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Two leaders of “Team Xecuter,” one of the world’s most notorious video game piracy groups, have been arrested and indicted.

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the indictment against Team Xecuter leaders Max Louarn, a French national, Gary Bowser, a Canadian national, and Yuanning Chen, a Chinese national.

The three defendants were leaders of Team Xecuter, which developed and sold illegal devices capable of hacking popular videogame consoles including the Nintendo Switch, the Nintendo 3DS, the Nintendo Entertainment System Classic Edition, the Sony PlayStation Classic, and the Microsoft Xbox.

Team Xecuter leaders facing 11 felony charges

The DOJ charged the defendants with 11 felony counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to circumvent technological measures and to traffic in circumvention devices, trafficking in circumvention devices, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

According to the Justice Department, Louarn has been arrested overseas and the U.S. government will seek his extradition to stand trial. Authorities in the Dominican Republican arrested and deported Bowser. He appeared in the federal court in New Jersey on Friday. Chen remains at-large.

Based on the indictment, Louarn also known as Julien Ambroise was responsible for recruiting investors for Team Xecuter. He was also responsible for exploiting developers and making strategic business decisions, finalizing product design, and financing projects for the criminal enterprise.

Bowser also is known as GaryOPA developed and marketed circumvention devices for popular game consoles. He also administered multiple websites operated by the notorious piracy group.

Chen also is known as Velison Chen, 100+1, and Jingui Chen supervised and managed a manufacturing and distribution company called China Distribution or ChinaDistrib, the official distributor of Team Xecuter’s circumvention devices.

The notorious piracy group used  encrypted means to hide its illegal activities

Team Xecuter allegedly claimed to have been rocking the video games industry since 2002 and started developing circumvention devices in 2001.

The video games piracy group used encrypted means of communications such as Signal and Telegram to protect its projects from other teams of hackers and law enforcement, according to an indictment unsealed on Friday. It also deployed various techniques to hide and protect the servers under its control,

From approximately June 2013 through August 2020, Team Xecuter used different product names for its devices such as the Gateway 3DS, the Stargate, the TrueBlue Mini, the Classic2Magic, and the SX line of devices that included the SX OS, the SX Pro, the SX Lite, and SX Core.

In a statement, DOJ Criminal Division Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian Rabbitt  said, “These defendants were allegedly leaders of a notorious international criminal group that reaped illegal profits for years by pirating video game technology of U.S. companies.”

He added that the department “will hold accountable hackers who seek to commandeer and exploit the intellectual property of American companies for financial gain, no matter where they may be located.”

“These defendants lined their pockets by stealing and selling the work of other video-game developers – even going so far as to make customers pay a licensing fee to play stolen games. This conduct doesn’t just harm billion-dollar companies; it hijacks the hard work of individuals working to advance in the video-game industry,” said U.S. Attorney Brian Moran for the Western District of Washington.

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