RICHMOND, Va., Aug. 29 (UPI) -- The leader of the online movie piracy group IMAGiNE pleaded guilty to copyright infringement Wednesday in federal court in Virginia.
Jeramiah B. Perkins, 39, of Portsmouth, Va., pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement. He faces as much as five years in prison, a fine of $250,000 and three years of supervised release when he is sentenced Jan. 3.
Perkins admitted he willfully conspired to reproduce and distribute tens of thousands of infringing copies of copyrighted works without permission, including infringing copies of movies before they were commercially released on DVD, the U.S. Justice Department said in a release.
Perkins was one of four IMAGiNE members indicted April 18 as federal authorities sought to break up their efforts to become the premier group to first release Internet copies of new movies only showing in theaters.
Perkins admitted he rented computer servers in France and elsewhere for use by the group. He said he registered domain names for their use and opened e-mail and PayPal accounts to receive donations and payments from individuals downloading or buying IMAGiNE releases of pirated copies of motion pictures and other copyrighted works.
The Justice Department said Perkins directed and participated in using receivers and recording devices in movie theaters to secretly capture the audio sound tracks of copyrighted movies and then synchronized the audio files with illegally recorded video files to create completed movie files suitable for sharing online.
Perkins admitted his group's movie piracy resulted in a readily provable infringement amount of more than $400,000, the Justice Department said.
Co-defendants Sean Lovelady, Willie Lambert and Gregory Cherwonik each pleaded guilty this year to one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement.
