Derby gang of four jailed over massive TV box swindle

FOUR men have been jailed for their parts in a sophisticated international scam to defraud TV giant Virgin Media of up to £32 million.
The fraud involved distributing set-top boxes which allowed customers to pick up Virgin Media television channels without paying a subscription.

The Derby gang operated from a house in Littleover where they received programmes through a legitimate subscription.
These were decoded and sent via the internet to accomplices in Hong Kong who then beamed the signals back to the fraudulent set-top boxes.
Derby Crown Court was told that Paul Hartrick, 51 was the head of the city branch of the conspiracy.
He imported a type of set-top box from Korea that could be modified to receive the Virgin Media channels without a subscription.
He sold these boxes to customers for a one off payment of up to £120 the court was told.

He and his accomplices Melvin Howard, Anthony Ginnivan and Amber Ahmed all pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the company.
Ginnivan, 48, owned the house in Fernwood Crescent, Littleover, and rented a room which was used for the scam to Howard, 62.
Prosecutor Martin Hurst told the court that this bedroom was the "nerve centre" of the operation.

Inside the room Ginnivan and Howard under the instruction of Hartrick had set up 44 set top boxes connected to the Virgin Media
network through 13 legitimate subscriptions for which they paid.
This system was used to "decrypt" the signals sent from Virgin Media and these decoded signals were then transmitted over the internet to Hong Kong.
An operation in Hong Kong then sent Virgin Media channels back over the internet to customers who bought the Korean set-top boxes The fourth fraudster Ahmed was responsible for ordering the legitimate subscriptions called Smartcards from Virgin Media.
Police estimated that ringleader Hartrick would have made more than £100,000 from selling the set-top boxes.

Paul Hartrick, Melvin Howard, Anthony Ginnivan and Amber Ahmed ave been jailed for their parts in a sophisticated international scam to defraud TV giant Virgin Media of up to £32 million. | This is Derbyshire

' The firm set up its own Starview set-top boxes in homes across the UK to try to pick up the illegal signals.

Then it switched off sections of its Virgin Media output in sequence to find out the source of the illegal operation. Eventually, experts pinpointed where the signals were being decoded to be the house in Littleover and contacted the police. The men were arrested and the full scale of the fraud came to light.'

Old fashioned detective work, would be intresting to see the modified boxes they were lifting the keys with.

How long did they get? I bet it's no more than 6-months!

the piece in the derby newspaper site was well written and much more informative than normal pieces on this type of event , maybe we will be ready about megakiddy next , what muppet picks up the pieces of a busted setup like that ??

Hartrick, of Sharpe Street, Tamworth, was jailed for five years yesterday.

Howard, of Stoney Lane, Spondon, was jailed for two years and ten months, Ginnivan received two years and one month and Ahmed, of Dover Street, Derby, was sent to prison for a year.

Ahmed was also given an extra six months for a separate fraud offence.

is this the same Hartrick that used to work at a certain sat shop in Hinkley?