US government demands 5 years in prison for Switch mod chip maker

The US government wants Gary Bowser, a member of the Switch modchipmaker group Team Xecuter, to be jailed for five years. The United States motivates this by stating that the man must be made an example, in order to deter others.

The government believes Bowser deserves the punishment for his important role within Team Xecuter. He is said to have been a ‘senior manager’ within the organization and contributed ‘discipline and process refinement’ to this ‘multinational company’. In addition, the government wants to punish him severely because of his further past as a criminal; they consider the risk of recidivism to be high. That writes Ars Technica, among others, who has gone through the court documents.

Bowser’s defense disagrees. They argue that the Canadian was no more than a “paid employee” of colleagues Max Louarn and Yuanning Chen. Bowser is said to have ‘taken the most risk’ by taking on the marketing, but also ‘made the least profit’. The defense estimates Bowser made $320,000 in seven years, while Louarn and Chen must have made “millions, if not tens of millions of dollars.” Therefore, he would be the least liable of the three defendants.

Furthermore, Bowser is also the only one of the three who is in US custody. Louarn is in prison in France and there is said to be a trial to extradite him to the US. Chen is in China and at large. Bowser’s defense expects his sentence to be unreasonably high, as the full burden of guilt will fall on his shoulders.

Gary Bowser was arrested in October of 2020. The Canadian has since confessed and has offered $4.5 million in damages, as well as help in tracking down Chen. He has also reached a settlement for $10 million in a civil lawsuit with Nintendo. The group had been active since 2013 and sold the SX modchip, which allowed homebrew software to run on the Switch, but also illegal copies of games to work. Bowser has admitted that the latter was in fact the chip’s primary purpose, even though it was initially denied.