Bodycam footage shows home of gang leader who made millions selling illegal Premier League streams

The ‘scoop’ of a multi-million pound fraud operation selling illegal streams of Premier League matches has been pictured in his pajamas as detectives raided his home.

Mark Gould, 36, can be seen sitting in his pajama bottoms surrounded by packets of crisps, bongs and cardboard boxes as detectives searched his South London flat in May 2018.

Bodycam footage also shows about 30 linked set-top boxes used for the illegal operation piled up in Gould’s home.

It comes as five men, including Gould, have been sentenced to more than 30 years in prison after the Premier League launched a historic private prosecution to crack down on privacy and illegal streaming.

Those involved, aged between 30 and 46, operated one of the UK’s largest illegal streaming services and made millions of pounds selling TV sticks to more than 50,000 customers and resellers, illegally accessing streams to most, so not all, streams to watch. most valuable sporting events in the world.

Trading standards researcher Doug Love led a raid on Gould’s riverside smart flat in Greenwich, south London, in 2018.

He told BBC news: ‘I don’t think any of us realized how big it was. When we went into the guest room, there were 20 or 30 set-top boxes linked together.”

The gang took feeds from broadcasters in the UK, Qatar, US, Australia and Canada and streamed them through the Flawless service seconds later.

In what is the world’s largest-ever prosecution of an illegal streaming network, the five men were sentenced on Tuesday at the Chesterfield Justice Center after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud, money laundering and contempt of court.

Together, Mark Gould, 36, Steven Gordon, 46, Peter Jolley, 41, Christopher Felvus, 36, William Brown, 33, and Zak Smith, 30, generated more than £7 million between 2016 and 2021 through three pirate streaming organizations that illegally access content on offer, including live Premier League matches.

Gould, described by Judge Martin Hurst as the “first” of the operation, was sentenced to 11 years in prison, while Gordon, Jolley, Felvus and Brown all received sentences ranging from three to six years.

Smith, who acted as a mole selling information obtained through his employment at an online monitoring and enforcement agency, is still at large and has a warrant out for his arrest.

In handing down the sentence, Judge Hurst outlined how the group charged £10 a month for the service.

A similar subscription with Sky Sports and BT Sports – the current Premier League rights holders in the UK – would cost between £60 and £80 a month.

In handing down the sentences, the judge described a sophisticated crime involving considerable planning and expertise, hacking into legitimate customers in the UK and abroad.

The gang’s company Flawless 1, which operated between 2016 and 2018, was the largest illegal IPTV service in the UK at the time, offering over 300 channels with 24/7 customer service for £10 a month.

It had an estimated 50,000 customers, including a network of resellers (who provided the services for £6 a month) and made £4.6 million in just under two years, from which Gould took more than £1.7 million.

In 2018, an escape service called ‘Optimal’ was launched by Gordon and Jolley after a pay dispute between Gordon and Gould, but it ultimately failed due to Gould and Brown sabotaging the service by infecting the servers with malware.

Flawless 2, also known as ‘Shared VPS’, was subsequently launched by Gould, Felvus and Brown after Gould’s initial arrest, earning £2.6 million between May 2018 and July 2021.

The trio took significant steps to conceal the service, with Brown fulfilling a range of roles including helping Flawless avoid detection by authorities, hacking into broadcasters and their legitimate subscribers, in addition to stealing content from rival illegal services.

Shared VPS was discovered after Birmingham Trading Standards arrested one of the largest Flawless resellers, following a Premier League & FACT investigation.

Evidence has been found of payments made to a PayPal account in the name of Shared-VPS before they moved to bitcoin.

That account was linked to Gould because, among other things, research showed that the account was used to order take-out meals and electrical goods at Gould’s home address.

The investigation and prosecution was carried out by the Premier League and supported by the intellectual property protection organization FACT and Hammersmith and Fulham Trading Standards, who led a series of enforcement raids and arrests at eight addresses across the country in 2018.

Evidence seized from Felvus’ computers also showed that he was in possession of indecent child images, leading to a separate prosecution.

In January 2021, he pleaded guilty to three charges of possession of an indecent photograph of a child and to committing 13 acts of voyeurism for which he was jailed and placed on the sex offenders register for 10 years.

Kevin Plumb, Premier League General Counsel said: ‘Today’s conviction is the culmination of a long and complex prosecution of a highly sophisticated operation.

“The sentences handed down, the longest sentences ever handed down for piracy-related crimes, justify the efforts made to bring these individuals to justice and reflect the seriousness and scale of the crimes.”