Columbia woman arrested for selling copyrighted movies

In January 2014, the Motion Pictures Association of America received a complaint that a mid-Missouri resident was selling copyrighted movies online.

The Boone County Cyber Crimes Task Force investigated and eventually arrested 46-year-old Cathy Ann Serino of Columbia for counterfeiting copyright movies.

Detectives made an undercover purchase of two movies from Serino’s website, and after receiving payment Serino allegedly sent the movies through the mail from a Boone County address.

After confirming the movies were copyright protected in March 2014, the Boone County Sheriff’s Department and Cyber Crimes Task Force began an investigation which yielded several computers and thousands of copyright protected DVDs.

Detective Andy Anderson with the Boone County Cyber Crimes Task Force said authorities there are pushing for a class C felony charge because of the sheer amount of materials they found.

And he said anyone could be arrested for downloading movies or songs illegally, even without selling them.

“Be careful of what your kids or other family members are doing, because even though it’s really convenient to go out on the internet and find movies for free, we can’t do that,” Anderson said.

Investigators believe Serino was downloading the movies through internet file sharing programs.