If a streaming service seems too good to be true, it probably is. In Jetflicks’ case, it was too good to be legal.
A federal jury in Las Vegas convicted five defendants for their roles in a complex scheme that removed popular TV shows and award-winning movies from pirate sites and bundled them into a streaming service called Jetflicks. the Justice Department said in a statement Thursday. According to the indictmentJetflicks operated as a subscription-based streamer that allowed users to watch and download copyrighted TV shows and movies without the permission of the copyright owners.
“The defendants operated Jetflicks, an illicit streaming service that they used to distribute hundreds of thousands of stolen television episodes,” said Principal Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri, head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division . in a report. According to the DOJ, the group pirated thousands of copyrighted television episodes, generating a mass of content larger than “the combined catalogs of Netflix, HuluVudu 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 operated a platform that automated the theft of television shows and distributed the stolen content to subscribers,” Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, David Sundberg, said in a statement..
They are Kristopher Dallmann, Douglas Courson, Felipe Garcia, Jared Jaurequi and Peter Huber. The indictment says the executives obtained content from pirate sites such as SickRage (also known as SickChill), Sick Beard, SABnzbd and TheTVDB and offered it to subscribers in one place. At one point, Jetflicks claimed to have more than 37,000 paying users and 183,200 episodes of television. The authorities estimated that the financial damage caused to program owners was in the millions.
As a legitimate business, Jetflicks eventually ran into problems, such as sharing subscribers and passwords, authorities alleged in the indictment. Officials also said the group attempted to disguise the site as an entertainment service for airplane pilots after facing incoming requests to remove unlicensed content.
“When complaints from copyright holders and problems with payment service providers threatened to topple this illicit multimillion-dollar enterprise, defendants attempted to disguise Jetflicks as an aviation entertainment company,” noted Sundberg.
And just like in the legitimate business world, about seven years after Jetflicks launched, one member of the group split off to start a new competing company, officials said.
Darryl Julius Polo, aka djppimp, launched iStreamItAll, which allowed users to stream and download TV shows and movies, the indictment says. iStreamItAll (ISIA) subscription plans had a monthly fee of $19.99, plus quarterly, semi-annual and annual options. Similar to Jetflicks, ISIA was not authorized to provide content, officials said. Polo, a computer programmer, pleaded guilty in 2019 one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and one count of criminal copyright infringement. P.olo was sentenced to 4.75 years in prison and ordered to pay $1 million.
Jetflicks also had its own organizational structure, authorities said. Dallman led operations while Courson and Jaurequi helped with management involving strategic decisions, recruiting and relationships with vendors and payment processors. Programming and coding was handled by Dallman, Polo and Huber, who wrote and reviewed the computer scripts for the website and mobile applications. This group also handled web design, customer interface and technical support, authorities said.
In 2016, an undercover agent broadcast an episode of the sci-fi series The OA, streamed on Netflix, according to the indictment. The agent also uploaded two episodes of a dystopian series, 12 monkeyswhich caused the episodes to be distributed without the permission of the copyright owner, authorities wrote.
Courson, Garcia, Jaurequi and Huber each face a maximum sentence of five years in prison, and Dallmann faces a maximum sentence of 48 years in prison, according to the DOJ. No sentencing date has been set.
