FBI: RAID NETS WEB PIRATES CHATSWORTH MAN, 3 MORE ARRESTED.

Byline: Staff and Wire Services

Federal agents Thursday arrested a Chatsworth man and three other people thought to be leaders in an international ring of Internet pirates responsible for stealing copies of the latest ``Star Wars'' film and other movies, games and software programs worth at least $50 million.

FBI agents and investigators in other nations conducted 90 searches, starting Wednesday, seizing hundreds of computers and shutting down at least eight major online distribution servers for pirated works.

William Veyna, 34, of Chatsworth was arrested Wednesday by FBI agents. Veyna is suspected of operating as a system operator for a major illegal software distribution site.

An arrest warrant describes a pattern of illegal activity by Veyna since January, much of it in concert with an undercover FBI agent. According to the warrant:

--Veyna uploaded illegal copies of movies ``Be Cool,'' ``Coach Carter,'' ``Twisted'' and the PlayStation game ``FIFA Soccer USA,'' and he downloaded illegal copies of the games ``Area 51'' and ``Battlefield 2.''

--Veyna gave two hard drives to the undercover agent to increase the space on an illegal server, and had a face-to-face meeting with the agent to discuss using a server to crack and encode media.

--He e-mailed the agent a receipt for the hard drives from Fry's Electronics identifying Veyna, according to the warrant.

--In an instant message to the agent, he recommended shutting their site down due to a rash of recent busts.

Reached by telephone at their Chatsworth home, Veyna's parents refused to comment on the case.

The FBI also arrested Chirayu Patel, 23, of Fremont, Calif.; David Fish, 24, of Watertown, Conn.; and Nate Lovell, 22, of Boulder, Colo. The four were charged with violating federal copyright protection laws. All are alleged to be members of ``warez'' groups, a kind of underground Internet co-op that is set up to trade in copyrighted materials.

The Justice Department ``is striking at the top of the copyright piracy supply chain - a distribution chain that provides the vast majority of illegal digital content now available online,'' Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said in Washington.

Called Operation Site Down, the crackdown involved undercover FBI operations run out of Chicago, San Francisco and Charlotte, N.C., and included help from authorities in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, Portugal and the United Kingdom.

Warez groups are extraordinarily difficult to infiltrate because users talk only in encrypted chat rooms, their computer servers require passwords and many are located overseas.

The FBI set up its own servers and lured warez members to store pirated material on them, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Francisco.

The investigations targeted ``release groups,'' the original sources of pirated works that can be distributed worldwide in hours. Among the warez groups targeted are RiSCISO, Myth, TDA, LND, Goodfellaz, Hoodlum, Vengeance, Centropy, Wasted Time, Paranoid, Corrupt, Gamerz, AdmitONE, Hellbound, KGS, BBX, KHG, NOX, NFR, CDZ, TUN and BHP.

Those groups are believed responsible for stealing and distributing copyrighted works, including ``Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith,'' ``Mr. and Mrs. Smith,'' Autodesk's Autocad 2006 and Adobe's Photoshop software.

The bootlegged software often is made available to popular file-sharing networks, where it can be easily downloaded for free, said Michael DuBose, a Justice lawyer who prosecutes cybercrimes. But mass producers of pirated materials in Asia and elsewhere also use warez groups as suppliers, DuBose said.

Studies of Internet piracy have estimated losses to the movie industry alone at $3.5 billion to $5.4 billion annually.

But the Internet is only a fraction of piracy's overall reach. And it's not only the movie industry that suffers, said LAPD Assistant Chief George Gascon.

``There are large sums of money being taken away from taxation,'' said Gascon, who also noted that raids in downtown Los Angeles have recently turned up more than $30 million in counterfeit entertainment goods.

President George W. Bush signed a new law last month setting tough penalties of up to 10 years in prison for anyone caught distributing a movie or song before its commercial release.