When you're doing seven-figure crime, a three-figure piece of software is not even a footnote worth worrying about, and bear in mind, successful software piracy requires some manner of technical proficiency, which obviously, he does not have.
(In a general sense, criminals should probably stay legit where possible, if you're stealing millions of dollars of art from a museum, you wouldn't want to get pinched because you got caught stealing a candy bar from the convenience store a block over.)
Software piracy doesn't require a lot of skill anymore.
If I were, hypothetically, someone who used pirated software in the past and checked the state of the business recently, I would know that recent releases are basically a "Run this .exe File" and it would install all necessary dependencies, the software in question and patch the cracks in.
Common misconception is also malware, you usually only get that when you google "<insert software name here> crack" and click on the first link without thinking. There are plenty of reputable sources on the internet which distribute malware free cracks and will punish offenders of this rule (of course, I wouldn't know anything about such sites).
PS: If the above hypothetical situation were true, I'd be paying for my software now, it would have been mostly due to lack of monetary sources.
Well I mean he had a loss of $600,000. You are right that he probably wouldn’t have been able to figure out how to apply a crack though, let alone find a pirated version in the first place.
(In a general sense, criminals should probably stay legit where possible, if you're stealing millions of dollars of art from a museum, you wouldn't want to get pinched because you got caught stealing a candy bar from the convenience store a block over.)