Infineon Executives in Plea Deal

Four current and former sales executives of German chip maker Infineon Technologies have agreed to plead guilty to participating in a conspiracy to fix the prices of computer memory chips, the Justice Department said Thursday.

The four men -- three Germans and an American -- will serve up to six months in prison and pay $250,000 in fines, according to a plea agreement filed in federal district court in San Francisco. The agreement must be approved by the court.

The move comes two months after Infineon agreed to plead guilty to price-fixing charges and pay a $160-million fine as part of a two-year-old probe into the prices of dynamic random access memory, used in computers and other electronics.

“These four executives are the first to plead guilty to a charge of fixing prices in what is still a very active and far-reaching investigation into antitrust violations in the DRAM industry,” said Scott Hammond, director of criminal enforcement for the Justice Department’s antitrust department.

The computer memory industry is dominated by Infineon; South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. and Hynix Semiconductor Inc.; and U.S.-based Micron Technology Inc. Each of the companies has acknowledged cooperating with the U.S. probe.

The Justice Department has reached a plea agreement with one other industry executive, Alfred Censullo of Micron, who pleaded guilty in January to obstruction of justice.

The four executives named in the Infineon plea agreement are Heinrich Florian, Gunter Hefner, T. Rudd Corwin and Peter Schaefer.