LOS ANGELES – An individual was indicted last week by a federal grand jury in the Western District of Tennessee for stealing and selling pre-release DVDs, copies of which were re-distributed tens of millions of times on pirate sites and networks before any legitimate release date.

These federal charges stem from an investigation and a referral from the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), the world’s leading antipiracy coalition. This indictment comes on the heels of two additional, unrelated civil lawsuits filed in federal court by ACE members against individuals in California and Pennsylvania, each accused of operating illegal internet protocol television (IPTV) services.

The indictment charges the individual with two counts of criminal copyright infringement and one count of interstate transportation of stolen goods. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison on each criminal copyright infringement count and 10 years in prison on the interstate transportation of stolen goods count.

“We applaud the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section of the U.S. Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Tennessee, for their action in the case against the individual charged with illegally selling copyrighted content, and we thank the case agents and prosecutors who conducted this investigation,” said Karyn Temple, Senior Executive Vice President and Global General Counsel for the Motion Picture Association (MPA). “It is because of work like this with law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and worldwide that the MPA can make significant progress in protecting the intellectual property rights of creators and addressing copyright infringement at the source.”

Read the full DOJ release here.