A local YouTube star who built a sizable following with slickly produced videos flaunting his fleet of luxury and sports cars, collection of diamond-encrusted bling, and his spacious Swedesboro home will be forced to give up nearly all of it after he was sentenced Tuesday to five and a half years in prison for the illegal business that allowed him to amass those trappings of success.
Bill Omar Carrasquillo — better known to his more than 800,000 online followers as “Omi in a Hellcat” — pleaded guilty last year to running one of the most brazen and successful cable TV piracy schemes ever prosecuted by the U.S. government.
As part of his sentencing Tuesday, he was ordered to forfeit more than $30 million in assets, including nearly $6 million in cash; cars including Lamborghinis, Porsches, Bentleys, and McLarens; and a portfolio of more than a dozen properties he’d amassed across Philadelphia and its suburbs.
“Thirty million dollars is a lot of money [but] tangible objects aren’t everything,” U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III said in announcing the punishment during a 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.”
Better known online as YouTuber ‘Omi in a Hellcat,’ Carrasquillo ran an illegal internet-based television and movie streaming service using video content fraudulently obtained from cable providers.
From March 2016 through November 2019, Carrasquillo and his co-defendants opened fraudulent accounts with TV providers Charter Communications, Comcast, DirecTV, Frontier Corporation, and Verizon Fios.
These companies supplied hundreds of set-top boxes and similar equipment to multiple properties owned by Carrasquillo. At these locations, content supplied by the TV providers had its copy protection stripped before being transmitted, stored, and then retransmitted to Gears subscribers using servers and other hardware controlled by Carrasquillo and his co-defendants.
U.S. Government Attorneys Submit Sentencing Memorandum
In a sentencing memorandum submitted in a Pennsylvania federal court on Tuesday, U.S. government attorneys say the infringement amount associated with the defendants’ services had been “conservatively” calculated at $176 million.
“Carrasquillo personally profited from the conspiracy in an amount of $30,095,204,” the memorandum notes.
62 Count Indictment
The original indictment charged Carrasquillo with a laundry list of crimes:
Conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, circumvention of access controls, access device fraud, wire fraud, criminal circumvention of copyright protection measures under the DMCA, and 20 counts of criminal copyright infringement.
And the list continued: six counts of wire fraud, three counts of false statements to a bank, 19 counts of monetary transactions from specified unlawful activity, two counts of false statements, two counts of removal of property and, finally, four counts of tax evasion.
Carrasquillo’s Plea Agreement
Carrasquillo and the government subsequently entered into a written plea agreement, the details of which are now revealed for the first time. On February 1, 2022, Carrasquillo pled guilty to the following:
1. Conspiracy to commit felony & misdemeanor copyright infringement, circumvention of access controls, access device fraud, & wire fraud from March 2016 through November 23, 2019, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371
2. Circumvention of an access control device, from March 2016 through November 23, 2019, in violation of 17 U.S.C. §§ 1201(a)(1)(A), 1204(a)(1) and 18 U.S.C. § 2
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