Five men who illegally streamed Premier League football matches have been jailed following a trading-standards investigation led by Hammersmith and Fulham Council.
The gang received more than £7m from 50,000 subscribers paying for £10-a-month subscriptions for the Flawless TV service.
The league's lawyers said the fraud prosecution was brought to protect ‘some of the world's most valuable content’.
The gang took feeds from broadcasters in the UK, Qatar, the US, Australia and Canada and streamed them a few seconds later.
The personal details of many of those who paid for are now in the hands of investigators who will decide whether to take action against them.
The gang's leader Mark Gould, 36, was sentenced to 11 years in prison at Derby Crown Court.
Four other members were sentenced to between three and more than five years.
One of them, Christopher Felvus, 36, was also found guilty of voyeurism and possessing indecent images of children, discovered on his computer.
Trading-standards investigator Doug Love led a raid on Gould's riverside flat in Greenwich, south London.
He said: ‘I don't think any of us realised how big it was. When we went into the spare bedroom, there were 20 or 30 set-top boxes linked together.’
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