Piracy Ring’s Pennsylvania Leader Pleads Guilty

In a major blow to the dark net, Willie O. Lambert, 57, of Pittston, Pa., pleaded guilty to conspiring to willfully 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, Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Neil H. MacBride, and Special Agent in Charge John P. Torres of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations (ICE-HSI) in Washington, D.C., announced today.

Lambert, a leading member of the IMAGiNE Group, an organized online piracy group seeking to become the premier group to first release Internet copies of new movies only showing in theaters, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement before U.S. District Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen in the Eastern District of Virginia.

According to court documents, Lambert and his co-conspirators sought to illegally obtain and disseminate digital copies of copyrighted motion pictures showing in theaters. Lambert admitted that he went to movie theaters and secretly used receivers and recording devices to capture the audio sound tracks of copyrighted movies (referred to as “capping”).

After obtaining, editing and filtering audio sound tracks and uploading them to servers utilized by the IMAGiNE Group, Lambert used and attempted to use software to synchronize the audio file with an illegally obtained video file of a movie to create a completed movie file suitable for sharing over the Internet among members of the IMAGiNE Group and others.

Lambert also admitted that the IMAGiNE group’s conduct resulted in a readily provable and reasonably foreseeable infringement amount of more than $400,000. Lambert faces up to five years in prison, a fine of $250,000 and three years of supervised release.

The investigation of the case and the arrests were conducted by agents with ICE-HSI. Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert J. Krask of the Eastern District of Virginia and Senior Counsel John H. Zacharia of the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section are prosecuting the case on behalf of the United States.

Significant assistance was provided by the CCIPS Cyber Crime Lab and the Office of International Affairs in the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. This case is part of efforts being undertaken by the Attorney General’s Task Force on Intellectual Property (IP Task Force) to stop the theft of intellectual property.

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