Eight Charged with Running Illegal TV Show and Movie Streaming Services
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Eight people have been charged with conspiring to violate federal criminal copyright law which resulted in the loss of millions of dollars by television program and film copyright owners.
Kristopher Lee Dallmann, Darryl Julius Polo, Douglas M. Courson, Felipe Garcia, Jared Edward Jaurequi, Peter H. Huber, Yoany Vaillant, and Luis Angel Villarino were indicted by a federal grand jury for running Jetflicks, an online subscription based streaming service based in Las Vegas. By using computer code to search and download programs from global pirate sites such as the Pirate Bay and Torrentz, Jetflicks permitted users to illegally stream and often download copyrighted TV shows.
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One of the defendants, Darryl Polo was supposedly a member of the Jetflicks computer programming team before he eventually left and created an equally illegal competing service, iStreamItAll. Both sites were available online and on numerous systems including smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, video game consoles, and digital media players allegedly reproducing tens of thousands of copyrighted television programs without authorization — more than Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video. Jetflicks offered over 183,200 different TV shows while its competition had over 120,000 different titles.
Dallman and Polo were both additionally charged with two counts of criminal copyright by public performance, four counts of money laundering along with two counts of criminal copyright infringement by reproduction or distribution.
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