CHINESE COUPLE CHARGED IN COMPUTER SCAM.

Byline: Janet Gilmore Daily News Staff Writer

It may look like a mouse, roam like a computer mouse and click like a Microsoft mouse, but it could be a counterfeit from a couple now facing criminal charges.

Prosecutors contend that Zhijian Song and his wife, Jian Ping Zhu, spent the past two years making $6.2 million worth of phony Microsoft products, including Windows 95, floppy disks and certificates of authenticity.

The couple, political refugees from China, are accused of having sold hundreds, if not thousands, of fake computer products through a Sherman Oaks store, Digital Labs, which is under investigation.

On Wednesday, a Los Angeles Municipal Court judge ordered 44-year-old Song and 38-year-old Zhu to stand trial on the counterfeiting charges, and she refused to reduce bail from $5 million.

``This is a massive type of fraud,'' said Judge Glenette Blackwell. ``But for the search warrant, this stuff could be all over the market. This is a million-dollar, billion-dollar business; they're a danger to the community.''

The attorney for the couple said they are innocent and were themselves duped because they were only delivering and keeping records for another person who actually was selling the products.

They face up to 17 years in prison if convicted.

The case began when a tipster warned Microsoft that pirated products were being sold at Digital Labs. Investigators served a search warrant on the store and while there ran into Song, who was delivering a shipment.

By the end of their investigation, agents had seized 60,000 pieces of Microsoft equipment and Intel computer chips from the duo's Monterey Park warehouses, an investigator said.

The computer chips, made to look like a more powerful and faster-running chip, were worth roughly $100,000, officials said. Authorities also confiscated $3.5 million from the couple's bank and business accounts.

Customers who have bought the phony items have returned them to Digital Labs because they malfunctioned, causing their computers to freeze or not work properly, said Pat McPherson, an investigator with the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office.

Not all bogus products cause problems, he said, but pirates are not concerned particularly with quality control and may pass off computers loaded with viruses and other problems.

Song and Zhu don't fit the stereotypical image of criminals.

Their attorney, Max Chiang, flipped through a photo album showing the oil and watercolor portraits Song created and has displayed in Orange County art galleries.

Back in 1989, Chiang said, Song protested alongside the students massacred by Chinese troops during the pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square. He came to the United States just a few years ago and set up an export-import business with his wife.