Microsoft accuses Mexican drug cartel La Familia of selling bootleg Office software

Microsoft claims La Familia is selling bootleg copies of Office, and the company is using this to show how counterfeiting and piracy is a more serious problem than many people believe.

It’s been a strange week for Microsoft. It began with Google revealing it had set a honey-trap in order to catch Bing copying its search results. And it’s ending with the revelation that the Mexican drug cartel, La Familia, is selling counterfeit copies of its Office software throughout the country. The claim came during the Global Congress on Combating Counterfeiting and Piracy in Paris, where David Finn, associate general counsel of Microsoft’s anti-piracy unit, said, “This is the real side, the scary side of counterfeiting and it plagues the world.” Finn suggests a lot of counterfeiting and piracy is linked to organized crime, not just in Mexico but in Asia and right around the world.