A federal grand jury has indicted eight people on charges of conspiring to violate copyright law by running a couple of the largest unauthorized TV show and movie streaming sites, according to the Department of Justice.
The indictments followed an FBI investigation. The case will be prosecuted by Senior Counsel Matthew A. Lamberti of the FBI Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander P. Berrang of the Eastern District of Virginia.
According to the Justice Department, those sites have been streaming more content than Netflix or Hulu or Vudu or Amazon Prime, costing those legitimate streamers subscriber revenue and content producers millions.
Indicted were Kristopher Lee Dallmann, 36; Darryl Julius Polo, aka djppimp, 36; Douglas M. Courson, 59; Felipe Garcia, 37; Jared Edward Jaurequi, aka Jared Edwards, 38; Peter H. Huber, 61; Yoany Vaillant, aka Yoany Vaillant Fajardo, 38; and Luis Angel Villarino, 40.
They were charged with running Jetflicks, a subscription-based service out of Las Vegas, and iStream. iStream, claimed over 100,000 TV show episodes. The sites delivered illegal copies of programming to tens of thousands of paying customers, according to the indictment.
And they spread their allegedly ill-gotten content over a host of outlets. "The two services were not only available to subscribers over the internet but specifically designed to work on many different types of devices, platforms and software including numerous varieties of computer operating systems, smartphones, tablets, smart televisions, video game consoles, digital media players, set-top boxes and web browsers," DOJ said.
The charges against one defendant included "two counts of criminal copyright infringement by reproduction or distribution, two counts of criminal copyright by public performance and four counts of money laundering," and another with "with two counts of criminal copyright infringement by distributing a copyrighted work being prepared for commercial distribution, two counts of criminal copyright infringement by reproduction or distribution, two counts of criminal copyright infringement by public performance and four counts of money laundering."
