A Las Vegas jury convicted five men this week for running a streaming service hosting thousands of pirated TV shows and charging money to subscribe to it.
Kristopher Dallmann, Douglas Courson, Felipe Garcia, Jared Jaurequi and Peter Huber ran a site called “Jetflicks” from as early as 2007. The group used both software and computer scripts to scour websites hosting pirated content and download thousands of television episodes, the Department of Justice said Thursday.
At one point, Jetflicks claimed to have more than 183,200 episodes on offer, larger than the combined legal catalogs of Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Hulu and Vudu, according to Variety.
The conspirators made millions of dollars charging to subscribe to their service. The monthly fee was $9.99, according to Variety.
Copyright holders and payment processors caught on, and the group attempted to play off Jetflicks as focusing solely on plane-related content.
“When complaints from copyright holders and problems with payment service providers threatened to topple the illicit multimillion-dollar enterprise, the defendants tried to disguise Jetflicks as an aviation entertainment company. Digital piracy is not a victimless crime,” said David Sundberg, assistant director in charge of the FBI Washington Field Office, said in the DOJ release.
All five men were convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, and Dallmann was also convicted of two counts of money laundering by concealment and three counts of misdemeanor criminal copyright infringement.
Dallmann faces up to 48 years in prison, while Jaurequi, Garcia, Huber and Courson each face a maximum of five years in prison, the Justice Department said.
• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.
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