Jetflicks, which paid $9.99 per month for its streaming service, produced millions of dollars in subscription revenue while causing “substantial harm to television program copyright owners,” the Justice Department stated on Thursday.
According to prosecutors, Jetflicks formerly claimed to host more than 183,200 TV episodes, which was larger than the combined catalogs of Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, and Amazon Prime Video.
According to court documents and evidence produced at trial, the Jetflicks streaming service was managed by five men beginning in 2007. They were Kristopher Dallmann, Douglas Courson, Felipe Garcia, Jared Jaurequi, and Peter Huber. According to federal authorities, the group utilized “sophisticated computer scripts” and software to search for unlawful versions of TV programs on piracy networks like as the Pirate Bay and Torrentz, which they then downloaded and uploaded on Jetflicks’ servers. The guys were accused in 2019 with conspiring to break federal criminal copyright laws.
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The jury found the five men guilty of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement. In addition, the jury found Dallmann guilty of two charges of money laundering by concealment and three counts of misdemeanor criminal copyright infringement. According to the Justice Department, Dallmann faces a maximum sentence of 48 years in jail, while Courson, Garcia, Jaurequi, and Huber each face up to five years in prison. The sentencing date has not yet been scheduled.
According to federal authorities, when objections from copyright owners and problems with payment service providers threatened to bring down the illicit operation, the defendants “tried to disguise Jetflicks as an aviation entertainment company.”
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“The defendants operated Jetflicks, an illicit streaming service they used to distribute hundreds of thousands of stolen television episodes,” principal deputy assistant attorney general Nicole Argentieri, chief of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said in a statement on June 20. “Their plan made millions of dollars in criminal profits while caused copyright holders to lose money. These verdicts demonstrate the Criminal Division’s dedication to safeguarding intellectual property rights by prosecuting digital piracy schemes and bringing perpetrators to justice.”
According to federal authorities, Darryl Julius Polo (aka “djppimp”), a member of the original Jetflicks gang, left to launch iStreamItAll, a competitor site with membership options starting at $19.99 per month. iStreamItAll, like Jetflicks, did not have authority to distribute TV and movie content on the platform, according to regulators. The Justice Department reports that Polo pleaded guilty to criminal copyright and money laundering offenses in 2019. In 2020, he was sentenced to 57 months in jail and had to give over $1 million in “criminal proceeds.”
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