Court Holds New York IPTV Box Seller Liable, Millions of Damages at Stake

An electronics store in Queens that sold pirate IPTV boxes for years, despite receiving six cease-and-desist letters from DISH, has been found liable by a New York federal court. The reseller blamed his supplier in court, but that defense did not convince the judge. As a result, the small brick-and-mortar store was ordered to destroy all remaining pirate boxes, while facing millions in potential damages.

In December 2023, DISH Network filed a copyright infringement lawsuit in New York targeting the pirate IPTV service Glo TV, along with an alleged reseller known as Massive Wireless.

This reseller is a brick-and-mortar electronics store operated by Khaled Akhtar in Jackson Heights, Queens. According to DISH, this store was used to sell “Glo TV”/”Rays IPTV” pirate IPTV services.

This accusation was backed up with hard evidence, as DISH used a private investigator to buy a pirate IPTV box in the store. The owner of the small store purchased these boxes in bulk from co-defendant Mumtazur Rehman Daud, who is the CEO of the California-based Rays IPTV LLC.

Massive Wireless Store (Google Maps)
 

In the grander scheme, Massive Wireless is a small player. The store is just one of many resellers in the broader pirate IPTV ecosystem. Where wholesalers can earn millions of dollars and the top players even more, the store’s owner said that he only made $5,000 in gross proceeds from selling the boxes.

These relatively modest proceeds pale in comparison to the $25 million in statutory damages that’s at stake in this case.

Summary Judgment & Destroyed Boxes

While the story may just be a smaller player, DISH was determined to send a message. Last year the company moved for summary judgment against Massive Wireless and its owner Khaled Akhtar, asking the court to find them liable for willful contributory and vicarious copyright infringement.

This request was granted this week. In an order handed down on June 9, 2026, U.S. District Judge Orelia Merchant granted DISH partial summary judgment.

In her order, U.S. District Court Judge Orelia Merchant noted that, by selling the pirate IPTV boxes, the store and its owner materially contributed to the copyright infringements of others.

“Massive Wireless admits that it, with the purpose of enabling customer access to the Service, sold set-top boxes preloaded with the Service and with a one-year subscription to the Service.”

“Akhtar and Massive Wireless provided the mechanisms for Service Users to access and view the Works and therefore materially contributed to the infringing activity,” Judge Merchant adds.

A separate permanent injunction, signed the same day, orders Massive Wireless and its owner to stop their infringing activities and to destroy any infringing hardware that is still in their possession.

Destroy
 

Notably, the injunction also requires the defendant to file a report under oath, detailing which IPTV devices were destroyed and how.

The Failed Supplier Defense

Massive Wireless and Akhtar did not lodge a detailed defense in response to DISH’s motion. Their opposition consisted of a three-page affidavit from Akhtar, which, as DISH pointed out, did not contest the legal arguments.

Instead, Akhtar’s affidavit pointed to the wholesaler who, like himself, speaks Bengali. He said that after receiving a warning letter from DISH, Daud told him it was a “scam” and that there was “nothing to worry about and to continue selling the boxes.”

Scam artist (from the affidavit)
 

DISH cited the same cease-and-desist notices as evidence to show that the store continued its infringing activity.

In the order, Judge Merchant noted that Akhtar’s claim that he was misled by his supplier was legally irrelevant. Vicarious liability is a strict liability doctrine that does not require the defendant to have knowledge of the infringement.

For the contributory infringement claim, the court found that Akhtar’s attempt to ignore six cease-and-desist letters constituted willful blindness, which legally satisfies the knowledge requirement.

“Regardless of whether Daud informed Akhtar that he did not need to worry about the cease-and-desist letters, willful blindness or objective knowledge is sufficient to show knowledge of infringement,” Judge Merchant wrote.

Where Are the Damages?

Unlike Massive Wireless and its owner, wholesaler Daud and his company Rays IPTV did not show up in court. They previously defaulted and will be targeted with a default judgment later.

In a footnote, the court explained that DISH is holding its damages claim back. The willfulness finding against Massive Wireless and Akhtar will be folded into a later motion for default judgment against Daud and Rays IPTV, which aims to hold defendants jointly and severally liable for willful infringement of 170 registered works.

At the statutory maximum of $150,000 per work, 170 works can lead up to $25.5 million in damages. According to DISH, these works are just a fraction of the total infringements, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the court will approve it in full.

What DISH’s exact demand is has yet to be seen. The same applies to a request for attorneys’ fees and costs, which the Queens-based store will face later this summer.

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The summary judgment order, issued by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, is available here (pdf) and the permanent injunction here (pdf).

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Posted Thursday 11 June 2026 at 6:13 pm AEST (my time).

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