$16 Million in Microsoft Products, Certificates Stolen

Masked gunmen broke into a Scottish manufacturing plant, tied up its employees and stole an estimated $16 million worth of Microsoft Corp. software and authentication certificates, the company said Tuesday.

Microsoft said the bandits got away with 200,000 certificates of authenticity, 100,000 CD-ROMs, computers and other equipment in the Nov. 10 heist at Thompson Litho Ltd., a contractor authorized to produce Microsoft software for computer manufacturers.

The certificates include a holographic image, watermark and serial numbers and are affixed to the front of computer manuals to assure authenticity. They are one of the company’s chief weapons against pirates who illegally copy and sell software.

“We are doing everything in our power to ensure that counterfeit product resulting from this robbery does not reach consumers in the United States or elsewhere and that, if it does, the trail is tracked straight to the source,” Microsoft senior corporate attorney Nancy Anderson said.

Four armed men forced their way into the factory after hours, bound and gagged three employees and locked them in an office. The thieves loaded the stolen goods into a van and escaped.

The stolen CD-ROMs included versions of Microsoft’s Windows 95 and Windows NT operating systems, Office 97 business software, Encarta 97 Encyclopedia and games.

The value of the stolen goods assumed that the stolen certificates all would be affixed to counterfeit copies of Windows 95, Microsoft spokeswoman Sarah Alexander said. “We easily could have made it a much bigger number,” she said.