.

KYLE ORLAND - 2/1/2024


It's-a me, the long arm of the law.

When 54-year-old Gary Bowser pleaded guilty to his role in helping Team Xecuter with their piracy-enabling line of console accessories, he realized he would likely never pay back the $14.5 million he owed Nintendo in civil and criminal penalties. In a new interview with The Guardian, though, Bowser says he began making $25 monthly payments toward those massive fines even while serving a related prison sentence.

Last year, Bowser was released after serving 14 months of that 40-month sentence (in addition to 16 months of pre-trial detention), which was spread across several different prisons. During part of that stay, Bowser tells The Guardian, he was paid $1 an hour for four-hour shifts counseling other prisoners on suicide watch.
From that money, Bowser says he “was paying Nintendo $25 a month” while behind bars. That lines up roughly with a discussion Bowser had with the Nick Moses podcast last year, where he said he had already paid $175 to Nintendo during his detention.

According to The Guardian, Nintendo will likely continue to take 20 to 30 percent of Bowser’s gross income (after paying for “necessities such as rent”) for the rest of his life.

The fall guy?​

While people associated with piracy often face fines rather than prison, Nintendo lawyers were upfront that they pushed for jail time for Bowser to “send a message that there are consequences for participating in a sustained effort to undermine the video game industry." That seems to have been effective, at least as far as Bowser’s concerned; he told The Guardian that “The sentence was like a message to other people that [are] still out there, that if they get caught … [they’ll] serve hard time.”


Bowser appears on the Nick Moses Gaming Podcast from a holding center in Washington state in 2023.

But Bowser also maintains that he wasn’t directly involved with the coding or manufacture of Team Xecuter’s products, and only worked on incidental details like product testing, promotion, and website coding. Speaking to Ars in 2020, Aurora, a writer for hacking news site Wololo, described Bowser as “kind of a PR guy” for Team Xecuter. Despite this, Bowser said taking a plea deal on just two charges saved him the time and money of fighting all 14 charges made against him in court.

Bowser was arrested in the Dominican Republic in 2020. Fellow Team Xecuter member and French national Max "MAXiMiLiEN" Louarn, who was indicted and detained in Tanzania at the same time as Bowser’s arrest, was still living in France as of mid-2022 and has yet to be extradited to the US. Chinese national and fellow indictee Yuanning Chen remains at large.

"If Mr. Louarn comes in front of me for sentencing, he may very well be doing double-digit years in prison for his role and his involvement, and the same with the other individual [Chen],” US District Judge Robert Lasnik said during Bowser’s sentencing.

Returning to society​

During his stay in prison, Bowser tells The Guardian that he suffered a two-week bout of COVID that was serious enough that “a priest would come over once a day to read him a prayer.” A bout of elephantiasis also left him unable to wear a shoe on his left foot and required the use of a wheelchair, he said.

Now that he’s free, Bowser says he has been relying on friends and a GoFundMe page to pay for rent and necessities as he looks for a job. That search could be somewhat hampered by his criminal record and by terms of the plea deal that prevent him from working with any modern gaming hardware.

Despite this, Bowser told The Guardian that his current circumstances are still preferable to a period of homelessness he experienced during his 20s. And while console hacking might be out for Bowser, he is reportedly still “tinkering away with old-school Texas Instruments calculators” to pass the time.

 

[The Last Stand]

Tell me again why Disney should have their own government.