A raid at a house in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire has resulted in the prosecution of a man who has allegedly been making money through modifying consoles using circumvention devices, also known as 'chipping'.
The warrant for the raid under powers provided by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 was carried out in January by plain clothes officers from Staffordshire County Council Trading Standards in partnership with Staffordshire Police at a trade premises. The building had proven difficult to gain entry to due to there being no obvious entrance.
A large quantity of video game console circumnavigation devices ('chips') were recovered together with 20 Microsoft Xbox 360 and four Nintendo Wii consoles. This had followed months of investigations by Staffordshire Trading Standards and several test purchases undertaken by ELSPA (the Entertainment & Leisure Software Publishers Association) IP Crime Unit investigators. One of the test purchase involved sending off a regular Xbox 360 to be chipped and the other the purchase of a pre-chipped Wii.
Besides the consoles, 200 chips and two PCs were also seized and forwarded to ELSPA experts for forensic examination.