Two brothers have been sentenced to a total of 11 years in prison for operating an illegal streaming service that offered subscriptions to premium television content, including Sky.
The trial commenced in September 2023 and ran for four weeks. Despite Butt failing to appear he was found guilty in his absence. He was sentenced to seven years in prison at Snaresbrook Crown Court on September 21st 2023. On 13 August 2024, Ammar Hussain was sentenced to four years in prison.
Trading under the names, Tech & Sat Ltd. Techsat and Tech + Sat, Amir Butt and Ammar Hussain operated a sophisticated and large-scale illicit streaming service which harvested and distributed pay-tv content from broadcasters including Sky, as well as providing their users with access to thousands of movies and pay-per-view content, without the need for them to pay for a legitimate subscription. Butt had a commercial-grade stream harvesting setup in an outbuilding of his home, fed by business-fibre broadband, which included dozens of set-top-boxes from which content was extracted, multiple encoders (used to transmit streams) and equipment which was capable of removing security watermarks which are placed on legitimate pay-tv streams by broadcasters. The defendants received hundreds of thousands of pounds as a result of their fraud, with potential losses to the legitimate broadcast industry estimated at £9 million. Butt was considered to be the ringleader of the operation, Hussain was described by the sentencing judge as his junior partner.
The case was privately prosecuted by Ari Alibhai on behalf of Sky, instructed by Gareth Minty of Mishcon de Reya.
Ari Alibhai