Bill Omar Carrasquillo, a prominent YouTube and Instagram influencer known as Omi in a Hellcat, has received a prison sentence of nearly six years for his involvement in a cable piracy case.
Along with two other associates, Carrasquillo was accused of selling copyrighted cable network programs to thousands of subscribers through Amazon Firesticks for a monthly fee. The group’s companies operated under different names, such as Gears TV, Reboot, Reloaded, and Gears. Users paid as little as $15 per month to access illegal content that Carrasquillo had stolen from cable boxes.
Prosecutors reported that thousands of subscribers paid to access premium cable TV and sports content through Firesticks, and that Carrasquillo, Jesse Gonzales, and Michael Barone had to forfeit $35 million in assets as a result of the fraud charges.
Carrasquillo was charged with various offenses, including conspiracy, violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, reproduction of a protected work, access device fraud, making false statements to a bank, income tax evasion, and money laundering. He pleaded guilty last year, and on March 7, he was sentenced to 5 and a half years in prison for his illegal activities.
Additionally, Carrasquillo was ordered to forfeit over $30 million in assets. These details were reported by Inquirer.
“Thirty million dollars is a lot of money [but] tangible objects aren’t everything,” U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III said during the hearing in federal court. “You have a large following and there may be people who think if you can get away with it, they can too.”
In 2019, it was reported that federal agents had seized almost all of Carrasquillo’s assets during a raid. Furthermore, his girlfriend’s bank accounts were frozen.
“I really didn’t know the significance of this crime until I was picked up [by the FBI] at my home,” he said in court during the sentencing hearing. “I feel like I let everybody down.”
