A supermarket worker who stole films including Fast and Furious 7 from his bedroom as part of an international hacking ring that cost Hollywood producers more than £200 million has been jailed for more than two years.
Luqman Farooq, 31, was part of a network that illegally copied 25,000 files holding movies such as The Expendables 3 and TV shows including the Walking Dead.
Titles belonging to Warner Bros and 20th Century Fox were accessed and uploaded to a server in France where they were sold online before their official release.
Expendables 3 star Sylvester Stallone had praised the work of City of London Police for arresting Farooq in April 2015 after the film was leaked a month ahead of release.
Luqman Farooq, pictured outside Southwark Crown Court, has been jailed for his role in a network that illegally copied 25,000 files holding movies such as Fast and Furious 7 and The Expendables 3 and TV shows including the Walking Dead
Stallone co-wrote the film and the leak caused producers to lose a fortune after it was downloaded more than two million times in the first week it was posted online.
Sainsbury’s worker Farooq had only carried out the offences because he felt pressurised by his Muslim background, his defence barrister claimed.
He operated two PayPal accounts where £20,000 worth of payments for the purchase of the stolen movies was deposited and the piracy ring released 15 films under the alias Dark 999.
The estimated loss to companies from the pre-release of just one movie is £225m, or 19 per cent of sales.
Farooq was one of five men charged in the United States in relation to the conspiracy in December 2018.
Prosecutor Michael Hick said: ‘The PayPal account used in this operation was in his name so it was easily traced.
‘He had access to sophisticated software but we accept that his role overall was not sophisticated, but he certainly had a level of knowledge and access to sophisticated software.
‘A payment of £12,320 went directly into his account, there was another, about £10,000 that went out of the related PayPal account.’
The group also copied Hollywood movies including X-Men: Days of Future Past, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and How to Train Your Dragon 2.
An investigation launched by the organisation Motion Picture Association (MPA), which represents all five major US film studios, identified the conspiracy under its Dark999 name advertising and promoting the stolen titles online.
Fast and Furious 7, pictured, was one of the films that was accessed and uploaded to a server in France, where they were sold online before their official release
Southwark Crown Court heard at least one film was accessed through the hacking of a UK editing company who had been entrusted with advanced copies to subtitle in Chinese before release.
The losses to English companies are estimated to be a further £12m.
Bernie Richmond, QC, defending, argued that Farooq had felt ‘cultural pressure’ to make money because of his Muslim background and the ‘shame’ of not providing for his family.
‘There was significant pressure to get a nice house and children and the cultural pressure of not shaming his wife and not shaming his parents,’ Mr Richmond said.
‘He got involved in a chatroom, the chatroom was a very clever pyramid selling scheme because within it various people made comments about the piracy in movies.
‘They said that the film companies are ripping off people. They are making billions and billions of pounds for movies which people should be able to see for nothing. The losses to them are a drop in the ocean compared to what they’re making.
‘What we have here is somebody who gets lured stupidly into making money.
‘What he had was his own little enterprise where he made £20,000 gross.’
But Judge Martin Griffith QC, sentencing, said Farooq’s cultural background was no excuse for his criminality.
Judge Griffith said: ‘There are many, many Muslims under the same pressure you were under who do not resort to crime.’
He told Farooq: ‘You’re a man who appears in court for the first time and has managed to get himself involved in an enormous conspiracy to defraud with huge amounts of money involved as the background to what you did.
Sylvester Stallone, pictured centre as part of the cast of The Expendables 3, had praised the work of City of London Police for arresting Farooq in April 2015 after the film was leaked a month ahead of release
‘You entered a plea at the very last minute of guilty of conspiracy to defraud.
‘At the heart of the case, purely because of the numbers and notoriety, is a film, Fast and Furious.
‘I’m aware of their popularity as you must have been and I remember the launch at Leicester Square of that or another film in the franchise.
‘Those films are remarkably successful and attract the unscrupulous attention of those people who want to avoid the cost of a cinema ticket by accessing a pirated version.
‘The people with whom you agreed to work launched a head-on assault on an English-based company who had the misfortune of being in possession of the film for the purpose of adding Chinese subtitles to the film.
‘It is accepted the hackers defeated their security systems, obtained the passwords and then got their hands on the film, metaphorically.
‘The conspiracy to defraud involves 15 films. You played your part in providing items for download and for which payments were made.
‘The prosecution say just Fast and Furious 7 alone, the activities of which you played a part, caused a loss to the filmmakers of £200m.
‘In addition the companies in the UK suffered knock on losses £12m, who suffered a severe knock for being the innocent victims of the hack as the Americans went to other people to get their films subtitled.
Southwark Crown Court, pictured, heard the supermarket employee had only carried out the offences because he felt pressurised by his Muslim background, but Judge Martin Griffith QC told him resorting to crime was no excuse
‘The hacking gives rise to enormous losses in the industry and calls for a deterrent sentence where people are becoming involved in it.
‘You cannot have been unaware of the size and value of the films that passed through your control for the purposes of some other persons hacking.
‘Despite the huge sums involved here your limited involvement would put you at about four years.
‘There certainly has been a substantial period of time since you were arrested in 2015.
‘You tried to become a whistleblower which you’ve now given up. Your activities have brought you in the ambit of the US criminal system which may have caused you many sleepless nights.
‘You have some difficulties – they didn’t stop you getting a job or finding a wife.
‘Your cultural background cannot be an excuse. There are many many Muslims under the same pressure you were under who do not resort to crime.
‘Your decision to engage in an illegal activity through your computer skills was in order to make money to make your lifestyle better.’
Farooq, of Shalimar Street, Halifax, west Yorkshire, admitted conspiracy to defraud as part of the City of London Police investigation.
He was sentenced to two years and three months imprisonment.
Jonathan Kelleher, of the CPS, said: ‘Farooq insisted that he was only trying to help authorities by catching key players in the piracy network, but he was actually the offender responsible for pirating numerous blockbuster films.
‘The technology, that Farooq was so fascinated by, ultimately led to his downfall, giving an audit trail of him accessing unofficial files and releasing them for his own gain.
‘CPS Specialist Fraud Division has worked closely with colleagues from City of London Police and the US authorities in order to secure this result.’