HeHeStreams: Pirate IPTV Owner Admits Cybercrime, Forfeits $500K

[alimac]

The former operator of pirate IPTV service HeHeStreams has reached a plea agreement with the US government. After being indicted on several counts carrying sentences of up to 20 years each, Joshua Streit has admitted to a single cybercrime offense. In addition to a potential prison sentence, Streit will now forfeit $500K.

Traditional IPTV suppliers provide access to pirate streams by rebroadcasting captured content from their own servers. It’s bandwidth-intensive, expensive, and prone to issues. HeHeStreams eliminated most of these additional costs by using techniques to connect customers to genuine streams, offered by the sports broadcasters themselves, directly from their own servers.


The upsides could be found in rock-solid streams, low server costs, and many happy customers. The downsides proved more complicated for Streit.

HeHeStreams: Pirate IPTV Owner Admits Cybercrime, Forfeits $500K * TorrentFreak

 

[chookey]

Not sure if I have completely misunderstood the story but I can't help but feel he was sort of pushed into doing it.
If a Company isn't prepared to pay a "reward" for having their vulnerabilities exposed then they can't be too shocked when they find themselves exploited.
Not defending what the guy did. He went about it the wrong way and left himself wide open for the extortion claims

Why is it though that these obviously clever people pull off these acts but never manage to cover up the profits, assets, etc; to some extent?