Since
Fred mentioned it, I figured we may as well revisit this.
A look around shows that, most definitely, SecuROM has not worked and there are numerous cracked versions of Mass Effect floating around. However, near as I can tell, nobody's bothered to create a version that is completely free of SecuROM -- I guess people who install cracks generally aren't the most concerned for the security of their systems.
I assume it's possible to install a cracked version and then remove SecuROM, but that doesn't sound like a fun experiment to try.
A look at the worldwide releases yields interesting results. Apparently the Polish version, by CD Projekt, comes in English and uses
SafeDisc, which appears to have many of the same problems as SecuROM (hoses Daemon Tools, runs as root-level system process, bastard to remove). I've heard conflicting reports about the Russian version; some people are claiming it doesn't have any DRM at all, while others are saying it uses StarForce, which of course is much worse than SecuROM. I'm more inclined to believe the latter, though if they really DID release a DRM-free version of the game in a major piracy center like Russia then that's just one more slap in the face to legit users.