FBI Shutdown Two Illegal Streaming Sites Bigger Than Netflix, Amazon & Hulu

Two Los Angeles based programmers, Luis Villarino and Darryl Polo have been running alternative streaming sites named Jetflicks and iStreamItAll. These offer more movies and TV Shows than Amazon Prime and Netflix. The FBI investigators have raided the illegal streaming sites and shut them down.

Both plead guilty

Darryl and his co-defendant, Luis have pleaded guilty for running the illegal video streaming sites. iStreamItAll offered more content when compared to Amazon Prime, Vudu, Hulu, and Netflix. The two US-based programmers, were smart to convince the customers in the US to forego the genuine streaming sites such as Netflix and instead choose its video streaming sites.

The US Justice Department commends FBI

The US Justice Department has commended the efforts of the FBI to nab the culprits. iStreamItAll and Jetflicks offer pirated content on various devices that include smart televisions, tablets, smartphones, digital media players, gaming consoles, a KODI addon and other computer systems besides offering to the subscribers over the Internet. The two programmers have urged the people to pay for their streaming services and get more. Prices for these services ranged anywhere from $19.99 per month to $179.99 per year and displayed content in an easy to use interface for members to stream.

The two computer programmers are now charged with copyright infringement. In total they offered 11,000 movies and 118,000 TV episodes through iStreamItAll. Which as mentioned before is bigger than Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Netflix. Jetflicks and iStreamItAll had several hundred paid subscribers.

iStreamItAll earned over $1 million

Polo was engaged in downloading movies and TV Shows from torrent sites and Usenet NZB sites hosting pirated content. He then processed them and streamed illegally on iStreamItAll. Polo targeted potential customers through emails to subscribe to his services. Besides working as a programmer at Jetflicks, he also runs other piracy services that include SmackDownOnYou. His earnings from piracy are estimated at over $1 million.

iStreamItAll and Jetflicks have caused massive loss of several million dollars to the movie and TV copyright holders. Apart from copyright infringement, Polo is also charged with criminal distribution of copyrighted work. Luis also works as a programmer for Jetflicks,. There he uses automated software to reproduce and stream several copyrighted movies and TV shows to paid subscribers. He is also charged with copyright infringement.

In 2015, Reed Hastings, Chief Executive Officer of Netflix, said piracy is its biggest competitor. Piracy is a major concern for streaming companies.

What are your thoughts on the recent shutdown of these two streaming sites? Let us know in the comment section below!