A fraudster who made more than £2 million selling set-top boxes preloaded with Disney and Sky channels has been jailed for two and a half years. Web designer Halton Powell, 44, sold at least 24,000 set-top boxes for around £100 each through eBay, his website and retail outlets between December 2014 and March 2016.
His fraud was said to have cost Sky £14 million in lost subscription fees. He launched his own company Droidsticks Ltd in 2013 and intellectual property cops began a probe in March 2015 after an online marketplace reported a large number of the boxes were being sold through an account owned by his company.
It was selling set-top boxes pre-loaded with a piece of software referred to as the ‘Droidsticks Wizard’, which allowed users to install add-ons to access Sky’s sports and film channels, as well as Disney Plus. Set-top boxes that contain this software at the point of sale are illegal.
In April 2015, an undercover investigator from Sky bought one of the devices at shops in Chingford, East London and Powell was arrested soon after. Police seized 1,300 set-top boxes from a storage unit and another 121 boxes from Powell's shop.
A review of Powell's bank account showed that he made a total of £2,344,949 from the sale of 24,515 set-top boxes through the marketplace. Powell, from Hornchurch in East London, initially denied all wrongdoing and claimed the website was created by a website designer.
But he admitted to supplying articles for the use in fraud when he appeared at Southwark Crown Court. Detective Sergeant Peter Gartland from City of London Police’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) said: “Powell attempted to hide the illegitimate nature of his business by concealing evidence that he was selling products pre-configured to stream Sky Sports and Sky Cinema.
“However, PIPCU officers were able to prove he was aware the set-top boxes were being used for this purpose by thousands of customers. It is vital to remember that watching premium content without a subscription is illegal – and enabling access to it can land you with a criminal record, as this case shows.”
Matt Hibbert, Sky’s Director of Anti-Piracy, UK & Ireland said: “We’d like to thank PIPCU for their support in bringing this case to a successful conclusion. The financial sums involved and the length of the sentence handed down today underline the seriousness of this type of criminality.
“We’ll continue to work with law enforcement and our industry partners to protect consumers and take action against those organisations intent on stealing our content.”
A date for confiscation proceedings will be set on 19 May.
