Eight individuals behind two of the largest illegal streaming services in the U.S. have been indicted on charges of conspiring to violate federal criminal copyright law, the Department of Justice announced Tuesday.
Las Vegas-based Jetflicks allegedly offered tens of thousands of paid subscribers throughout the U.S. the ability to stream or download copyrighted TV series — at one time boasting it had more than 180,000 episodes. An ex-Jetflix employee, Darryl Julius Polo, left the company to launch a competitor called iStreamItAll that claimed to have more content than Netflix, Hulu, Vudu and Amazon Prime, according to the DOJ announcement. The individuals charged are Polo, Kristopher Lee Dallmann, Douglas M. Courson, Felipe Garcia, Jared Edward Jaurequi, Peter H. Huber, Yoany Vaillant and Luis Angel Villarino.
Dallmann and Polo are also facing additional charges, which include criminal copyright infringement by reproduction or distribution, criminal copyright by public performance and money laundering.
The two services were designed to work across multiple devices and platforms, including smartphones, video game consoles and digital media players. Jetflix got its content from pirate websites like The Pirate Bay and Torrentz, according to the DOJ, and used automated computer code to search for new illegal content that it then made available to its customers. ISIA used similar tactics and offered films that were not yet available legally outside of a movie theater.
