YouTuber Sentenced To Over 5 Years and Ordered To Forfeit $30 Million in Large-Scale Cable Piracy Case (inquirer.com) 72
A YouTube star who built a sizable following with slickly produced videos flaunting his fleet of luxury and sports cars, collection of diamond-encrusted bling, and his spacious Swedesboro home will be forced to give up nearly all of it after he was sentenced Tuesday to 5 and a half years in prison for the illegal business that allowed him to amass those trappings of success. From a report: Bill Omar Carrasquillo -- better known to his more than 800,000 online followers as "Omi in a Hellcat" -- pleaded guilty last year to running one of the most brazen and successful cable TV piracy schemes ever prosecuted by the U.S. government. As part of his sentencing Tuesday, he was ordered to forfeit more than $30 million in assets, including nearly $6 million in cash; cars including Lamborghinis, Porsches, Bentleys, and McLarens; and a portfolio of more than a dozen properties he'd amassed across Philadelphia and its suburbs.
"Thirty million dollars is a lot of money [but] tangible objects aren't everything," U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III said in announcing the punishment during a hearing in federal court. "You have a large following and there may be people who think if you can get away with it, they can too." Carrasquillo, 36, apologized to his family, his employees, and the cable companies he'd cheated through his business, which illegally sold content hijacked from cable boxes to thousands of online subscribers paying fees as low as $15 a month. "I really didn't know the significance of this crime until I was picked up [by the FBI] at my home," he said. "I feel like I let everybody down." But while prosecutors described Carrasquillo's crimes -- which included counts of conspiracy, copyright infringement, fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion -- as serious, much of Tuesday's hearing focused on Carrasquillo's remarkable rags-to-riches story.
"Thirty million dollars is a lot of money [but] tangible objects aren't everything," U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III said in announcing the punishment during a hearing in federal court. "You have a large following and there may be people who think if you can get away with it, they can too." Carrasquillo, 36, apologized to his family, his employees, and the cable companies he'd cheated through his business, which illegally sold content hijacked from cable boxes to thousands of online subscribers paying fees as low as $15 a month. "I really didn't know the significance of this crime until I was picked up [by the FBI] at my home," he said. "I feel like I let everybody down." But while prosecutors described Carrasquillo's crimes -- which included counts of conspiracy, copyright infringement, fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion -- as serious, much of Tuesday's hearing focused on Carrasquillo's remarkable rags-to-riches story.
He made the big mistake: taxes! (Score:5, Interesting)
From the article: he must pay "an additional $5.7 million to the IRS for unpaid taxes."
How many criminals have been brought down by for failing to pay taxes?
Re:He made the big mistake: taxes! (Score:5, Insightful)
How many criminals have been brought down by for failing to pay taxes?
Al Capone, for one.
Re:He made the big mistake: taxes! (Score:5, Insightful)
If he'd not been so greedy and got out of it with $X million...AND didn't publicly brag about it....and just paid taxes, maybe just labelling it "Misc"...he might have gotten away with it.
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Someone in law enforcement once told me that most criminals are not very bright, otherwise they wouldn't be criminals. After all, you can be shady in sales and marketing without being illegal.
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Someone in law enforcement once told me that most criminals are not very bright, otherwise they wouldn't be criminals
I am sure that's true for the criminals that are caught. Perhaps not so true for the criminals that get away with their crimes.
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Like most show off rich people, like trump?! :D
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Most people as a whole are not very bright either. Humans are a short step away from being herd animals. Just having common sense puts one in a top tier, and there are enough with common sense that the species as a whole doesn't collapse. Every so often there's a great leap forward when a genius comes along and says "Rocks? Why are we eating rocks?"
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The trick is to listen. Nobody knows everything and we have to be willing to have difficult discussions to understand different perspectives.
One guy with a PhD in Computer Science just kept recommending things are weren't practical from a business perspective. He judged everything through "most logical design", but users and managers are not always logical, and the system needed to work with such. He was "fuck money, make it right!". Not his money, though.
Re:He made the big mistake: taxes! (Score:4, Insightful)
The list of available career paths for those who are shady and/or without a moral compass, yet enough of a sense of self-preservation to want to avoid breaking the law is a lengthy one.
And somebody with a moment's time and a bit of a sick mind can come up with literally dozens more without much effort. I mean, there's entire business categories today built on the premise that you can steal from anybody, so long as they can't afford to sue and/or prosecute you for it.
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Yup.
If he'd not been so greedy and got out of it with $X million...AND didn't publicly brag about it....and just paid taxes, maybe just labelling it "Misc"...he might have gotten away with it.
And where is he going to get the T4?
To be able to pay taxes you need to make the money seem legit. And for that you need to start money laundering.
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I dunno why crooks of this magnitude stick around instead of moving to Cape Verde or somewhere.
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How many criminals take taxes and do whatever the fuck they want with them?
It's called a "protection racket," and it has been a staple of the mafia for as long as the mafia has existed.
"Nice business you've got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it."
Street gangs do a lot of it, too.
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Street gangs do a lot of it, too.
As do online gangs.
Re: He made the big mistake: taxes! (Score:2)
Thatâ(TM)s the entire focus of government. You own nothing. House paid off? Try not paying taxes and see how long you âoeownâ it. You are simply paying rent by another name.
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You NEVER own it.
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From the article: he must pay "an additional $5.7 million to the IRS for unpaid taxes."
How many criminals have been brought down by for failing to pay taxes?
If criminals pay their taxes, the IRS doesn't care. Line 8z on the current form 1040 [irs.gov] is for any other types of income not declared elsewhere. IRS Publication 17 (2022) mentions this [irs.gov]. If you look through the list of other income, you will also see bribes. If, as an elected official, you receive a bribe, you are supposed to include it on your tax form. Embezzled funds should also be reported.
Pay your taxes is the name of the game.
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IANAL but there have been case around this the 16th amendment and 5th amendment being basically in conflict. Supposedly you can report additional income as 'illegal activities' and the IRS wont narc on you!
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Supposedly you can report additional income as 'illegal activities' and the IRS wont narc on you!
Your declared unlawful income cannot and will not be used against you in a criminal proceeding based on your tax records. On the other hand, the 5th amendment does not protect one from civil asset forfeiture proceedings, where the "accused" is the allegedly unlawfully obtained property. So your choices boil down to "get indicted for tax fraud" or "have your tax return used as a roadmap to seize your assets." Door #3 is "launder the money" which is itself a crime and carries its own set of problems (chief
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Which, if you think about it, is quite a smart catch-22 by the Government to facilitate nailing people for illegal earnings.
This isn't a case of the taxman crushing an honest worker, it's the Government having multiple avenues to curtail activities that arguably destabilise society.
In this case, someone making themselves very wealthy off the back of the work, effort, and investment of others.
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I used to work in international development. I never came across a case of fraud, bribery or embezzlement but a colleague told me the story of him being asked for a bribe one time. The colleague said I need a receipt for the money... The bribe didn't get paid.
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This is pure genius. Won't always work out to your favour (they might agree, or they might disagree but not be so nervous about it that they don't get in your way - they actually had SOME leverage when they asked for the bribe). Still, it's a great idea.
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Being a criminal does not earn you a tax discount. If he earned money, he owes taxes. Legality of the income generating activity is the court to decide upon, as a separate matter.
Dude he stole cable TV (Score:3, Insightful)
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To be fair, he did exactly the same thing oil companies do. He exploited a resource and resold it for profit.
Problem was, the resource he exploited was protected by the DMCA, rather than buried under several thousand feet of dirt. He should've been born earlier so he could've dug up oil instead. Late stage capitalism strikes again.
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Man: "Father, last weekend I made love to three women at the same time."
Priest: "That is very serious. How long since your last confession?"
Man: "Never, I'm not catholic."
Priest: "Then why are you telling me this?"
Man: "Telling you? I'm telling *everyone*!"
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"Bang pool boys" sounds so dirty. In the industry we prefer to say "sharing the love".
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"Bang pool boys" sounds so dirty. In the industry we prefer to say "sharing the love".
Banging pool boys is a proud Hollywood tradition [screenrant.com] dating back nearly a decade shy of a century. Oh wait, that was a pool full of banging boys. Easy mistake to make.
It's an explicit reference (Score:2)
Re: You stole from rich people (Score:2)
I want to start a church like Al Bundy.
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that was your mistake. Next time start a ministry and fleece old women out of their life savings while watching your wife bang pool boys like a good Christian.
You were downmodded as a Troll, and I can kinda see why, although 'Offtopic' might have been the better choice. That said, I get where you're coming from, and I laughed out loud, so thanks for your comment!
I "didn't know the significance of this crime" (Score:3)
... until I got caught.
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I was thinking "significance of the crime" in this case means "how much trouble I could get in"
"...didn't know the significance..." (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, right.
Insignificant but bought him "more than $30 million in assets, including nearly $6 million in cash; cars including Lamborghinis, Porsches, Bentleys, and McLarens; and a portfolio of more than a dozen properties he'd amassed across Philadelphia and its suburbs."
Got any other good howlers you want to tell us, Omi?
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oh you think profitability determines magnitude of crime?
You can shoot a homeless person who creates no wealth in the head for fifty cents, that must be lesser crime?
he only did copyright infringement if he paid his taxes
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Profitability determines the lower bound of the magnitude of crime.
There is no way to do something illegal that nets you 30 million dollars and getting away with a slap on the wrist. At least if you're a single person.
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there are gifted grifted that got away with millions
lets see how Charlie Javice does... note just a civil lawsuit anyway, could disappear with the money and then what
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/0... [nytimes.com]
He probably didn't (Score:1)
Re: He probably didn't (Score:2)
Ok grandpa, time to take your nighttime meds and hobble off to bed.
He ran a pirate IPTV network (Score:4, Informative)
In case you don't want to have to read TFA just to figure out what was meant by "cable piracy", it was that he took a bunch of legitimate linear TV cable service subscriptions and re-broadcast them as a paid IPTV service. Basically, he ran the bootleg equivalent of DirecTV Stream.
What surprises me the most about this is that there were enough people willing to pay for a sketchy service that this guy ended up making millions. If you don't have any moral objections to piracy, the usual pirate's code is don't pay for a pirated copy. I guess his customers were people who really wanted linear TV and weren't satisfied with torrents.
Re:He ran a pirate IPTV network (Score:5, Informative)
IPTV is a way to gain access to TV channels you otherwise can't. And I don't mean "financially can't". There are lots of people willing to pay for a TV channel (or more), but they are unlucky enough to live in areas those channels don't broadcast, and there are no legal ways for those people to watch those channels.
Geoblocking prompts illegal activities.
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I was just reading an article the other day that pointed out how MBA programs rever the idea of setting up a business that sits between producers and consumers, and collects rent in return for doing nothing. That's what Amazon does. It's what eBay does. It's largely what Facebook and Google do. And it is exactly what's happening here.
And that's exactly what's happening here: Some people created (say) a movie. Whoever did so would love for consumers to pay to see it. Consumers want to pay and see it. But, n
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That's what Amazon does. It's what eBay does. It's largely what Facebook and Google do.
Those outfits are middlemen for content created by peons. This guy's mistake was to skim off the top of Mickey Mouse (studios). He wasn't big enough. Had he been, he could have gotten into the business of skimming as a large ISP. Want to stream that Netflix, Hulu, Britbox or whatever content? Pay us our cut. Or no customers. Net neutrality laws? Bwah, ha, ha, ha.
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Do your time, then sell your story (Score:1)
"A product of North Philadelphia, he was raised as one of 38 children. His mother was deported and died of an overdose when he was still a child. His father dealt drugs and trained Carrasquillo at age 12 to cook crack cocaine.
He ping-ponged between relatives’ homes and foster care, including a stint with one caretaker who intentionally had him committed to a mental health facility for access to prescription narcotics he could later sell on the streets. He spent much of his teena
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It used to be a fairly common thing for people on Twitch to plug their HDMI capture card (with a HDMI splitter to strip HDCP) into their cable box and stream sporting events. This guy just decided to make a business out of it. He didn't do anything particularly interesting, he just made a lot more money than you'd expect, before he finally got caught.
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The “Son of Sam” law prevents you from profiting off of stories about your crime.
Re: Do your time, then sell your story (Score:2)
You have to first be convicted in court for those laws to apply.
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But the truth is more complex than you suggest. Son of Sam laws are State driven ordinance; there is no Federal ordinance. And most have been struck down as unconstitutional in any states that have passed them. Son of Sam law summary [wikipedia.org] and some other color [mtsu.edu].
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There was some woman who did the same exact thing with Covid paycheck protection money that she'd scammed. She went on social media flaunting her wealth, because people online love that shit.
Look at all the top YouTube content creators. It's mostly rich people showing off their riches. If you can't be wealthy yourself, live vicariously through others I guess.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Foolish insecurity shows off and screws themse (Score:2)
Look at kids today. When asked what they want to do for a job when they grow up, most say an "influencer" just like the...
... kids back when you were growing up, who said "movie star" or "radio DJ."
What a moron (Score:2)
If you're gonna live a life of crime, at least have the brains to not publicly flaunt your wealth...
In other news (Score:3)
Large-scale cable corruption case goes ignored for two years before being permanently swept under the rug.
I know which of the two has done more harm, and it's not the YouTube idiot. (He paid more in net taxes though, since the government didn't routinely give him billions of dollars with no strings attached in return for his tax evasion).
"I really didn't know the significance..." (Score:2)
I see the guy is working on a come back as a comedy artist.
pardon my ignorance (Score:2)
That's criminal, the fact that USD 15 per month is thought to be low...!
and the subcribers? (Score:1)
Are they now going after the 100,000+ subscribers that were paying him. With a payment history, I have to assume there is an audit trail of some sort. Cut the issue off at its head.