Selling Boxes versus Receiving Channels

[overthefence]

Over the last week or so I have read a couple of articles on court cases where there had been arrests on account of fraud against satellite / Cable providers.
Granted this is not new which arrests being made in the past

Computer expert Aron Lees sold hundreds of hacked Sky TV decoder boxes | Daily Mail Online

Man sold 'dodgy' Sky TV boxes to region's pubs and clubs (From The Northern Echo)

My question / curiosity was more around the arrests. They always arrest the person for selling either the equipment that allows one to stream services but you do not hear apart from the odd pub or club where they arrest the individuals whom are actually receiving the services.

Why is that?

It says in one of the articles that they had access to IP and e-mail addresses so do they ever go further down the line?

Do boxes allow for connection to a VPN to mask the IP address so if signing up via a VPN webmail address and having a VPN on the box can you therefore become invisible even if they did have details.

I'm therefore curious on peoples views and set ups.

 

[VectorZ]

The higher up the food chain is in their best interest... taking out the supplier stops multiple end users, and far increases their chance of getting a conviction.

 

[alimac]

will always go after the giver the taker secondry

 

[overthefence]

Cheers people

I guess that makes sense as stop the source stop the fraud, apart from other servers will exist.

if the user was targeted then surely more people would think harder.

also I would question who committed the fraud the server provider for sharing the service or the person actually avoiding paying the subscription.
It is always debatable anyway as just becuase you receive the service it does not mean you defraudd the service provider for the figures quoted as most would probably never subscribe direct.

Guess if the subscription was a more reasonable price more people would go direct.