Meet Gary Bowser, a 51-year-old hacker from Canada. For the sake of clarity, this Bowser shares no connection with either Doug Bowser, the President of Nintendo of America, or video game Bowser, the chief villain of the Super Mario series. Unlike those Bowsers, Gary Bowser was part of a hacking group known as Team-Xecutor that produced and sold modchips. These chips gave people the opportunity to play pirated games, also known as “ROMs.” Unfortunately for the hacker, his history appears to have caught up with him.

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Recently, it was revealed that Gary Bowser pleaded guilty to piracy charges in a Seattle court. According to reports, he is subject to pay $4.5 million and could spend up to 10 years behind bars. In addition, his plea agreement dictates that he must assist the U.S. government in tracking down other assets of Team-Xecutor. If he cooperates with government officials, 9 other charges filed against him will be dropped. One of these charges included conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Gary Bowser’s criminal history against Nintendo started with allegations that he was associated with the hacking group known as Team-Xecuter. According to these allegations, Bowser participated in a project that made tools to hack Nintendo Switch consoles, which would give his customers free access to Nintendo Switch games. While Bowser initially denied these accusations against him, last week he changed his plea to guilty. In pleading guilty, he admitted that Team-Xecuttor had made “at least tens of millions of dollars of proceeds” from hacking. Furthermore, he profited from the deal individually, stating that he made up to $1,000 per month.

It shouldn’t surprise many savvy Nintendo fans to learn that the company pursued litigation against the notorious Team-Xecuter group of hackers. Over the years, the Japanese video game company has cracked down on numerous types of ROM hacks. Besides these charges against Bowser, he faces a separate civil lawsuit from Nintendo that was filed earlier in the year. According to reports, Nintendo wants $2,500 for each “trafficked device” and $150,000 for every copyright violation.

In other Nintendo-related news, the company recently announced the closure of several of its offices in North America. These locations included Redwood City and Toronto. According to the company, this was done to make operations more centrally located at the Nintendo of America headquarters in Redmond, Washington, and Vancouver, British Columbia. Unfortunately, the report suggests that the closure of these Nintendo offices displaced roughly 100 employees.

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Source: IGN, Polygon