Movie pirates in £1m racket start jail terms

Sahil Rafiq, 25, Reece Baker, 22, Ben Cooper, 33, and Graeme Reid, 40, were part of a racket that created copies of blockbuster films and distributed them on the web for free.

Rafiq of Warnford Walk, Wolverhampton, was sentenced to four-and-a-half years while Cooper, of Dilloways Lane, Willenhall, was given three-and-a-half years at Wolverhampton Crown Court yesterday.

Baker of Colletts Grove, Birmingham and Reid of Kingsclere Walk, Chesterfield, were given four-years and two-months, and three-and-half-years, respectively.

Scott Hemming, 25, of Perry Common Road, Birmingham, was handed a two-year suspended prison sentence and made the subject of a mental health treatment requirement.

All five had admitted conspiracy to defraud at various stages between March 1 in 2010, and January 1 last year by copying, distributing or making available online infringing copies of films.

Together, they were part of a plot believed to have resulted in copies of up to 9,000 films, watched by as many as five million people in less than four years.

Judge Nicholas Webb said: "The film industry is a multi-billion pound industry where a great deal of money is put at risk.

"Just about all the expenditure is up front and if successful the investors make a profit to reinvest into another project.

"Many films do not cover production costs, less than 50 per cent do, and they have to rely on the sales of DVDs and Blu-Rays.

"Any activity that jeopardises that reduces the chance of it making a profit.

"It also means there can be less employment in the cinemas, which in turn relies on different trades and services.

"Most intelligent people see the economic truth in that."

Judge Webb said it seemed that 'notoriety and kudos' were what spurred on all five defendants as none had made any money out of the operation.

He said: "The fact that none of you were motivated by financial gain at the time of the offences will be balanced against the other factors."

The court heard how Rafiq, who had completed a degree course in computing, had been involved in the piracy scam for two-and-a-half years.

He used various identities and ran the group 26K where he was responsible for illegally releasing 835 films, which could be downloaded online.

Baker, who had been involved for 20 months, had gone by the names Hope and Resistance.

He had helped to upload 310 films and had paid £100 for overseas copies of the films Argo and Skyfall.

The court heard Baker had continued to release pirate films while on bail following his first arrest.

Reid had been involved in the conspiracy for three years and founded the online group, Remix HD.

Judge Webb said while unemployed Reid had discovered he was good at using computers and went on to work with overseas sites to gain copies of films including The Amazing Superman, Brave and Total Recall.

Judge Webb said that Cooper had preferred to specialise in the quality of his illegal downloads, rather focussing on how fast he could put them out.

The court heard that for three years he worked under the alias 'Cooperman' and was proud of his work.

Judge Webb said Henning's involvement had been on a lesser scale and he had received a psychiatric report advising how he would not cope with prison.

But he said the 800 encoded films he had helped release online had been downloaded on more than 230,000 occasions.