South Korea newspaper The Korea Herald reports that the Korea Customs Service recently busted a massive Nintendo piracy ring made up of 25 individual suspects. The customs service, which made the announcement on Monday, claims that the ring sold over 90,000 illegally copied Nintendo games as well as memory cards worth at least 100 billion won ($87.2 million).
The suspects include 15 online store managers, that opened stores on overseas websites as a way to elude the authorities. The suspects, says the KCS, often changed the IP addresses of the stores, as well as hiring part-time workers to manage the sites, bank accounts and phones under other people's names.
Advertising the products as "100 percent authentic" guaranteed, the suspects used R4, DSTT and DSTTi cards that were capable of bypassing copy protection. The suspects allegedly sold flash memory cards of up to 16GB, capable of holding up to 300 games, as well as unauthorized copies of games, for between 40,000 won (about $35.00) and 100,000 won (about $87.00).
The KCS had been investigating the case, employing a team of 30 officers, since April.