It is an understatement to say that Nintendo has been fighting to stop Team Xecuter from modifying and pirating their 3DS and Switch hardware and trying to profit from it. Nintendo’s fight isn’t over, but the company’s persistence is paying off. According to the Department of Justice, “two leaders of one of the world’s most notorious video-game piracy groups, Team Xecuter, have been arrested and are in custody facing charges filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle”.
They also said that the two “were charged in a federal indictment unsealed today. The indictment alleges the defendants were leaders of a criminal enterprise that developed and sold illegal devices that hacked popular video-game consoles so they could be used to play unauthorized, or pirated, copies of video-games. The enterprise targeted popular consoles such as the Nintendo Switch, the Nintendo 3DS, the Nintendo Entertainment System Classic Edition, the Sony PlayStation Classic, and the Microsoft Xbox. Each defendant is charged 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”.