A fraudster who ran a Facebook group enabling members to watch premium TV and streaming services illegally has been jailed for two years. Sunny Kanda, 41, made more than £108,000 by supplying doctored Amazon TV firesticks to group members for 18 months, a court heard.
Frances Pencheon, prosecuting, said the firesticks contained apps that enabled the user to watch Sky Sports, BT Sports, Sky Movies channels, Disney+, Netflix and other streaming channels without paying subscriptions. The apps were not supplied by Amazon.
By the time trading standards officers caught up with him, the group had nearly 4,000 members.
His barrister Jeremy Barton said Kanda was “someone who has good morals, someone who has been thoroughly honest” who had made an “error of judgement” that had cost him his good character and his standing in his community. He could not justify his actions. If jailed he would have to postpone his wedding, he said.
Judge Simon Hickey said Kanda had known what he was doing was against copyright laws, had kept doing it for 18 months and had made a lot of money through his crimes. He said the loss to the TV and streaming companies was not clear but would be “substantial”.
As Kanda’s fiancée watched, the 41-year-old bank employee was jailed for two years. He faces a confiscation hearing later this year as the authorities try to reclaim all the money he got through his illegal deals. He pleaded guilty to distributing items that infringed copyright, handling criminal cash and fraud, all committed from September 2020 to November 2022.
Ms Pencheon said Kanda did not set up the Facebook group which had more than 1,000 members in May 2020, but was involved in it. He took over running the group on February 2022, using an alias and paying the previous group leader £2,000 and paying £400 a month to someone “higher up in the chain” to continue the illegal operation. By November 2022, the Facebook group had more than 3,900 members.
Each doctored TV firestick enabled the user to access the premium TV and streaming channels for a year only, after which the user had to pay another fee.
The national e-crime trading standards squad tracked down Kanda and raided his home. They found a doctored firestick and Kanda’s bank and PayPal accounts revealed he had made 1,840 transactions involving the doctored firesticks netting him £108,150, none of which he had declared to the taxman.
Mr Barton said Kanda had been candid with the trading standards officers and given them names of others involved in running the illegal operation. He deeply regretted his actions and wanted nothing to do with the money they had generated and which he had available to hand to the authorities.
A spokesperson for National Trading Standards said: “Accessing pirated content through illegal TV firesticks undermines the UK’s entertainment industry, putting its talented workforce and supply chains at risk by depriving them of fair earnings and revenue. It also puts consumers at risk by exposing them to illegal software that can put their data and bank details in jeopardy. Today’s sentence is an important reminder to all those who buy and sell TV firesticks that crime does not pay – it breaches copyright law and we encourage people to report suspected cases to the Citizens Advice consumer service.”
Get all the latest news from court here