Four executives at German memory vendor Infineon Technologies AG and its U.S. subsidiary have pled guilty to charges of illegally setting prices for PC memory chips, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Thursday. The sales executives admitted to a scheme to artificially set prices for DRAM (dynamic RAM) with other co-conspirators, who were not named in a Justice Department press release Thursday. Their sentences include jail time and hefty fines, the Justice Department said.
Two of the executives worked at Infineon"s headquarters in Munich. Heinrich Florian, Infineon"s vice president for sales, marketing, and logistics and vice president for marketing and logistics during 2001 and 2002, will serve a six-month prison sentence and pay a $250,000 fine. Gunter Hefner, vice president of sales for memory products, will spend five months in prison and pay a $250,000 fine for his role in the scheme during that period.