A Tennessee court has sentenced a Memphis man who worked for a DVD and Blu-ray manufacturing and distribution company to 57 months in prison for stealing and selling digital copies of unreleased movies.
37-year-old Steven R. Hale was charged in March with selling ripped DVD and Blu-ray discs of movies before their release. Prosecutors stated at the time that Hale had stolen numerous discs of movies that were being prepared for commercial distribution in the United States between February 2021 and March 2022.
In May 2025, Hale admitted to committing criminal copyright infringement and agreed to fully compensate the victims, including returning to his employer approximately 1,160 DVDs and Blu-rays that investigators had confiscated.
Hale, a convicted felon with previous armed robbery charges, also pleaded guilty to unlawfully possessing a firearm found with one round in the chamber and 13 in the magazine.
"The copyright owner lost tens of millions of dollars as a result of Steven Hale stealing DVDs and Blu-rays of blockbuster movies and selling them before their official scheduled release dates," said FBI Special Agent in Charge Joseph E. Carrico on Thursday.
As the Justice Department revealed in March, Hale sold ripped versions of the stolen pre-release DVDs and Blu-rays through various e-commerce sites.
The list of stolen movie discs includes "Godzilla v. Kong," "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings," "Dune," "F9: The Fast Saga," "Venom: Let There Be Carnage," and "Black Widow."
He was also accused of ripping the pre-release "Spider-Man: No Way Home" Blu-ray and sharing a digital copy extracted from it online, after bypassing the encryption preventing unauthorized copying.
"That digital copy was then illegally made available over the internet more than a month before the Blu-ray's official scheduled release date," the Justice Department said. "Copies of 'Spider-Man: No Way Home' were downloaded tens of millions of times, with an estimated loss to the copyright owner of tens of millions of dollars."
In early March, prosecutors in New York charged two individuals employed by a third-party contractor for the StubHub online ticket marketplace with profiting $635,000 from the resale of nearly 1,000 stolen tickets for Taylor Swift's Eras Tour and various other events, such as the U.S. Open Tennis Championships, Ed Sheeran concerts, Adele concerts, and multiple NBA games.
Twenty-year-old Tyrone Rose and 31-year-old Shamara Simmons, both employees of Sutherland Global Services in Jamaica, were detained in New York City and are now facing a possible maximum penalty of up to 15 years behind bars.