Two members of an Orange County trio caught illegally selling more than $12,500 worth Nintendo Wii games in a 2010 undercover sting learned their punishments this week inside the Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse in Santa Ana.
David Anthony Olivo and Alex Michael Sasser escaped prison but will be on federal probation for two years, according to punishment issued by U.S. District Court Judge James V Selna.
Joel Vittatoro (AKA “Jigger”), the remaining defendant, signed a guilty plea in April though he has not been sentenced, according to court records.
A federal grand jury indicted the trio in November after an investigator with the Entertainment Software Association posed as a customer at OC Game Squad in Fullerton and was sold a one-terabyte external hard drive loaded with 500 Nintendo Wii games for only $50.
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The stolen games–which retailed for $25 and included Tiger Woods PGA, The Simpsons, and Resident Evil 4–are protected by copyright laws.
According
to federal sentencing guidelines, the offenders could have faced as
much as six months in prison, but Selna and Assistant United States Attorney Douglas F. McCormick believed probation was adequate punishment given the circumstances.
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CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.