Illegal streaming service Jetflicks once boasted on its site that visitors could watch almost any TV show or movie “Anytime”. Anywhere.” Now the five people behind the bootleg streaming service are facing serious prison terms.
A jury convicted Christopher Dallman, Douglas Courson, Felipe Garcia, Jared Jaurequi and Peter Huber on Friday in federal court in Las Vegas of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement. Dallmann was also found guilty of two counts of money laundering and three counts of criminal copyright infringement for leading the Jetflicks operation. .
Jetflicks used computer scripts and software to scour the Internet for illegal copies of movies and TV shows, and as recently as 2007, hosted hundreds of thousands of illegal copies from torrent and Usenet sites. According to the Justice Department, the defendants created a catalog of fake shows and movies larger than the combined collection of streaming services including Netflix, Hulu, Vudu and Amazon Prime.
Users can pay a subscription fee to access the site on almost any media streaming device with a web browser. Jetflicks claims that it “offers over 183,200 TV series and has over 37,000 subscribers”. Filed in 2019 in the Eastern District of Virginia.
The group’s leader, Dallmann, and his co-conspirators “made millions of dollars from publishing and distributing this catalog of stolen content,” according to the press release.
At one point, Jetflicks operators and employees were making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from its subscription service. According to the indictment, Dallman wrote in his online chat that his site earned $750,000 in one year.
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) took notice of Jetflicks in 2012 and sent cease and desist letters to the site’s operators. Four years later, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began operating the site undercover by paying a six-month subscription fee. They have recorded cases of illegal downloading of shows like secret agents Shameless, Ray Donovan, OA and SyFy 12 monkeys along with fees to access them. Agents then wired those charges back into the defendants’ bank accounts, according to court records.
A sentencing hearing has not yet been scheduled. Dallman faces up to 48 years in prison and the other four defendants face five years, the Justice Department says.
