Can, yes, but that would most likely be someone who is selling computers with unlicensed Windows installed. I’m willing to bet that the only reason Microsoft even continues to make home versions cost money is because of the deals they have with OEMs who preinstall Windows, and pay Microsoft a bit for the OS.

For example, the time I was doing field service at a small office (like seven people), because they were tired of the rando guy they were paying crazy amounts of money to. He had set them up with three or four servers he’d built himself, all of the machines in the office were unlicensed, all of the server apps (MS SQL and MS Office were the big ones I remember, but there were others) were unlicensed. He “worked remotely” “at night” and never came into their office after having put everything in place.

After the customer cut the cord with this guy, he redirected their website to somewhere else. Site was still there, but his name was on the domain registration, and he wouldn’t give it back to the customer he had registered it for.

I discovered the shady state of affairs, documented and reported to my chain of command at the MSP. They must have talked to the customer because a couple of weeks later my phone rings. It’s the customer – caller ID and I recognized the voice, and it was the late aughts, so AI fakery was not on the table. The FBI was in their office, and would I talk to them? I was asked, and answered, about all of the systems and applications that I’d found which were unlicensed.

Now, I’m not saying the FBI was involved solely because of the licensing issues. I’m sure they wanted the guy for some other thing and this was their way in the door. But yeah, that was fun. And interestingly, that’s not the only time I’ve had to talk to the FBI about “computer fuckery” tangentially related to my employment.