As part of its ongoing battle with piracy, DirecTV said the FBI arrested 38-year-old Jerry Wayne Smith, of Gaffney, S.C., on federal charges related to the alleged sale of stolen access cards and activation fraud. Smith is alleged to have fraudulently obtained a large number of access cards from DirecTV and activated fraudulent accounts, the company said. Prosecution of the case is being handled by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Greenville, S.C.
DIRECTV filed lawsuits in the U.S. District Court in New York and Philadelphia against six individuals it claims were setting up false subscription accounts and illegally activating DIRECTV receivers.
The suits claim that the defendants, Michael Grant, Rylon Grant and Jean Grant, of Brooklyn, N.Y., along with 59 unidentified defendants (listed as John Does in the complaint); and Larry Osborne, Victoria Osborne and Jon Owens, of Philadelphia, and 44 John Does, created false subscription accounts and illegally activated numerous access cards and receivers to enable others to receive DIRECTV programming without authorization or proper payment to DIRECTV.
"With our programming signals secure from hackers since the introduction of new access card technology, many people are turning to fraud to gain unauthorized access to our programming and they are now discovering this avenue of illegal activity is a dead end," said Dan Fawcett, executive vice president, Business and Legal Affairs, DIRECTV, Inc. "We have several additional fraud investigations underway and we intend to take each of these cases to trial and defend our business, our customers and our programming partners against those who are attempting to gain unauthorized access to our programming."
DIRECTV claims the defendants violated provisions of the Federal Communications Act, Federal Wiretap laws and state law, all of which state that it is illegal to intercept or assist others in intercepting DIRECTV's encrypted satellite signals without authorization or payment to DIRECTV.
According to the federal and state laws under which the complaint was filed, DIRECTV is entitled to either actual damages, including any profits made by the defendants, or statutory damages that can range from $10,000 to $100,000 per violation, as well as payment of all costs and attorneys' and investigative fees.
This is the fifth and sixth federal lawsuit involving allegations of fraud filed by DIRECTV since September of last year when DIRECTV sued a Utah couple over allegations of fraud and filed a lawsuit in Florida against seven individuals for the same offense. Earlier this year DIRECTV targeted 19 Canadian citizens and five businesses that it believed were participating in a scheme to activate fraudulent DIRECTV accounts, and last April filed a complaint against 10 former DIRECTV customer service agents, who it believes engaged in a scheme to defraud DIRECTV by creating subscription accounts with false information and fraudulently linking access cards to existing accounts that enabled others to receive DIRECTV® programming.
