Two men associated with the pirated Android app store Appbucket have pleaded guilty to copyright infringement. The Department of Justice estimates that the site made more than $80,000 during its two-year operation. The fate of the third Appbucket defendant is still unknown.
With the help of French and Dutch police, the FBI managed to shut down the “pirate” Android stores applanet.net, appbucket.net, and snappzmarket.com during the summer of 2012.
The seizures of these domains were the first against pirated marketplaces for mobile applications, following similar actions we know from seizures of BitTorrent websites and streaming sites.
Yesterday, the Justice Department announced that two of the three website operators have pleaded guilty to copyright infringement. Nicholas Narbone, 26, and Thomas Dye, 21, signed a settlement agreement with the government and are currently scheduled to go to trial in June.
No information was provided about the third defendant of the illegal website, Thomas Pace, who was primarily responsible for finding pirated copies of Android applications as well as managing the site's servers.
Authorities estimate that more than a million apps were distributed through the site, which retail for about $700,000. During the two years the site was in operation, the defendants allegedly earned more than $80,000.
“The FBI will continue to work with various other law enforcement agencies to identify, investigate, and prosecute individuals and groups involved in these types of criminal activities that are intended to profit from the hard work and developed creative ideas of others,” said FBI Special Agent Johnson.
