‘Dodgy’ Fire Stick raids in 17 areas as users face 12 months jail and £50,000 fine

https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/dodgy-fire-stick-raids-17-33149821

by pppppppppppppppppd

42 comments

  1. Pay for your internet access. Then pay for a dozen subscriptions. Then don’t forget your telly license too.

    Remind me how this shit isn’t extortion.

    A Swedish mole or a charged particle will solve a good majority of these issues; IYKYK

  2. Someone tries to break into my house… “nothing we can do”

    Use dodgy fire stick “That’s 12 months in prison”

    Next time someone tries to break into my house I’m going to say that they had dodgy fire sticks in their pockets as well.

  3. What a waste of time and police resources. They care more about corporations’ bottom line than actual serious crimes. Mugs.

  4. Glad the police are keeping the streets safe by protecting the billionaire’s profit margins

  5. In other news: Amazon reports sales of new Fire Stick model “disappointing”.

  6. The cops are absolutely going after the makers and distributors of these devices, rather than users. There are millions of users and it’s very unclear how they’d even begin to go tracking them down.

  7. For all those commenting about how it’s a waste of police time/resources, I’d argue the complete opposite.

    Notice how it’s been reported in the Liverpool Echo, suggesting it’s a regional issue not a national one. You could suggest that devices are being modified by low level criminal groups being used by much wider organised crime groups as a means of generating some funds to spend elsewhere (drug trafficking, human trafficking, weapons trafficking…I could go on). If a device has been modified and they’re able to raid homes, that indicates that the devices that have been modified are traceable and known. So the police wouldn’t just be knocking on your nans door and checking to see if she paid Dodgy Dave to alter her fire stick.

    So no, it isn’t a waste of police resources, it’s actually a fairly clever, deliberate effort to reduce organised crime in the region. Bravo once again to those in the thin blue line.

  8. Streaming has gotten so bad an fragmented that people are even going back to physical media. The streaming companies have fucked themselves over being greedy or launching their own service

  9. Same headline comes out every few weeks, they don’t give a shit about catching people using them, it’s the sellers they want. Just scare tactics that boomers see on Facebook and believe it.

  10. During 2024, Jonathan Edge, aged 29 at the time, from Anfield Road in Liverpool, was handed a 40-month custodial sentence for distributing Firestick devices that allowed customers to unlawfully access Premier League football fixtures. Meanwhile in 2025, Sunny Kanda, then 40, from Creek View in Halifax, received a two-year jail term relating to “supplying and distributing TV fire sticks and concealing bank transfers linked to criminal activity”.

    As usual nobody reads the article.

    This is related to selling and distribution.

    Nobody has received jail time in the UK for using one, and nobody will.

    Although they are kind of shit anyway. Set up your own personal server.

  11. “This is a crime that diverts funds away from the entertainment industries, money that supports thousands of technical and support staff.” Sure sure. Which is why pay for those people have been largely stagnant but the paychecks for the top players are getting fatter and fatter. Cut the bullshit.

  12. Some fuckstick broke into my car back in October. Middle of the day, parked outside my house. Brazen as you like. Managed to somehow get in and steal sunglasses and the like but fortunately couldn’t steal the car itself.

    Called the police, nothing they could do. They wanted ME to contact all the neighbours and collect any available ring doorbell footage etc and send it to them.

    So fuck them! If fire stick raids are more important than theft and burglary etc something has gone very wrong.

  13. If you read the article you’ll see that no users have actually been investigated, arrested, or fined. It’s distributors that have been target.

    Absolutely appalling headline.

  14. How are they even getting warrants to raid people’s homes?

  16. Just a lesson for all: there’s no need to use a firestick dodgy or otherwise. A few internet links gives you everything you need for free. No middle man or technical set up or payment required. Those dodgy firestick people were selling you something that they got for free that is literally one click away.

  17. Do if I have a fire stick , how will they know it’s dodgy?

  18. Absolutely zero chance they have the time, resource or personnel to go to the homes of the average person just using these devices

    The major suppliers maybe, but these stories have been coming out every 6 months for years now

    Also they love to drive the “you’re funding major criminals and nefarious activities” narrative when the few people I know who have distributed streaming apps before are just a few tech savvy nerds from work

  19. In Liverpool…who’d have thought it.

    Seriously they put this article up every few weeks, wouldn’t surprise me if it’s a paid for ad by the premier league or other content providers to scare people into subscribing.

    Logically, the article is saying police raided peoples houses to find dodgy fire sticks….if they meant they identified a supplier who was selling them online then it’s more believable.

    BBC used to run adverts scaring people into paying for a tv licence and their special vans can detect you…sounds familiar? (Later proven false and didn’t exist)

    I’m not advocating for illegal streaming nor do I think the current fragmentation of content is affordable and sustainable especially in this financial climate…it’s almost like piracy died when content was affordable and easy to access.

  20. >Jonathan Edge, aged 29 at the time, from Anfield Road in Liverpool, was handed a 40-month custodial sentence for distributing Firestick devices

    Fun fact, the average sentence given for sexual assault in the UK is 36-48 months. The average for GBH is 24-36. Across violent crimes as a whole it’s about 20–22.

    Interesting that the courts consider dodgy fire sticks as much more serious than violent crime, and about a serious sexual assault

  21. “Individuals caught illegally streaming face penalties reaching thousands of pounds, alongside the possibility of imprisonment for up to 12 months.”

    Utter bollocks. No individuals are getting fined or being put in prison for streaming. Copyright infringement is a civil matter in the UK.

    People that sell devices enabled to access pirated content are being targeted, not individuals who bought a dodgy Fire stick from a bloke down the pub.

  22. Users of firesticks do not freak out. There is no way the police will come for you. They will need a warrant to come knock on the door, which means they need to prove to a judge that they have reasonable suspicion or whatever.

    That’s pretty hard to do unless they are sneaking around houses looking in windows when the big match is on. And even then they have no real way of knowing if its a legit sub or not.

    Sure they will probably make an example of a few people, but these will most likely be people “known to the police” and they will notice the firestick while on an unrelated visit.

  23. Remember, there is no such thing as a victimless crime!

    In this case the real victims are Disney, Sky-sports, Apple and others whose top line profits are directly affected. Our duty as citizens should be to provide resources so that these corporations are protected.

  24. Headline and article don’t match up, shockingly. There’s fuck all they can do about people with them, going after the people selling them is fair game.

  25. Well police officers buy them, so they know who sells them.

  26. Ironically, I work with a few former coppers and one of them said in their last job they had a guy who sorted them and their colleague Fire Sticks out at work.

  27. The irony being that sky bet has moved half of its business to Malta to avoid paying tax in the UK.

  29. That’s insane. It just shows how the big corporations have the MPs and lawmakers in their pockets, when those sort of punishments can apply to, this, while people committing serious offences, against ordinary people, are let off with barely a slap on the wrist. That is if the offense even gets investigated!

  30. My question is, how they detect the houses to raid? Do they check peoples web history without any other evidence?

  31. So amazon don’t pay tax but we get done for not paying amazon. Hah!
    The world is truly on its head.

  32. “Give them bread and circuses, and you can get away with anything”

    “Okay but listen, some of them were sneaking into the circus using dodgy sticks, so we put them in prison for that”

  33. Good to know my wife’s ex-friend can stalk and intimidate her for 3 years and the police say there’s nothing they can do about it. But if I told them the same person had a dodgy fire stick they would look into it.

  34. So people are getting arrested for putting an end user content on their Android Boxes and Fire sticks? I have a Raspberry PI Android TV Box and I use Custom Roms on all my Android Devices. In the UK,. people get arrested over this? What time to be alive.

  35. Clickbait title. It’s people distributing them, not using them.

  36. Classic scaremongering headline and article. They only ever go after distributors and resellers. 

    The most any user has ever gotten is a warning letter. No individual in the UK has ever been charged and arrested for only watching illegal streams. 

  37. Clickbait ASF, title applies to distributors. No way a single user of a firestick will have their fucking house raided

    More bullshit paid for by the government to scaremonger, whilst the real issues are ignored as usual

  38. They are cracking down on supply and distribution.

    So keep you hairnon Daryl.

    But what i dont get is anyone justifying using one.

    You have one to watch stuff for free.

    Its not because you are making some kind of statement against the “man”.

    Companies make profits – shocker.

    Companies charge what they can get away with, always have and always will.

    Pirating content is like home taping of records. But prirating and selling on is the real problem and thats what this crackdown is about.

  39. Good luck getting £50k off them, why do they think they’re using dodgy fire sticks in the first place

  40. I’d put money on this being distributors rather than users and it’s phrased this way as a scare tactic.

    That said, the amount of times I’ve walked past a house where you can see them watching a 3pm game on their TV through their front window, you don’t exactly need a detector van to see who’s using them.

  41. Maybe if the providers didn’t continually jack the prices and stuff more ads in then people wouldn’t do this.

    I mean, some people would, but most honest people dont mind paying a fair price for a service, but it’s getting really bad.  The only reason I have any streaming services is because one of my credit card gives me a refund on them and I get a lot of discounts for working in my industry 

  42. There isn’t a single reported case of an IPTV user being prosecuted in the UK. Of 5 million users only approx 1000 have been contacted with cease and desist letters.

    The target is the distributers because there are fewer targets but along side that the best the broadcasters can do are these various transparent PR stories (that take liberties with the facts) via regional online news outlets to discourage and scare people away from IPTV services.

    Until the broadcasters make their services more affordable in this dire economy, people will continue to use these cheap services which often offer much more than sky or virgin can offer. For instance, 3pm KO. And since end users are too expensive to find and prosecute, they can continue to use these services without fear.

Comments are closed.