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Windows Central
Windows Central
Technology
Kevin Okemwa

Stolen Microsoft Office and Windows keys land a Florida woman with 22 months in prison and a $50,000 fine — after she ironically stored them in Excel spreadsheets

Microsoft Windows Florida Prison
Hands in handcuffs with Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity (COA) badge.

Heidi Richards, 52 (or Heidi Shaffer, Heidi Hastings, or Heidi Williams, depending on who you ask), has been sentenced to 22 months in prison for trafficking thousands of stolen Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity (COA) labels through her Florida-based e-commerce brand, "Trinity Software Distribution", alongside a $50,000 fine for that company.

Basically, those COA labels are small stickers issued by Microsoft to OEMs verifying that a copy of its software is genuine. They feature a unique product key code used to activate the software or the entire operating system.

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