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Sydney Man Detained by AFP, Obliged to Pay AUS $1.66 Million

 

As punishment, a Sydney man who has been selling hijacked subscription service deets must now pay almost $1.66 million in cryptocurrency (and some cash). The 23-year-old had previously been sentenced to two years and two months in prison in April for running the massive illicit operation that sold Netflix, Hulu, and Spotify usernames and passwords. 

According to the AFP, the funds would be allocated by the Department of Home Affairs to assist crime prevention, law enforcement, and community safety activities. The accused will now face a two-year and two-month jail term also. 

The AFP launched an investigation in May 2018 after receiving information from the FBI concerning a now-defunct account-generating website named WickedGen.com. 

WickedGen was a portal that offered stolen login information for internet subscription services such as Netflix, Spotify, and Hulu. The account information belonged to unwitting individuals in Australia and across the world, including the United States. 

The Sydney resident was identified as the site's founder, operator, and major financial beneficiary, as well as the developer, of WickedGen and three additional sites which too provided similar services. The perpetrator had over 150,000 registered members throughout four websites and sold about 86,000 memberships to unlawfully access authorized streaming services. 

In October of last year, the Sydney-based man pled guilty to acquiring these log-ins and passwords. Following the guilty plea, the AFP's Criminal Assets Confiscation Taskforce (CACT) secured restraining orders on the individual's cryptocurrencies, as well as bank and PayPal accounts kept under fictitious identities. 

While comparing to all those who watch free-to-air television, the usage of online subscriptions has increased in Australia, with nearly the same amount of Australians consuming material via online subscription streaming platforms, such as Netflix. 

According to the observations published by the Australian Bureau of Communications, Arts, and Regional Research, the prominence of over-the-top services has been on the surge.