The US Department of Justice has indicted four operators of Android warez sites.

The four are charged with criminal copyright infringement operating the sites Snappzmarket and Appbucket which were seized by the government in August 2012 by the FBI.

The accused are charged with distributing over a million copies of cracked copy protected apps and included pre-cracked warez.

An example of the problem is an Android developer who created the multiplayer dueling game Gentlemen! that was widely pirated in Russia and China. Although it had 50,000 Android downloads, only a fraction, 114, were paying customers.

The iOS market, which is better protected, saw 1,114 paying downloads. More info on the extent of the infringement can be found here.