Postman jailed for £200k illegal sport streaming business

A postal worker has been jailed for selling illegal hardware and apps for customers to stream sports for a fraction of the cost of legitimate subscriptions.

Michael David Barrow, of Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, ran a sophisticated piracy business using equipment like hacked Amazon Fire TV Sticks, Swansea Crown Court heard.

He pocketed more than £200,000 from the scam while the potential loss to broadcasters including Sky Sport, TNT Sport, and BT Sport ran into millions of pounds.

Sending the father-of-two to prison for 38 months, the judge told him he had engaged in "large-scale commercial fraud" driven by "pure greed", despite knowing the likely sentence which awaited him if caught.

Barrow continued to run his fraudulent business even after police visited his house.

He was given a cease and desist notice and details about previous court cases which had seen defendants receiving custodial sentences.

Barrow also had his account suspended by Facebook on the grounds he was violating intellectual property rules.

When officers returned to his property they found he had a "football-themed bar" at the rear of the property where potential customers could see the illegal streaming for themselves.

Ari Alibhai, prosecuting on behalf of the Premier League, told the court that for more than four year the defendant provided customers with apps and modified Amazon Fire TV Sticks.

An Amazon Fire Stick is a device that plugs into TVs and gives the viewer options to watch programmes from legitimate services including the BBC iPlayer and Netflix.

This allowed them to unlawfully access content from broadcasters such as Sky Sport, TNT Sport, and BT Sport along with other content, live events including big boxing matches, and a library of more than 18,000 films.

Alibhai said on the defendant's own account he had more than 1,800 customers and was providing a "subscription and hardware" package at about £120 a year, a fraction of what the legitimate broadcasters were charging.

The court heard that Barrow only accepted new customers on recommendation from existing customers and insisted on the use of full names to avoid the operation being, as he put it, "infiltrated by Sky agents".

Payments were made via PayPal or into the defendant's bank account, and he encouraged customers to disguise the nature of the transfers by referencing them as being for classic or retro football kits.

The court heard Barrow also had a "significant degree of technical knowledge" and was able to advise customers on how they could take steps to get around the techniques used by the broadcasters to counteract the illegal streaming of their content.

The prosecutor said Barrow's activities came to the attention of South Wales Police in 2021 following reports to the CrimeStoppers charity.

Officers visited his home in Pembrokeshire to advise him that the authorities were aware of what he was doing.

The court heard the defendant continued his fraudulent operation and took steps to avoid being caught again, including by insisting that customers communicated with him via the encrypted messaging app Telegram.

The prosecutor said a financial investigation showed the defendant had received more than £170,000 in PayPal payments - of which £167,000 was suspected of being from his illegal streaming operation - and another £45,000 in fraudulent streaming payments into a bank account.

Alibhai said it was hard to quantify the loss to the legitimate broadcasters but that the potential loss to Sky Sport, BT Sport, and TNT Sport alone - regardless of the other companies affected including those based overseas - was in the region of £6m.

Barrow had previously pleaded guilty to three offences of marking and supplying articles for use in a fraud when he appeared in the dock for sentencing. He has no previous convictions.

Megan Williams, for Barrow, said it was clear from the contents of the pre-sentence report that her client had expressed genuine remorse for what he had done.

She said it was accepted that what had started in 2019 as a "misguided wish" on the part of the defendant to help friends and family then "snowballed" into something far larger. The barrister added that since his arrest, the father-of-two had been seeking help with his mental health issues.

Judge Paul Thomas noted that while Barrow was engaged in the online piracy he had a "steady income" working for the postal service, and said it was clear the defendant's motivation was simply "pure greed".

Barrow was sentenced to 38 months in prison. He will serve 40% of the sentence in custody before being released on licence.