What is the legal liability for purchasing cracked software?  Examples
of this can be found by googling for "cracked software warez".  In
specific I am referring to expensive CAD / CAM software.

Certainly this is against the law, and is stealing.  Recently a group
'drink or die' was successfully prosecuted for selling cracked
software.  But they were selling it... What about the buyers?  What is
their liability?  How risky is it to purchase illegal software?

Thank you for your time,
Steve

One risk might be that if you use design software which you know to be
'cracked', it may also be flawed, which could expose you to eg a
product liability or professional indemnity claim, if a product is
subsequently shown to be faulty you do not have the defence that it
was designed using industry standard software.

Owain