Cuban citizen convicted in U.S. streaming piracy scheme

Nov. 16 (UPI) -- A federal jury in Las Vegas found Yoany Vaillant guilty of conspiring to commit criminal copyright infringement for his work on behalf of illegal streamer Jetflicks.

Vaillant, 43, is a Cuban citizen and knows 27 computer programming languages, which he used to streamline the subscription-based but illegal Jetflicks content for its subscribers who were located throughout the United States, the Department of Justice announced in a news release Friday.

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Federal prosecutors argued Vaillant, during his nearly five months working for Jetflicks, "made significant contributions to the operation of the service."

Those contributions include fixing problems affecting the service's automated downloading technology, uploading, syncing and illegal streaming of television content, according to the DOJ.

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Jetflicks is headquartered in Las Vegas and claimed to have 183,285 copyrighted episodes of television programming, which is much more than Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and any other streaming services.

Prosecutors provided evidence showing Vaillant and seven co-conspirators scoured pirate sites located around the world to access and download its extensive library of streaming titles without obtaining permission or paying respective copyright holders.

Jetflicks used automated software and computer scripts programmed by Vaillant and others that ran continuously to illegally access programming that Jetflicks made available for its tens of thousands of subscribers in the United States, according to the DOJ.

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The illegal streaming service often made copyrighted programming available a day after it originally aired.

"The vast scale of Jetflicks' piracy affected every significant copyright owner of a television program in the United States," the DOJ said.

The illegal streaming caused "millions of dollars of losses to the U.S. television show and streaming industries," the agency said.

Vaillant was among eight defendants indicted in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Virginia in 2019.

Co-defendants Darryl Polo and Luis Villarino each pleaded guilty to respective charges accusing them of copyright infringement. Polo also pleaded guilty to money laundering and was sentenced to four yearsand nine months in prison while Villarino was sentenced to one year and one day in prison.

Vaillant is the last of the eight defendants to be prosecuted after the case was transferred to the Nevada District Court and is scheduled for sentencing, along with five other co-defendants, on Feb. 3 and 4 in Las Vegas.