Sophisticated scam operations selling the illegal devices were found operating on social media, with thousands of ads.
Millions of people in the UK using modified Amazon Fire Sticks to illegally stream TV programming have been warned they could be prosecuted for taking part in funding international piracy gangs.
The caution comes from Kieron Sharp, a former detective with the City of London Police, who is now chairing Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) and its fight against the fraud, which costs an estimated £21 billion a year.
An increasing number of Brits are believed to be using the illegal devices, but also risk identity theft, criminals stealing their bank details, and malware viruses infecting their personal devices. It is estimated that 6.2 million people illegally stream TV, and 3.2 million access pirated live sport.
Our sister title The Mirror carried out an investigation into the fraudulent business of selling the modified Fire Sticks.
Tens of thousands of adverts are posted publicly on Facebook, offering thousands of TV channels for just a few pounds a month. In one case, a single UK mobile number was used in 800 ads on the platform offering “packages” for as little as £6.
Customers are told to contact the criminal sellers on WhatsApp. The entire process suggests a sophisticated scam operation that expects its ads to be removed and linked accounts blocked.
One seller offered “All Sky channels, all sports channels, all football events, Netflix, HBO, Disney +, Amazon Prime and Apple” for as little as £2.50 a month, with subscriptions starting at £35 for six months, or £150 for five years. In comparison, anyone wanting to follow all the Premier League matches legally would have to shell out nearly £50 a month for the cheapest offers.
The seller, who claimed to be from a company called IPTV, “Don’t worry, we are providing services all over the UK”, in an attempt to claim their service was legal. IPTV is a generic term for Internet Protocol Television.
They added: “It’s [an] online service to provide channels on fire stick, smart TVs, android TVs, mobile phone as well. We can provide subscriptions to other countries like Australia, USA and Canada.”
However, there is no guarantee those behind the fraud will be around long enough to close the deal. In January, a man streaming illegally to thousands from his Birmingham home was jailed for two years. Meanwhile, criminals are mining thousands of people’s personal data, including card details, and can infect their devices with malware.
Kieron Sharp said that those who use the illegal streaming services are also breaking the law and risk prosecution. FACT is assisting in exposing gangs like those on Facebook, with 36 people since jailed for an average of almost three years each.
Kieron, who is also a former head of the economic crime team at Interpol, said: “This has been a problem forever, since the days of pirated video cassettes and DVDs. But the rise of streaming has made things easier for the criminal in the same way as it has made things easier for the legal consumer. Is it any more of a problem than it was years ago? That’s very difficult to say. There’s no complete picture of the landscape.”
He added: “If we take out a gang and they have a customer database, we would normally write to the consumers on that customer list telling them ‘What you are doing is breaking the law and you will have to stop’. We would like to think that they would start paying for that content.
“But it is entirely possible that consumers could get swept up in our investigations. It would be a discussion for everybody involved in the business to see if that is an area that we would want to go down. It could happen, it really could. I would never say to any of the consumers through the messaging that we do that they are not going to get prosecuted because that just isn’t correct.”
Sunny Kumar Kanda from Halifax was jailed for two years for supplying modified Fire Sticks via a Facebook group consisting of over 4,000 members.
Fellow seller Jonathan Edge from Liverpool was sentenced to more than three years, with a further sentence of two years and three months for viewing the content he distributed to be served immediately after.
However, the more immediate risk comes from the potential malicious software from illegal streaming.
Kieron said: “There is a risk from using these devices, it is not just us saying this. People should be warned about this. There’s a real risk of having your identity stolen or similar. If you give over your credit card details, you are giving them to criminals.
“They could get access to the camera on your TV, if it has one, or microphone. There is no safety or security with what you are getting with these modified devices. Some people set them up just to get your personal details.” A recent report by Enders Analysis accused Amazon’s £25 Fire Stick of allowing “plug-and-play piracy”, with three in five who used a physical device for piracy in the last 12 months choosing the Fire Stick, according to Sky.
Amazon said it had made changes to Fire TV to make streaming illegal content more difficult. An Amazon spokesperson said: “Pirated content violates our policies regarding intellectual property rights, and compromises the security and privacy of our customers.
“We remain vigilant in our efforts to combat piracy and protect customers from the risks associated with pirated content, which includes prohibiting apps that infringe upon the rights of third parties in our Appstore, and warning customers of the risks associated with installing or using apps from unknown sources.”
