UK court jails 68-year-old for £980,000 pirate IPTV business
Milan Ibrahim ran 80 servers from a Chorley address, selling stolen Sky, BBC and Premier League streams to customers in Britain and abroad.
Key points
- A UK court sentenced Milan Ibrahim, 68, to more than six years in prison for running an illegal streaming service.
- The business took £980,812 (about $1.3 million) over three years, according to the City of London Police.
- Officers seized and shut down all 80 servers the operation ran from a premises in Chorley, Lancashire.
- Stolen streams included content from the BBC, ITV, Sky, the Premier League and the Motion Picture Association.
- Ibrahim will also face Proceeds of Crime Act action to claw back the money he made.
A British man has been jailed for more than six years after running what police call one of the UK's longest-standing pirate television operations.
Milan Ibrahim, 68, sold access to an illegal IPTV service, which is a system that delivers TV channels over the internet instead of through a satellite dish or cable box. His customers paid a subscription and got live streams of channels and matches they were not entitled to watch.
The investigation was run by the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit, a specialist team inside the City of London Police that goes after copyright crime. Officers say the business pulled in £980,812, roughly $1.3 million, over three years.
Who was selling what?
Ibrahim resold live broadcasts belonging to some of the biggest names in British television. Police list the BBC, ITV, Sky, the Premier League and the Motion Picture Association among the rights holders whose content was pirated.
Customers were in the UK and overseas. They paid Ibrahim, and in return they got streams of paid channels and live football without paying the actual broadcasters.
The operation ran from a premises in Chorley, a town in Lancashire in northwest England, on a bank of 80 servers. Those are the powerful computers that pushed the video feeds out to paying subscribers.
How did police shut it down?
Officers raided the site and seized every one of the 80 servers, cutting off the streams in one go. "During enforcement activity, all 80 servers were seized and shut down, significantly disrupting the operation's ability to provide illegal streaming services," the City of London Police said.
| Detail | Figure |
|---|---|
| Sentence | 6+ years |
| Revenue over 3 years | £980,812 (~$1.3m) |
| Servers seized | 80 |
| Location | Chorley, Lancashire |
| Defendant's age | 68 |
Stefan Sergot, Director of Legal Enforcement at the Premier League, called the case "significant" and described the service as "one of the UK's most prominent and long-standing suppliers of pirate services."
Beyond the prison term, Ibrahim faces action under the Proceeds of Crime Act, the UK law used to strip criminals of money they earned through offending. That process is aimed at recovering the near-£1 million the business generated.
Should customers of the service worry?
Yes, at least a little. When police seize servers, they usually get the customer database too, and that can lead to fines or warning letters for the people who were paying for the illegal streams.
Paying for a cheap TV subscription that offers Sky, Premier League football and Hollywood films for a few pounds a month is almost always illegal. UK viewers who signed up to services like this have in past cases received formal warnings from FACT, the Federation Against Copyright Theft, which took part in this operation alongside police.
UK company records, as BleepingComputer notes, show Ibrahim was previously a director of a dissolved firm called CTU Systems that marketed IPTV software. Authorities have not linked that company to the illegal service in this case.
Common questions
Is watching an illegal IPTV stream a crime in the UK?
Yes. Paying for or knowingly using an unauthorised stream of copyrighted TV is a civil and potentially criminal matter, and enforcement bodies have pursued end users as well as sellers.
How do these services get caught?
Rights holders such as the Premier League fund investigators who buy subscriptions, trace payments and map the servers. Police then raid the premises and pull the hardware, as happened in Chorley.
