A BRIT who enjoyed a lavish lifestyle running three illegal streaming sites for cheap access to Sky Sports has been jailed for more than three years.
Stephen Woodward, 36, splashed out on designer clothes and jewellery, expensive holidays and a Jaguar F-Type V8 coupe worth £91,000 from his ill-gotten gains.
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Messages found on his phone bragged of making £100,000 a month from the operation.
Stephen ran three websites with access to Sky Sports and 4,500 other premium channels for a small fee.
This included IPTV Hosting, Helix Hosting and Black and White TV, which have all since been closed down.
Police believe he pocketed £1million overall.
Read more on illegal streaming
“Stephen was brazen in running his illegal steaming websites,” said Detective Constable Daryl Fryatt, from City of London Police.
“Despite being the subject of a criminal investigation, he had clearly not learned his lesson and yet again attempted to gain financially from his illegal activity.
“His sentencing and upcoming confiscation proceedings should send a message that there are significant consequences for criminals who enable illegal access to copyrighted content.”
City of London Police’s Intellectual Property Crime Unit secured an all-assets restraint order against a total of £1.1 million held in 15 bank accounts and 21 cryptocurrency wallets owned by Stephen.
A further £144,121 worth of cash, which was seized from Stephen during their investigation, was also frozen.
These funds, in addition to jewellery seized by officers from Stephen’s address, will now be subject to confiscation proceedings.
The 36-year-old, from Thirsk, North Yorkshire, pleaded guilty at York Crown Court on February 21 to distributing articles infringing copyright and four money laundering offences.
He will serve three years and one month behind bars.
His brother Christopher Woodward, 34, who pocketed £126,000 from the operation, pleaded guilty to money laundering.
He was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment, suspended for 12 months, and must also complete 240 hours of unpaid work.
Officers first arrested Stephen back in November 2019 and searched his home address, where they seized almost £5,000, a computer, a hard drive, nine phones and around 100 SIM cards to help him open different PayPal accounts using false identities he bought online.
Analysis of his phone found evidence of communications with various companies to assist with the running of IPTV Hosting, in which he said he was making £100,000 a month.
Despite being released under investigation, Stephen launched two further illegal streaming websites, Black and White TV and Helix Hosting.
He was arrested and had his home searched a second time in July 2020, telling officers on the scene “the cash is in the same place as last time”.
But that wasn’t to be the only time Stephen landed himself in trouble with the police.
In November 2020, he was arrested again by British Transport Police at Kings Cross station on suspicion of money laundering, after a staff
member at Thirsk station saw him place a carrier bag behind a grit bin before boarding a train to London.
The staff member checked the contents of the bag and was shocked to find £20,000.
Kieron Sharp, Chairman of anti piracy organisation FACT, said: “This investigation and the outcome underline that illegal streaming is not a victimless crime.
“It harms the creative economy and funds criminality.
“FACT commends the work of PIPCU in bringing this long-running case to justice.”
Warning over ‘jailbroken’ Fire Sticks
Illegal streaming can be delivered by a number of devices by one of the most common are ‘jailbroken’ Fire Sticks, which means a third-party media server software has been installed on to it.
The software most commonly used is called Kodi.
It can grant users unrestricted access to new features and apps the normal version of the device wouldn’t allow – but it is not legal to use in the UK.
But it becomes illegal when a box is used to stream subscription channels for free.
It is also illegal to buy or sell these modified devices which have become known as “fully-loaded” – a term that describes how the software has been altered to allow access to subscription-only channels.
“These devices are legal when used to watch legitimate, free to air, content,” the government said at the time.
“They become illegal once they are adapted to stream illicit content, for example TV programmes, films and subscription sports channels without paying the appropriate subscriptions.”
