Last week, at age 29, John Sankus Jr. moved out of his parents’ house for the first time. He and his parents drove 150 miles from their home in suburban Philadelphia to his new one: a federal penitentiary in Allenwood, Pa. Mr. Sankus, who entered the minimum-security prison on July 2 to serve a 46-month sentence, is a soft-spoken, churchgoing computer technician who still has the plush stuffed whales from his childhood.
“But United States Customs Service investigators and prosecutors say he was also a ringleader of an international gang of software pirates that deprived companies of millions of dollars through the illegal distribution of copyrighted software, games and movies on the Internet. In February, Mr. Sankus pleaded guilty to a felony count of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement.
“The piracy group, known as DrinkorDie, was among the chief targets of more than 100 coordinated raids in the United States and abroad last December. So far 15 people in the United States have pleaded guilty to criminal charges as a result of the raids, including a Duke University student, a programmer at the University of California at Los Angeles, an employee at an Internet service provider and several executives at technology companies. So far Mr. Sankus and five others have been sentenced to prison…”
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