More than 60,000 pirated copies of Nintendo Co. game consoles were seized Wednesday during raids in New York and New Jersey, prosecutors announced.
Four people were arrested in the crackdown on the theft of popular games such as "Donkey Kong," "Mario Brothers," "Duck Hunt," "Baseball" and others, according to a release by federal authorities and papers filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
The arrests occurred after the defendants agreed to sell the games to FBI agents posing as gaming thieves willing to resell the games in Manhattan and through a distributor in the Midwest, prosecutors said.
According to a criminal complaint filed in the case, the defendants between September and December 2004 had imported into the United States more than 280,000 illegal video game consoles.
More than 60,000 game consoles were seized during searches Wednesday in Brooklyn, Queens and Maple Shade, N.J., authorities said.
The Japanese game maker told the FBI that individuals and companies copy the video games and sell the pirated versions throughout the world, costing the company millions of dollars in lost revenue annually, according to the complaint.