The founder of the pirate streaming service Jetflicks, Kristopher Dallmann, has been sentenced to seven years in prison. Dallmann did not plead guilty to several charges, including conspiracy, copyright infringement, and money laundering.
Jetflicks operated for approximately 12 years, from its launch in 2007 until its closure by the FBI in 2019. At the peak of its popularity, the service offered more than 10,500 movies and 183,000 TV shows, collected from legal platforms (including Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime) using automated scripts.
Jetflicks allowed tens of thousands of paid subscribers to watch and download pirated content, and new episodes of TV series often appeared on Jetflicks as early as the day after they aired on TV.
In 2024, a federal jury in Las Vegas found Kristopher Dallmann and his associates — Douglas Courson, Felipe Garcia, Jared Jaurequi, and Peter Huber — guilty of involvement in the activities of Jetflicks.
All five were charged with conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, and Dallmann personally faced additional charges of money laundering related to his attempts to conceal illegal profits from Jetflicks.
At that time, the court determined that Dallmann operated Jetflicks with the assistance of Jaurequi and Curzon. Garcia handled customer support and also sourced content, while Huber worked as a programmer at Jetflicks. All the defendants, except for Dallmann, faced no more than five years of imprisonment. In Dallmann’s case, the prosecution insisted on a harsher sentence—up to 48 years of imprisonment (due to additional charges of money laundering).
It is worth noting that after his arrest, Dallmann claimed that FBI agents escorted him out of the premises at gunpoint, denied his request for a lawyer, and insisted that he waive his rights. Ultimately, Dallmann did not plead guilty.
“Dallmann earned millions of dollars in profit from this operation. According to the government’s estimates, the copyright infringements in this case amount to $37.5 million,” reports the U.S. Department of Justice. “This sum includes the estimated market value of copies of pirated content created by the defendants to build the Jetflicks library, as well as the estimated market value of streaming episodes of TV series that the defendants provided to their subscribers.”
According to Torrent Freak, last week, a federal judge sentenced Dallmann after finding him guilty on six charges. These included conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, as well as copyright infringement through reproduction, distribution, and public performance of content. He was also found guilty of money laundering and aiding and abetting. Consequently, he received sentences ranging from 12 to 84 months of imprisonment, served concurrently.
Dallmann was also fined a total of $375,000, which he is required to pay immediately. The sentence is set to be executed on October 17, 2025 (on this day, Dallmann is required to appear to begin serving his sentence).