US authorities from the Department of Justice and Homeland Security's ICE unit arrested Yonjo Quiroa as part of Operating Fake Sweep in February of this year. The 28-year-old Comstock Park, Michigan resident was suspected of operating nine websites that hosted links to other pages containing illegal streams of copyrighted sports broadcasts.
Officials said Quiroa's website linked to content belonging to the NBA, NFL, NHL, WWE and TNA. Furthermore, during the nearly two years his site was online, the site admin earned roughly $13,000 in advertising revenue.
Quiroa has remained behind bars without bail since being picked up in February. In August, he entered a guilty plea for a copyright misdemeanor to avoid going to trial. At the time he was told he would receive a sentence of between six months to one full year.
District Court Judge Robert Ellis recently handed out the sentence. Quiroa received time served for the single count of criminal copyright infringement. He was ordered to pay a special assessment fee of $25 due immediately.
Furthermore, the judge determined that money Quiroa earned from advertising was considered a loss to each of the five sports leagues that his site provided links to streams of. As such, he was ordered to pay back the full $13,000 as restitution. Split evenly, each league will receive $2,600. Oh, and he is also being deported to his home country.
TorrentFreak points out that this is the first verdict against the operator of a link site and could serve as precedent for pending cases like that against channelsurfing.net owner Brian McCarthy.