People who availed of so-called “dodgy box” TV services supplied by Ciaran Donovan are unlikely to be pursued by the authorities following his conviction this week for money laundering.
The 42-year-old, from Ashfield, Co Kildare, was jailed for 16 months at Naas Circuit Court for laundering more than €900,000 arising from the operation of the illegal King Kong Media subscription-based streaming service. He had pleaded guilty to three charges.
The investigation into Donovan’s activities involved gardaí examining bank accounts and other aspects of his operation, but they are not expected to use the information gathered to pursue his customers.
One source said it was the equivalent of a person buying a fake Gucci handbag in a market. The persons involved in making and selling the fake handbags might be involved in criminal activity, but not necessarily the person who bought one of the items.
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This will come as a relief to the thousands of people who, via Donovan, made use of the King Kong Media service. This allowed them, for a fraction of what it would have otherwise cost, to access to a huge number of subscription TV channels from around the world.
The offer of such illegal services is a widely taken up by otherwise law-abiding members of the public. A number of people present in court during Donovan’s numerous court appearances confessed privately to The Irish Times that they or family members made use of such a service.
The Garda inquiry into Donovan’s activities, where he was selling access to a service in Ireland that was established by criminals outside the jurisdiction, came in the wake of an investigation into the illegal service by subscription services Sky TV and Virgin, who were losing substantial amounts of revenue because of the Kildare man’s activities.
Donovan was offering access to the service for €70 a year, about 10 per cent of what it would otherwise cost. In return for payment, he gave his customers access to the streaming service from an app they downloaded to a device.
[ ‘Dodgy box’ TV service operator jailed for 16 monthsOpens in new window ]
The court heard he had about 3,500 paying customers and that over a period of five years, €470,511 passed through bank accounts linked to his illegal operation. The figures would suggest the losses to the legitimate subscription service providers concerned amounted to millions of euro.
King Kong Media is one of the largest of the international providers of illegal streaming services. Interestingly, according to sources, people such as Donovan who advertise such illegal services online often disappear from social media after they have built up a customer base, using incentives thereafter to encourage their existing customers to spread the word privately about the service.
For this reason, it is difficult for the legal TV streaming services to estimate the extent of the ongoing losses involved, though the companies employ full-time investigators who seek to spot such illegality and bring it to the attention of An Garda Síochána.
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