A federal grand jury yesterday indicted eight people who allegedly ran two pirate streaming services that "offered more television programs and movies than legitimate streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, and Amazon Prime Video," the Department of Justice said.

Jetflicks, which operated from 2007 to 2017, obtained its video from torrent sites and Usenet sites "using automated programs and databases such as SickRage, Sick Beard, SABnzbd, and TheTVDB," the indictment said. Jetflicks made "those episodes available on servers in the United States and Canada to Jetflicks subscribers for streaming and/or downloading," the indictment said. Torrent sites that Jetflicks operators relied on allegedly included the Pirate Bay, RARBG, and Torrentz.

With this method, defendants often "provid[ed] episodes to subscribers the day after the shows originally aired on television," a DOJ announcement yesterday said. Jetflicks charged subscription fees as low as $9.99 per month, letting subscribers "watch an unlimited number of commercial-free television programs," the indictment said. The service claimed to have more than 37,000 subscribers.

The indictment was handed down in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Domain names to be seized

One of the eight defendants, 36-year-old Darryl Julius Polo, left Jetflicks to create another site called iStreamItAll, which was still online today. iStreamItAll likely won't stay online long, though, as the indictment said the site's domain names are subject to forfeiture. The Jetflicks domain names were also subject to forfeiture orders, and the website is offline.

Jetflicks "claimed to have more than 183,200 different television episodes," while iStreamItAll "at one point claimed to have 115,849 different television episodes and 10,511 individual movies," the DOJ said. iStreamItAll "publicly asserted that it had more content than Netflix, Hulu, Vudu and Amazon Prime," the DOJ said. (Netflix offered 4,010 movies and 1,569 TV shows as of 2018, according to Netflix search engine Fixable.)

The two services were designed to work with "numerous varieties of computer operating systems, smartphones, tablets, smart televisions, video game consoles, digital media players, set-top boxes and web browsers," the DOJ said. iStreamItAll offers monthly plans for $19.99 and charges $179.99 for a full year.

In addition to Polo, the indictment included charges against Kristopher Lee Dallmann, 36; Douglas M. Courson, 59; Felipe Garcia, 37; Jared Edward Jaurequi, 38; Peter H. Huber, 61; Yoany Vaillant, 38; and Luis Angel Villarino, 40. All eight defendants were charged with conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement. Dallmann and Polo face additional charges of criminal copyright infringement, money laundering, and aiding and abetting.

"Prosecutors said none of the defendants have been taken into custody," according to The Washington Post. While conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement can be punished with up to five years in prison, the additional charges faced by Dallmann and Polo "could put them in prison for many more decades," the Post wrote.

On November 16, 2017, law enforcement officials seized equipment from two houses in Las Vegas that were used by Dallmann to operate Jetflicks, according to the indictment. The seized equipment included 28 Mac Mini computers, which are often used as servers. Law enforcement also seized more than 40 storage drives and other computers and devices from Dallmann's houses. Additional seizures of storage drives and computers were made at another Las Vegas home used by Polo.