Shropshire Star

Father fined for selling fake Sky TV

A Powys man who cheated Sky out of almost £50,000 by selling hacked TV technology has been fined.

Published

Ryan Jackson was caught via his Facebook page during a joint investigation by Powys County Council and Sky which scoured social media and eBay for illegal activity.

The 30 year-old, of Gaufron, Rhayader admitted four charges when he appeared at Llandrindod Wells Magistrates Court on Wednesday.

He was fined £1,340, plus £4,070 costs and a £34 surcharge.

The father of two, formerly of Myrtle Dene, Tremont Road, Llandrindod Wells, was advertising adapted Amazon Fire TV sticks, Amazon set-top boxes and a hacked internet protocol TV service, which delivers content via internet networks.

Jackson sold them for about £100, which gave his customers premium Sky content including movies, sports and pay-per-view events.

He also offered subscription services including Netflix and Spotify.

Jackson pleaded guilty to three charges of providing or selling devices adapted to circumvent technological measures and one charge of breach of copyright with the intention of financial gain.

A Sky investigator, David Ferguson, made a test purchase and was sent a "fully loaded" stick for £105.

Snowballed

The court heard that between January 2016 and August 2018, Jackson made a profit of between £840 and £2,500, but the cost in terms of losses to Sky was about £50,000.

Prosecuting for Powys County Council, Rob Brown, said Jackson had found a way on the internet to obtain Sky easily and decided to offer it himself.

"He used social media to advertise and initially provided the service to friends, then friends of friends and it snowballed from there," he said.

Gareth Walters, defending described the scam as "an amateur operation from the very beginning", and said Jackson had spent time off work with chronic back pain.

"He is very intelligent, but he put his knowledge to bad use rather than good," Mr Walters said.

"He wanted to get free Sky for himself, found out on YouTube tutorials how to do it, and saw an opportunity to make some money."

He said Jackson is currently doing an Open University Degree on criminology and psychology but his conviction may affect his job prospects in the future.

Sentencing Jackson, magistrate Ingrid Gallagher said: "It was not an intelligent thing to do. You are paying much more than you made."

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