The U.S. Department of Justice reported that a former employee of an unnamed multinational company, Steven Hale, was sentenced to four years in prison for stealing hundreds of DVD and Blu-ray discs containing unreleased films and posting copies of them online.
In May 2025, Hale pleaded guilty to stealing discs from his employer between 2021 and 2022 and selling them through online marketplaces. He worked at an unnamed international company whose services were used by major film studios. The company produced and distributed DVD and Blu-ray movie discs.
Among the films that Hale stole and then uploaded online for illegal downloading were F9, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Godzilla vs. Kong, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Dune, and Black Widow.
According to law enforcement, Hale caused the greatest damage by leaking a pre-release Blu-ray of “Spider-Man: No Way Home” online. The film, released in theaters in 2021, became the first post–COVID-19 pandemic movie to gross over $1 billion at the box office. Disc sales were expected to be similarly high, but they were affected by the film’s leak online.
Illegal downloads of the film were so widespread that, according to researchers at ReasonLabs, scammers began embedding malware into pirated copies to “attract as many victims as possible.”
Seeing the buzz, Hale bypassed DRM to copy the film from Blu-ray and upload a high-quality rip that stood out against the low-grade camrips. As the U.S. Department of Justice noted, this version of the film was downloaded “tens of millions of times,” and the damage to the rightsholder amounted to “tens of millions of U.S. dollars.”
The 38-year-old Hale, previously convicted of armed robbery, faced up to 15 years in prison, but thanks to a plea deal the maximum term was reduced to five years. At the time, authorities noted that Hale had “accepted responsibility” and deserved a reduced sentence. This was likely because in the spring the total “amount of the violation” was estimated at about $40,000, rather than the tens of millions of dollars now being reported.
In the end, Hale pleaded guilty to copyright infringement, agreed to pay restitution (the exact amount of which was not disclosed), and to return to his former employer about 1,160 stolen DVDs and Blu-ray discs that had previously been seized by the police.
In addition, he pleaded guilty to firearm possession (during a search, a pistol was found with a round in the chamber and 13 rounds in the magazine).
Taking into account the theft of discs, the distribution of illegal copies of films, and the firearms possession charge, the U.S. District Court in Tennessee sentenced Hale to 57 months in prison—just under the maximum possible five years of incarceration.