A school headteacher has been jailed after he ran an illegal streaming service worth £450,000.
Paul Merrell, 43, operated the illegal business which ripped off the likes of Sky Sports and TNT Sports for four years building up a customer base of 2,000 people and making around £240,000 in profit, reports BirminghamLive.
Merrell, of Boldmere Road, Sutton Coldfield, had been a deputy headteacher at a school in Coventry for most of the period between January 2017 and January 2021 before moving on to Elmfield Rudolf Steiner School in Stourbridge where he was headmaster at the time of his conviction.
He was credited with turning around the financial fortunes of the boarding school which is now at risk of closure without him.
Merrell admitted two offences under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act and on Friday, February 2, he was jailed for 12 months.
A confiscation order for £91,250 was also made which was likely to result in the married father-of-one losing his house, his barrister said.
Judge Simon Drew KC said during the trial at Birmingham Crown Court that he recognised Merrell had suffered a “great fall from grace” but concluded a deterrent punishment needed to be passed for what he described as a “sophisticated and persistent commercial undertaking”.
The headteacher had sold software for £10 a month providing illegal access to subscription-only services including TNT and Sky, which usually cost about £50 per month, the court was told.
Over the four years, he received around £450,000 into a PayPal account but transferred nearly £200,00 of that to criminal online enterprises which hosted the illegal streams.
Ben Mills, prosecuting on behalf of Birmingham City Council, said: “Is it victimless? Without any thought it’s just Sky and BT who lose out and they make millions anyway. Plainly they suffer losses through criminal activity. All their direct subscribers are indirect victims because if there are fewer subscribers they are going to face higher costs.”
He said the more “visceral loss” was to the likes of non-profit organisations like the Football Association which received money from selling broadcasting rights to televised matches and distributed the proceeds to grassroots football throughout the country.
Lee Marklew, defending, told the court that Merrell left his £70,000-a-year job at a school in Coventry in July 2021 and took a pay cut for a £56,000 salary at Elmfield because “he knew the school needed saving and he thought he could do something about it”.
He explained that the school had been making six-figure losses prior to Merrell’s arrival and only managed to “stay afloat” by selling land, Mr Marklew added Merrell had convinced staff to take a voluntary pay cut despite the fact they were already earning below the market rate.
He added that the defendant had secured a £30,000 deal with Dudley Council to take on home-school children who needed extra support. A letter from Sue Dawson, chair of the school council, said “all will be lost” at the school if he was jailed and it would face closure.
Mr Marklew added: “They don’t pay staff market salaries and accruing someone like Mr Merrell on the salary he commands would be almost impossible to find without a significant degree of good fortune.”
“Should you send him to prison it is difficult to see how he could keep his house. It’s worth half a million. The consequences of his actions upon others, his wife, son and all the pupils and staff would be destabilising in the extreme. They are innocents.
“The school faced near-intolerable financial strain. He became instrumental in seeing the school through troubled waters. Plainly away from this criminality, he is ordinarily a decent human being committed to the school.”
Judge Drew estimated Merrell had diverted up to £3m away from television subscription companies, based on the discount he provided, although he acknowledged not everyone who bought illegal streaming packages would have purchased a legitimate one.
