SOURCE ...They shouldn't have come after him if all he was doing was modding consoles. Unless he was specifically selling the games along with it, modding consoles is perfectly fine. The article never stated if he sold these games or not.
I had a modded PS1 back in the day. I played Spyro and Crash Bandicoot like a motherfucker. It seemed so innocent.
One of my friends had a chipped Xbox1, and he had heaps of movies and games on it. I was thinking about it, but then decided against it, as pirated **** usually screws up a lot. He had no problems with his, but I've been burned before when it came to a copied movie. The quality was ****, could barely hear it, and it kept cutting out on me. I didn't pay for it, so it didn't worry me that much, but I haven't had a pirated anything in my possession since then.
Honestly, if you're going to pirate games (Which I don't condone, but there will always be people who do it), don't freaking sell them for christs sake. And it's obvious he did sell them. He wouldn't have been charged for just modding systems, that's perfectly legal because he bought the hardware. However, I'm not sure if it's legal to re sell modded hardware or not.
The next day, the officer brought a new game system to Heilman, who modified it to allow it to play illegally downloaded games. He also told the officer how to burn other illegally copied games. That's enough to fine someone your not even meant to burn DVDs. Who knows if in the fine print there is stuff that says your not allowed to mod consoles at the very least there would be something that says your not allowed to mod consoles to allow illegally downloadable or burnt games. $203,000 of illegal substances even if his not selling it("he offered to sell or modify video game systems") is pretty bad according to the law.