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Ex-Microsoft employee charged in $17 million software fraud


A former Microsoft employee has been charged with mail and computer fraud after allegedly obtaining software with a retail value of $17 million through Microsoft's staff software purchasing system and selling it at a profit.

The FBI and the US Attorney for the Western District of Washington announced on Monday that Richard Gregg, 42, formerly a Project Coordinator for Windows Development, had been arrested on the sixty two-count indictment.

The abuse of the system by Gregg and others was revealed during a Microsoft internal investigation in the autumn of 2002. This week's criminal charges against Gregg stem from an ongoing investigation by the FBI and US Attorney's Office, in which arrests have already been made.

In December last year, former Microsoft manager Daniel Feussner, 32, was arrested and accused of stealing $9 million worth of Microsoft software through the same internal ordering system. Mr Feussner swallowed anti-freeze shortly afterwards, and died in hospital.

John Conners, Microsoft's financial officer, told Reuters: "we have been working very closely with the FBI and US Attorney's office on the investigation and have made changes to our internal ordering system to prevent this from happening again."

The text of the indictment is available here

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