City of London Police last August released a statement with a captivating title: a sixty-year-old sentenced to 6 and a half years for pocketing £980,812 through an illegal streaming infrastructure.
The news, repeated by various press outlets, described the arrest of a sixty-eight year old from Chorley guilty of conspiracy to defraud: his business, based on 80 serverssold season tickets to customers around the world, mostly to British expatriates.
It’s a shame that the press release omitted two fundamental details: the service was called Ex Pat TV (later renamed My TV Abroad) and the raid by the authorities took place on August 10, 2016exactly ten years earlier. This was clarified by TorrentFreak, who reconstructed the story by cross-referencing judicial sources and web archives.
The statement mentioned a three-year period of illicit activity, but did not specify the dates. Preston Crown Court, when consulted, confirmed that Milan Ibrahim he had pleaded guilty already on the fifth day of the trial. The investigation, initiated by PIPCU (Intellectual Property Police), had led to the seizure of three homes and a business in Chorley, with the arrest of three men: Ibrahim and two others, aged 36 and 40.
From charges to conviction: a ten-year story
The disputed period was from 1 June 2013 to 10 August 2016day of the raid. The official indictment, as confirmed by CPS (Crown Prosecution Service), concerned conspiracy to defraud copyright holders through live streaming, films and satellite set-top boxes provided to commercial premises. Ibrahim had pleaded guilty to the first two charges, while the other two defendants were never convicted: the case against them was dropped following Ibrahim’s confession.
The site mytvabroad.comarchived on 15 July 2016, promised live British TV channels anywhere in the world starting from £19 per monthwithout the need for VPN. The operation was already known, with TorrentFreak reporting the raid the following day pointing to a Chorley company selling IPTV packages to expats.
Although the sentence is real and the recovery of £980,812 via the Proceeds of Crime Act be confirmed, the lack of context has transformed old news into supposed news, fueling misleading headlines about recent seizures and “just” arrests that actually dated back more than a decade.
