ZINGA: BOX FRAUD COST VIRGIN £140 MILLION

A fraudster cost Virgin Media more than £140million when he sold 400,000 set top boxes which could be programmed to receive subscription channels for free.

Munaf Zinga, 41, supplied a ‘blank’ box used to hack into the channels with instructions to download illegal software.

The scam cost Virgin up to £144 million a year.

Zinga’s company Rayyonics Ltd was set up in the summer of 2005 to supply the Eurovox set top box and the illegal ‘firmware.’

During 2008, the business expanded to produce a new box, designed to pick up channels from UPC subscription channels in Ireland.

Later in the year it produced the European Quantam box, designed to pirate other satellite TV channels.

In March 2008, police arrested one of Rayyonics clients, Paul Boswell, who was caught selling the devices in Wigan.

The following month Imran Khansia and Rafiq Dudwhala, who had also bought set top boxes from Rayyonics were also arrested.

The company reacted by producing a programme which allowed the boxes to simply pick up free to view channels such as the BBC, he said.

But the boxes cost of around £100 each to view programmes which could be seen for free, Snaresbrook Crown Court heard.

‘We heard evidence that the average Virgin customer spends £30 per month on television,’ said prosecutor David Groome.

‘If that figure is indicated and it is assumed that the users of these boxes were in fact watching TV in accordance with the average user, that would give us an actual loss figure of around £12 million per month or £144 million per year.’

Zinga was the founder and the prime mover of the business, Mukundan Pillai, 42, the technical expert and Salim Patel, 47, the delivery driver. 

Patel had admitted his role in the conspiracy, on the basis that he was not involved in the company, and made no profit from it.

Zinga and Pillai both denied conspiracy to defraud, but were convicted after a trial.

Passing sentence, Judge Inigo Bing said: ‘This was a clever and audacious fraud conducted over a considerable period of time.

‘You, Pillai and Zinga, combined your undoubted talents in your respective field in a truly devious and dishonest fashion.

‘Although the conspiracy was simple, it took a combination of business acumen provided by you, Mr Zinga, and the technical know-how provided by you Mr Pillai, into practice.’

He said the ‘ingenious and devious’ scheme had been cloaked in respectability, which implied that the devices were legal.

Zinga, of (55) Dacre Road, Plaistow, east London, was sentenced to eight years in prison.

Pillai, of (6) Nonsuch Close, Hainault, Essex, was handed six years for his ‘crucial’ role.

The judge said he accepted Patel had played a much lesser part, but said the fraud needed a trusted driver to deliver boxes and take cash.

Patel, of (5) Crescent Road, Plaistow, admitted to conspiracy to defraud and was sentenced to a year in prison.

Zinga’s wife Yasmin, of (55) Dacre Road, Plaistow, east London, and Jose Sreeraman, of (6) Sheringham Drive, Barking, Essex, were earlier acquitted of conspiracy to defraud.

Boswell, who had bought 8,000 boxes from Rayonics, later admitted selling unauthorised decoders at Liverpool Crown Court.

He was sentenced to two years in prison after voluntarily paying back some £120,000 in profits from the enterprise.

Kahnsia and Dudwhala, who had bought around 10,000 boxes through their companies Cleverbase and Telebox, lasted pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud.

They both sentenced to six years in prison after a trial at Preston Crown Court.

Salim Zinga pleaded guilty to the same charge at a joint trial, after bank accounts revealed he had received some £400,000 in payments from suppliers, which he had then paid to Rayyonics.

He was sentenced to four years in prison.
ends