Huge Piracy Raid Leads to Canadian Fraud Lawsuit

[Gregg Lengling]

DirecTV said it filed a lawsuit in Ontario against 19 Canadian citizens and five of their businesses it believes were allegedly participating in a scheme to activate fraudulent DirecTV accounts that enabled individuals to receive the satellite TV company's programming without authorization.

In connection with the lawsuit, DirecTV said it executed civil seizure orders at nine locations in southern Ontario and recovered computer files and business records related to the activation fraud scheme and gray market activity. The company also said equipment used in the past to modify access cards to enable programming theft was seized.

DirecTV said the raid, the culmination of a six month investigation by its Office of Signal Integrity and legal department, was the largest ever conducted by the company on a single day.

The DirecTV lawsuit alleges that the defendants operated a scheme through a complex network of companies and Web sites used to provide bogus U.S. addresses and other false information to establish DirecTV accounts. Those accounts were then used to illegally activate programming for individuals, who apparently paid defendants to receive DirecTV programming without authorization.

DirecTV said defendants in the case allegedly violated Canadian communications law through their sale and distribution of piracy technology and activations, including DirecTV access cards to dealers and consumers in the United States and by facilitating the unauthorized reception of DirecTV programming. The company said that under Canadian law, it's entitled to damages estimated in excess of $10 million. DirecTV also claimed punitive damages of $10 million.