Carlo Ricardo Mireles, 36, of Hawai'i pleaded guilty in February 2004 to seven felony counts associated with the scheme and was placed on supervised release for the past three years. U.S. District Judge D. Lowell Jensen also ordered Mireles to forfeit more than $250,000 worth of property, bank accounts and vehicles to the government.

Co-defendant Darryl Scott Poll, 44, of Moorpark, Calif., was sentenced June 7 to five years in prison, ordered to pay a fine of $350,000, and placed on supervised release for a period of three years after his sentence. Poll had previously pleaded guilty to eight felony charges of assisting in the unlawful interception and reception of communications services offered over a cable system.

According to the U.S. attorney's office of the Eastern District of California, Mireles and Poll were doing business as Wholesale Electronics and Red Rock Group Ltd., between June 1998 and December 2003, and manufactured and sold cable television descramblers allowing illicit access to cable programming.

The descramblers were advertised extensively through a series of web sites on the Internet and also through national magazines. The devices, manufactured at facilities in Simi Valley, Calif., and/or Las Vegas, were specifically modified and/or designed to allow consumers to receive premium and pay-per-view cable television programming without the knowledge or authorization of cable operators, according to prosecutors.

It is believed Mireles and Poll sold 100,000 illicit descramblers and received more than $12 million in revenue, prosecutors said.