Picked up in his pajamas: Brit who offered illegal football for 11.50 euros a month, eleven years in prison | Foreign football

The news was announced by the Premier League. Mark Gould, the central figure behind Flawless TV, was raided by police as the man sat in his pajamas in his flat in Greenwich, south London, next to a bag of Doritos crisps and Domino’s pizza boxes. He personally made almost 2 million euros in profit with the streaming service. No less than 30 digiboxes were found in his apartment with which illegal streams were imported.

At the same time, his four accomplices were also arrested and subsequently convicted of fraud and money laundering. One of the men was also found guilty in court of making sex images and possessing child pornography. Gould was sentenced to 11 years in prison, the four all received prison terms of three to five years.

Flawles TV intercepted streams from pay channels from the United Kingdom, America, Canada, Australia and Qatar, to bring them to their subscribers a few seconds later. For five years, between 2016 and 2021, they were able to maintain that practice. They even had their own app, with movies on it. An ingenious system enabled them to escape attention for a long time, with software that allowed, among other things, to delete a unique Sky code that exposes fraudsters.

They also went against the so-called ‘blackout’ rule, which ensures that no football can be played on a Saturday afternoon at 3 o’clock so that football fans can still watch matches of local British football clubs.

It is estimated that by 2022 four million Britons (out of a population of 67 million) watched a sporting match at least once via an illegal source.

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