Programmer convicted in streaming case; service was headquartered in Vegas

A computer programmer who was one of several who operated an illegal streaming service that the government alleges “affected every significant copyright owner of a television program in the United States” was convicted Thursday in federal court, federal prosecutors announced.

The defendant, who was convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, is the eighth and final defendant to be convicted in the case, according to a Department of Justice news release.

According to court and evidence presented at trial, Yoany Vaillant, 43, worked as a computer programmer for Jetflicks, an online, subscription-based service headquartered in Las Vegas.

The operation permitted subscribers to stream and sometimes download copyrighted television episodes without the permission of copyright owners.

Jetflicks claimed to have 183,285 different television episodes, far more than Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, Amazon Prime, Disney+, or any other licensed streaming service, stated the news release.

At Jetflicks, Vaillant worked directly with Kristopher Dallmann and Jared Jaurequi, who were convicted of criminal copyright offenses earlier this year, the news release said.

“Evidence at trial showed that Vaillant and his co-conspirators scoured the internet to find infringing television programs from pirate sites — including some of the biggest sites specializing in infringing content such as The Pirate Bay, RARBG, altHUB, and Nzbplanet — using automated software and computer scripts that ran nonstop,” the news release stated.

“Vaillant and his co-conspirators reproduced hundreds of thousands of copyrighted television episodes without authorization and streamed the infringing programs to tens of thousands of paid subscribers located throughout the United States, often providing episodes to subscribers the day after the shows originally aired on television,” according to DOJ.

Vaillant was among eight defendants indicted in the Eastern District of Virginia in 2019 for allegedly running Jetflicks. Vaillant’s co-defendant Darryl Polo, a computer programmer, pleaded guilty to four criminal copyright counts and one money laundering count, which related to Jetflicks as well as another illegal streaming site he operated.

Co-defendant Luis Villarino, also a computer programmer, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement at Jetflicks. The court sentenced Polo to four years and nine months in prison and Villarino to one year and one day in prison.

In February 2022, the court transferred the case to the District of Nevada.

The court severed Vaillant’s case from the other five defendants — Dallmann, Jaurequi, Douglas Courson, Felipe Garcia, and Peter Huber — and those defendants were tried in Las Vegas last June.

Dallmann ran the Jetflicks operation with assistance from Jaurequi and Courson; Garcia was in charge of customer support and helped obtain television show content; and Huber provided computer programming services. A jury found all five defendants guilty of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, and Dallmann was also found guilty of three additional counts of criminal copyright infringement and two counts of money laundering by concealment.

It was the largest internet piracy case by volume of infringed works — and first illegal streaming case — ever to go to trial, DOJ stated.

The court will sentence Dallmann, Courson, Garcia, Jaurequi, Huber, and Vaillant on Feb. 3 and 4.

Contact Marvin Clemons at [email protected].