Nashville, Tennessee - September 21 , 2006 - James K. Vines, United States Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, announced that Brian Matthew Dorsett, 27, of Fort Wayne, Indiana, entered a plea of guilty in federal court today to charges that he conspired with others to sell and distribute devices primarily of assistance in the unauthorized decryption of DirecTV satellite television programming.
Dorsett faces up to five years imprisonment, restitution of up to $800,000, and a period of supervised release of up to three years following his imprisonment. Dorsett is presently serving a 30-month federal sentence for his conviction in the Southern District of Florida for conspiracy to commit access device fraud in a case involving the sale of devices used in the unauthorized decryption of DirecTV Latin America satellite television programming.
According to testimony at the guilty plea hearing today, in about November of 2000, Dorsett developed a means of illicitly modifying DirecTV "HU cards" using a device that came to be known as an "HU loader." In about November and December of 2000, Dorsett and Donald R. Nance II began to illicitly modify "HU cards" to enable viewing of all DirecTV channels without payment of the required subscription fees or pay-per-view fees to DirecTV and charged approximately $200 for each "HU card" thus modified.
In about December of 2000, Dorsett and Nance agreed to sell "HU loaders" and "daughter boards" through another man named Billy Joe Osborne. An associate of Osborne named Dale Kenneth Kubin arranged to sell approximately 100 "HU loaders" to an individual from Nashville, Tennessee for approximately $2,500 each. On or about January 19, 2001, Osborne, Kubin and another man named Timothy Nemeth met with the individual from Nashville in a hotel room at a Sheraton Hotel near the airport in Detroit, Michigan to exchange approximately 50 "HU loader daughter boards" for approximately $125,000 in cash. The cash then was delivered to Nance.
On March 9, 2001 Nemeth flew to Nashville, Tennessee from Midway Airport in Chicago, Illinois and delivered to the individual from Nashville a 3.5 " floppy disk that contained the HU loader source code for approximately $125,000.
The individual from Nashville grossed approximately $800,000 from the sale of "HU loaders" to others.
Nance, Osborne, and Kubin previously have pled guilty for their role in this conspiracy and are awaiting sentencing. Dorsett’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for December 18, 2006.
This investigation of this case was conducted by U.S. Customs Service and the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation. Assistant United States Attorney Byron Jones prosecuted the case for the United States.
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