TAMPA, Fla. – A federal jury has found Heidi Richards, 52, of Brandon, Florida, guilty of conspiring to traffic in illicit Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity (COA) labels, United States Attorney Gregory W. Kehoe announced Tuesday.
Richards, who operated under the name Trinity Software Distribution, was convicted following a trial where evidence showed she paid co-conspirators millions of dollars for thousands of genuine, standalone Microsoft COA labels. The labels were acquired at prices substantially lower than the retail cost of the software they were meant to accompany.
According to court documents, Richards and her employees would harvest the product key codes from these labels and then sell them in bulk to customers. This practice violates federal law, which prohibits the trafficking of standalone COA labels separated from the software programs they were intended to authenticate.
Microsoft COA labels serve to authenticate genuine software, bear security features to prevent counterfeiting, and are crucial because they contain the product key codes necessary to activate Microsoft software. The labels, however, are explicitly not to be sold separately from the license and hardware they are intended to accompany, as they hold no independent commercial value. An illicit, secondary market exists specifically for the product key codes on these labels.
Richards now faces a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison. Her sentencing hearing is scheduled for February 26, 2026.
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