Pirate IPTVs do not stop suffering blows week after week. These services offer a wide variety of channels and content on demand for a price that is far from what the same would cost through a legal channel. A year ago HeHeStream disappeared, one of the best pirate IPTV focused on broadcasting sporting events. Despite this, the person responsible for this service has recently faced justice in the United States, something that has cost him $500,000. We tell you more about it.
As we will see just below, the owner of this service was forced some time ago to close the pirate IPTV services that it was offering, but its “special” way of getting the signal can now be very expensive.
A crime he commits makes him lose $500,000
The owner of this HeHeStream service accepted an offer to settle his case under pressure from the Alliance for Creativity (or ACE). This settlement meant that the person in charge, named Joshua Streit, was forced to hand over his domain names and shut down his site. This agreement that he reached with ACE did not mention any type of financial compensation, but hopefully it included it. This should have ended legal problems for Streit, but nothing could be further from the truth.
These problems are due to the way the HeHeStream platform operated. Most pirate IPTVs provide access to pirate broadcasts by capturing from their own televisions. This method requires a lot of bandwidth, is expensive and often prone to problems. However, HeHeStream eliminated these costs by offering connections that went directly to the servers of the sports broadcasters themselves.
On October 21 of last year, the Department of Justice announced that Streit had been charged with several crimes, including one under a new law designed to reduce this type of illegal emissions. These charges include one count of wire fraud and one count of sending interstate threats with the intent to extort money. In addition, a final charge of illicit digital transmission was added. This led Streit to negotiate with the government to reach an agreement that would be beneficial to both parties.
Finally, on June 13, Streit himself only pleaded guilty to a single charge of “Computer fraud: unauthorized access to obtain information from a protected computer”. With this access, he obtained information from protected computers for commercial advantage and private financial gain. Streit gained unauthorized access to user accounts on a Major League Baseball website and used that access to conduct illegal broadcasts of sporting events.
This plea agreement reached by Streit with the Government also includes the seizure of “any and all property, real or personal, constituting or derived from any product that said person obtained, directly or indirectly, as a result of the crime. In addition, it also includes the seizure of “any and all personal property that was used or intended to be used to commit or facilitate the commission of the crime.” All of this implies that Streit will lose around $500,000.
Whether or not Streit will face a prison term remains to be seen. The crime that has been admitted for this carries a sentence of 5 years in prison in the United States, although it could potentially serve up to 10 years.
