A Minnesota resident has been charged with coercion and illegally streaming copyright-protected content from the National Football League (NFL), National Basketball Association (NBA), Maple Leaf Baseball (MLB), and National Hockey League (NHL).
According to the Department of Justice (DOJ) statement on Thursday:
The culprit – Joshua Streit, allegedly hacked into the leagues’ computer systems and operated a website that streamed copyrighted content for his profit.
Federal prosecutors charged a 30-year-old Minnesota man with illegally streaming sports games from sites including Major League Baseball and then attempting to extort the league after he hacked its website https://t.co/YCKOutkRW3
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) October 28, 2021
You can see below a screenshot of Joshua Streit’s illegal streaming website that was allegedly operational between 2017 to August 2021.
Image source: The Record
Streit allegedly obtained access to the copyright-protected materials on the sports leagues’ websites through “misappropriated login credentials” from real user accounts.
U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams said in the press release:
Thanks to this Office’s teamwork with all four major American sports leagues and the FBI, Streit has struck out on his illegal streaming and extortion scheme.
Streit is also indicted for coercing $150,000 from the Maple Leaf Baseball (MLB) after threatening to disclose the MLB’s vulnerabilities in its online infrastructure.
Due to Streit’s illegal copyright-protected streaming, 0ne of the leagues lost approximately $3 million. However, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York has refrained from immediately responding to any request for comment.
Although U.S officials didn’t confirm anything about the reason behind the start of Streit’s investigation, a court document does reveal that it all may have started after a complaint was launched against the website.
According to the document, the FBI claimed that they could track down the culprit after he was found using the same same “inflx” username on both the streaming site’s chat and on Reddit.
Through Reddit, the U.S investigators discovered that the Reddit account was registered with an email address used by Streit for his blog, where he often published various cybersecurity research.
Image source: The Record
If found guilty on all the charges against him, Streit may face up to 60 years in prison. In addition, the MLB claims that his hacking incurred losses of around $3 million, money that he might need to pay to the company.
