Broken American Higher Education System Encourages Illegal Activities

Jeremiah Mondello was a damn good software salesman. While he was still in college, he started a backyard eBay business that earned  him some $300,000 in three years, mostly shipping Intuit's Quicken financial software at the rock-bottom price of about $30 a pop.

His secret? He pirated the software, burned it onto counterfeit discs and laundered his profits through a series of PayPal accounts established under stolen identities. This week a federal judge sentenced the 23-year-old to four years in prison for identity theft, copyright violation and mail fraud, in a prosecution hailed by the Justice Department as a warning shot to software counterfeiters.

"I just sold a few to pay for gas and lunch. I was on financial aid. I didn't want to take out any more student loans," he said. "That was the starting motivation. Later, I guess I kind of decided I thought it would be a good idea to save some money and start my own business and do some travel."

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