If a streaming service sounds too good to be true, it probably is. In the case of Jetflicks, it was too good to be considered legal.
A federal jury in Las Vegas has indicted five male defendants for their roles in a complex scheme to scrape popular TV shows and award-winning movies from pirate websites and aggregate them on a streaming service called Jetflicks. The Ministry of Justice said in a statement on Thursday. According to the indictmentJetflicks operates as a subscription-based streaming device that allows users to watch and download copyrighted TV shows and movies without permission from the copyright holders.
“The defendants operated Jetflicks, an illicit streaming service that they used to distribute hundreds of thousands of stolen TV episodes,” said Nicole Argentieri, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General and Head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. In the current situation. According to the Department of Justice, the group copied thousands of copyrighted television episodes, generating a mass of content larger than “the combined catalogs of Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, and Amazon Prime.”
For a monthly subscription fee of $10, users can watch shows on multiple devices and platforms within days of new episodes appearing on legitimate services and channels, authorities said.
“The defendants operate a platform that automatically steals TV programs and distributes stolen content to subscribers.” Assistant Director in Charge David Sandberg of the FBI's Washington Field Office said in a statement.
The five are Christopher Dallman, Douglas Corson, Felipe Garcia, Jared Gorecki, and Peter Hooper. The indictment states that the cadre obtained content from pirate websites such as SickRage, (also known as SickChill), Sick Beard, SABnzbd, and TheTVDB and displayed it in one place to subscribers. At one point, Jetflicks claimed to have over 37,000 paid users and 183,200 TV episodes. The authorities estimated the financial damage to the software owners in the millions.
Like a legitimate business, Jetflicks eventually ran into problems, such as subscribers sharing logins and passwords, authorities alleged in the indictment. Officials also said the group tried to disguise the site as an entertainment service for airline travelers after it faced incoming requests to remove unauthorized content.
“When complaints from copyright holders and problems with payment providers threatened to take down the multi-million dollar illicit enterprise, the defendants attempted to disguise Jetflicks as an in-flight entertainment company,” Sandberg noted.
As is typical in the world of legitimate businesses, about seven years after starting Jetflicks, one of the group members broke off to launch a new competing venture, Officials said.
Darrell Julius Polo, also known as djppimp, launched the iStreamItAll app, which allowed users to stream and download TV shows and movies, the indictment said. iStreamItAll (ISIA) subscription plans have a subscription fee of $19.99, plus quarterly, semi-annual, and annual options. Similar to Jetflicks, ISIA did not have permission to provide the content, officials said. Polo, a computer programmer, pleaded guilty in 2019 to one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and one count of criminal copyright infringement. sOlu was sentenced to 4.75 years in prison He was ordered to pay $1 million.
The authorities claimed that Jetflicks also had its own organizational structure. Dallman managed operations while Corson and Jawrecki assisted with administration that included strategic decisions, hiring and dealing with vendors and payment processors. Programming and coding were handled by Dallman, Polo, and Huber, who wrote and reviewed computer scripts for the website and mobile applications. This group also handled web design, customer interface and technical assistance, authorities said.
In 2016, a secret agent aired an episode of the sci-fi show Organic Agriculture, which aired on Netflix, according to the indictment. The customer also downloaded two episodes of the Dystopia series, 12 monkeyAuthorities wrote that he caused the episodes to be distributed without permission from the copyright holder.
Corson, Garcia, Jawrecki and Huber each face a maximum sentence of five years in prison, and Dallman faces a maximum sentence of 48 years in prison, according to the Department of Justice. A sentencing date has not been set.