Alfred Censullo, a regional sales manager for Micron, was charged in a San Francisco federal court with altering and concealing documents about competitor pricing information for dynamic random access memory products, or DRAMs.

Boise, Idaho-based Micron is the largest DRAM manufacturer in North America and the second largest worldwide. DRAM components provide high-speed storage and retrieval of electronic information in personal computers and servers.

The products generate more than 15 billion dollars in annual sales, but prices fluctuate greatly due to changes in supply and demand.

South Korea's Samsung Electronics is the world's largest DRAM manufacturer, followed by Micron, then Germany's Infineon Technologies, trailed closely by South Korea's Hynix. Those four companies comprise three-quarters of the total DRAM market, according to industry analysts.

In June 2002, Micron was served a federal grand-jury subpoena seeking documents related to contacts and communications between DRAM competitors regarding prices and sales.

After learning of the investigation, the Justice Department said, Censullo altered his handwritten notes taken from telephone conversations he had with Micron sales managers in which they discussed the prices at which the company would sell its DRAM products and the prices that competitors would charge.

In addition, according to the Justice Department, Censullo removed -- and initially concealed from federal prosecutors -- 14 pages of competitors' pricing information that he kept in his notebooks.

"The alterations by Censullo were an attempt to disguise the nature, source and accuracy of information responsive to the grand-jury subpoena concerning contacts and communications between DRAM suppliers relating to the pricing and sale of DRAM," the Justice Department said.

"This evidence was central to the criminal antitrust investigation." Censullo handled Micron's sales to customers in upstate New York, including the server division of IBM. He faces up to 10 years in prison and a 250,000 dollar fine.

At the time the investigation began in early 2002, Samsung and Infineon both publicly acknowledged being subpoenaed.

Even though Micron is the only DRAM manufacturer based in the United States, other major DRAM makers have subsidiaries in America. Details surrounding what instigated the investigation were not disclosed, but DRAM chip prices spiked higher in a period of months without a corresponding decrease in demand.

SPACE.WIRE