Two IPTV Pirates Sentenced to Prison But After 5 Years Questions Remain

In the unlikely event that there's anyone left in the UK who hasn't been completely desensitized to the perils of IPTV, here's another case to strain the nerves. After being raided five years ago, two brothers from Ilford in Essex have been sentenced to prison. Whether both will actually see the inside of a cell is unclear; one turned up to face the music, the other failed to appear. The reason for his absence is unknown and just the start of a long list of other unanswered questions.

People being arrested for pirate IPTV activities isn’t anything new, not in the UK or indeed anywhere else, but it is mentioned a lot more than before.

The terminology currently used to describe offenders seems to have changed too. Last month it was reported that 40 illegal ‘IPTV operators’ were served with official warnings, some via an in-person visit by police and anti-piracy group FACT.

For smaller players, subscription resellers, for example, the strategy makes complete sense. Yet the idea of having a similar doorstep chat with known wholesale suppliers doesn’t add up at all. Ambiguities such as this make it more difficult to determine the significance of new developments, all of which are currently reported by UK tabloids on a single level – extreme – regardless of the facts.

Five years ago, events were significantly less distorted, meaning that big events stood out as they should.

Action Takes Out Two Alleged IPTV Operators

In March 2019, raids in London carried out by police, Trading Standards, and anti-piracy outfit Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), targeted what was described as a “£3 million fraud operation” to “download, encrypt and widely distribute TV content from Sky, Virgin and BT.”

While the terminology could’ve benefited from a tweak or two, this had all the hallmarks of a raid against an actual provider of illegal streams, which is still relatively rare in the UK. Confirmation that searches of shop premises and homes had uncovered equipment valued at £100k – computers, servers, and set-top boxes – that reportedly enabled the operation, left little doubt that this was important news.

Two men were arrested on suspicion of fraud, with police claiming that the suspects generated £600,000 per year from their activities. A list of 3,000 subscribers to their services found in the shop, was reportedly in the hands of the authorities. As is usually the case, we asked a few questions about the event at the time to guide our reporting but, as is mostly the case, answers never arrived.

Five Years Later, Suddenly More News

In an announcement to the press on Tuesday, it was revealed that two brothers had been sentenced to “a total of 11 years in prison” for “operating an illegal streaming service” that offered subscriptions to premium television content, including Sky.

Amir Butt, aged 56 from Ilford, was sentenced to seven years in prison while his brother, Ammar Hussain, aged 39 and also from Ilford, was sentenced to four years.

Given the length of Butt’s sentence, clarity is obviously important. However, while the announcement clearly states that Hussain was “found guilty of conspiracy to defraud over a seven-year period” (August 2012 to March 2019), the offense or offenses for which Butt received a significantly longer sentence seem to be missing. (separation of statements below for illustration purposes).

Of course, we could assume that all seven years were for conspiracy to defraud but at minimum, that wouldn’t account for Butt failing to appear, or indeed any other offenses, such as they exist. Offenses are normally described in fine detail, but not here.

The next paragraph covering the raids in March 2019 also raises questions. It notes that Butt was arrested at his home address and Hussain was arrested at a shop in Ilford, which had operated under various company names over the years including Tech & Sat Ltd, Techsat, and Tech + Sat.

“The pair sold annual subscriptions, which provided access to a range of sports and entertainment content, for £200 each,” the statement continued.

Other details presented to the media five years ago have been changed or reassessed, made less specific, or even removed.

Scale of the Fraud Diminishes

Having previously claimed to have seized a list of 3,000 subscribers, the announcement yesterday adjusted to “they were believed to have thousands of customers.”

The £3 million “fraud operation” is now described as “depriving legitimate tv providers in excess of £1m.” An early claim of “£600k per year” in revenue now reads “hundreds of thousands of pounds in revenue,” presumably in total.

It would be naive to believe that all evidence meets prosecution standards, so reductions should never come as a surprise. Equally, generating hundreds of thousands of pounds selling illegal access to a legitimate service’s content, is still a very serious offense, one that has custodial sentence written all over it.

The Nature of the Operation Remains Unclear

But even more difficult to square is the following statement:

Cash and a substantial amount of equipment, including Sky set-top boxes and viewing cards, were seized from the addresses for further forensic analysis.

Given that Sky set-top boxes are clearly visible in Google Street View images of the shop, the fact that some were seized along with some cash is hardly a surprise.

What the statement does not say is that the equipment was actually used to “download, encrypt and widely distribute TV content” nor does it make any attempt to reveal what the forensic analysis actually found.

These details are extremely important when attempting to weigh the significance of any enforcement action. The strong suggestion earlier, that a provider had been shut down, would mean actual content being removed from the market. Removing a reseller, no matter how big, would leave the supply intact and a gap in the market easily filled with minimal effort.

Unlike in the United States, where court records are mostly freely available, in the UK there’s a much greater reliance on press releases issued by those directly and commercially involved, despite prosecutions being funded by the public purse. Requests to see actual court records are always denied.

Prison Sentences For Two, One Had Better Things to Do

There’s no question that in appropriate cases, convictions are critical to deter criminality; indeed, during the last 24 hours all information we’ve managed to uncover suggests that custodial sentences were entirely appropriate and almost inevitable. Yet another surprise here is that the trial actually took place nearly a year ago and ran for four weeks.

While that indicates a plea of ‘not guilty’ for Hussain, it appears that Butt may have had something more important to do; for reasons that aren’t explained, he failed to appear for his own trial.

That somehow led to Butt being found guilty first, for whatever crime or combination of crimes that justified a sentence almost double that of his business partner, Hussain, who received his four-year sentence at Snaresbrook Crown Court just this week.

Finally, it’s worth highlighting that the overwhelming majority of news related to IPTV in the UK is managed as part of the BeStreamWise anti-piracy campaign. Viewed through that prism, there’s a clear incentive to only report news in a way that supports the campaign, rather than reporting the details as-is, warts and all.

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