Phara, Queen of NinjaVideo, Pleads Guilty To Conspiracy and Copyright Infringement

enigmax
September 30, 2011
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NinjaVideo,
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Hana Beshara, one of the founders of the popular NinjaVideo movie and TV show streaming site, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy and criminal copyright infringement. Better known online by her pseudonym Phara and by site members as their “Queen”, Beshara will be sentenced in January and faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison on each count.

Mid-2010, nine sites connected to movie streaming were targeted by the U.S. government. They included NinjaVideo.net, at the time one of the Internet’s most prominent video streaming sites.

This ‘first round’ in the ongoing “Operation in Our Sites” resulted in five people connected to NinjaVideo being indicted by a federal grand jury this month. One of those indicted was site co-founder Hana Beshara.

Yesterday, Beshara – who is better known online by her pseudonym Phara, and affectionately referred to by NinjaVideo members as their “Queen” – pleaded guilty to her role in the founding of NinjaVideo during 2008.

The guilty plea of the Las Vegas-residing 29-year-old was made before U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga in the Eastern District of Virginia. For crimes of conspiracy and criminal copyright infringement, Beshara faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison on each count.

According to court documents, Beshara admitted negotiating agreements with online advertisers and together with the other defendants receiving revenue and donations totalling some $500,000. Of this amount, Beshara admitted personally receiving $200,000.

“As part of her plea agreement, Beshara agreed to forfeit assets seized by ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in June 2010, including cash, an investment brokerage account, two bank accounts, a Paypal account and one Internet advertising account,” reads a statement from the Department of Justice.

Online, Beshara was a larger-than-life character who attracted both praise and criticism for her colorful management style as the most public-facing administrator of NinjaVideo.

But with this profile came enemies and at least one site dedicated to revealing her real identity. When photographs and details of her personal life appeared on the Internet in 2009, it was a question of when, not if, the site would eventually be brought down.

Beshara’s guilty plea follows that of co-defendant 23-year-old Matthew Smith, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and criminal copyright infringement last week.

Smith will be sentenced 16th December and the remaining three defendants will face a jury trial beginning 6th February 2012.

Beshara will be sentencd 6th January 2012, where she faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison on each count.

Hana Beshara (aka Phara) speaking earlier on her indictment

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Guest

Just kill Obama.
- Btapes
  
  If you think that will work go ahead and try, oh wait that would just cause new laws to be set in place that’s even worse. Come on be realistic and no one is going to march for less strict copyright laws, so try thinking a bit harder.
  
  Maybe the USA is ready to have it’s own Pirate Party but I doubt it. People are in the middle of economic recovery, until it hits their doorsteps don’t expect too much change.
  - Momo
    
    “no one is going to march for less strict copyright laws”
    
    Occupy Wall Street, maybe?? Aren’t they protesting corporate control of government? Just the amount of FUD surrounding their protests should be enough to show that somebody is afraid of them.
    - http://ompldr.org/vYWN3ag/see-what-i-thought-id-do-was-id-pretend-i-was-one-of-those-slut-whores-LOL.html w3ts1ut
      
      Occupy Wallstreet protests, by extension of the initial movement, seeks help to put the power back into the hands of people, I can see how that in some ways would allow for less corrupt control over issues like Copyright. Everything is negatively affected for us so long as our Government, authorities, and law makers remain bought. The connection between the protests and freedoms online is not directly made, but definitely supported and eventually addressed by such movements.
      
      To further reinforce your point about how worried authorities are with the protests, just look at the first few civilian arrests, they actually had to look up a (really stupid) law from the 1800s to prosecute people wearing a mask, this is a clear indicator that they’re rummaging for excuses to slow the movement, they are indeed worried.
      
      http://www.occupytogether.org/
  - Pp
    
    kind of haiting here but can’t help it, this person published her info and posted her vacation pics and even her full name I have read on the site before. Now she may have done a good job working on the site, the real question is why the hell didn’t she get the hell out of the us = case closed? Now shes fked….
- Momo
  
  Congratulations, you win a free trip to Gitmo!
- Anonlol
  
  … and elect Ron Paul
- http://www.facebook.com/eric.boehm Jack Murdock
  
  Yeah, with your collection of star wars figures toys huh?
  - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_PXX4S66KOUIGIKTTIMV3CBGO7Y Colin
    
    Breaking News
    Terrified Secret Service retaliate with tactical nuclear weapon
    :-)
    - Anonymous
      
      In other, unrelated news – TorrentFreak commenter Jack Murdock stabbed to death.
http://travismccrea.com Travis McCrea

You say “on each count”, but I am not fully certain if I understand the total number of counts against her? Just the two? Or is there multiple counts on each charge?
- Ven
  
  One count of conspiracy and 5 counts of “substantial” copyright infringement. Read about it here (http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2011/September/11-crm-1158.html).
  
  Realize that, since she cut a deal, she probably won’t get anywhere near the maximum sentence for this. Considering she handed over all of her assets, I’m going to go out on a limb and claim she gets less than 3 years in jail.
  - Anonymous
    
    Lol, that’s what i can get for publicly executing a random person in a busy street.
Bruddah

“Beshara admitted personally receiving $200,000″ – since 2008

i would say i hope they throw the book at her but they won’t now she’s saving the time and cost of a trial. shame
- Pbigmoon
  
  whats it matter weither they made money or not you either agree with it or you dont!
  - Bruddah
    
    it matters greatly that she made tremendous amounts of money out of shitty fucking media. makes her as bad as the **aa in my opinion. if the site was run non profit i would be in disagreement. better?
    - Pbigmoon
      
      you either want your movies/tv shows for free or you dont who made what shouldnt really come into it
      
      but at least we can both agree with w3ts1ut”s post :)
    - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IZ5BM5GNLA54OADSWGSXAMA7SY Jay
      
      “it matters greatly that she made tremendous amounts of money out of shitty fucking media. makes her as bad as the **aa in my opinion. if the site was run non profit i would be in disagreement. better?”
      
      This is a plea bargain. They make her admit a ton of stuff that isn’t true. I doubt highly with the raids she made that much.
      
      The US uses plea bargains to “influence” someone’s testimony. And now, you wonder why more countries don’t do it? Well, here’s one sign of a corrupt system.
    - Bruddah
      
      Jay
      well, if that’s how it works in the US, fair enough. people here (UK) tend to plea bargain to admit some of their easier to prove ‘crimes’ to avoid the full blown thing being blown up in court in a trial. then again similar crimes all in one case here would run concurrently, over there they appear to run consecutively (28 life sentences totalling hundreds of years etc). glad i don’t live there or i’d still be in prison since 1989, lol
      
      and yes, ok, so you could say she didnt make that much considering they nicked all her assets, hardly the point, the intent was there and she would have if they hadn’t got involved
      
      Pbigmoon
      sorry, it matters a lot to me, filesharing is filesharing, i detest anyone who makes a direct monetary profit out of it, including *aa
    - Rekrul
      
      Here in the US, plea bargains are often used as a way to scare people into pleading guilty to some charges, even if they’re actually innocent. Prosecutors would rather get a conviction on a lesser charge than to take the chance of losing in court. I’m not saying that would have happened in this case, but it does happen. I personally know a woman who took a plea bargain to spend a year in jail for sex with a minor, rather than go to trial to prove that he raped her and have her name dragged through the mud in the media.
      
      It’s strange that the feds don’t actually list how much money they seized. Could it be because it was nowhere near what they claimed she had?
      
      Also, you imply that she deserves it because she was trying to make money off the site. However, regardless of whether she made any money or not, her conviction makes it that much easier to convict others, even if they don’t make any money. Not only that, it helps to scare away any others who might think of putting up a similar site. Whether you like the people involved or not, every criminal conviction for copyright infringement makes it that much more risky for others to continue providing copyrighted material for free.
    - Piratescum
      
      @Rekrul
      
      Yeah nice story pal. There is no way a woman who was raped would spend a year in jail rather than trying to bring the rapist to justice, minor or not. All this nonsense of plea bargain in hilarious. Keep sprouting your nonsense here by trying to defend Phara and hope some 12 year old gobble it up.
      
      @Jay
      
      I guess you too will never run out of excuses to defend her either. Keep up the good work with your conspiracy theories.
    - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IZ5BM5GNLA54OADSWGSXAMA7SY Jay
      
      @Piratescum
      
      Hey, chief, ever think about the fact that the deck is stacked against her? I’ll give you three words to Google while you play the role of the denier: Hew Raymond Griffiths.
      
      And a little bit more research for you. plea bargaining controversy
      
      Perhaps when you have a better argument than random ad homs, I’ll actually take you seriously. Back to the drawing board, kid.
    - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IZ5BM5GNLA54OADSWGSXAMA7SY Jay
      
      @Piratescum
      
      Hey, chief, ever think about the fact that the deck is stacked against her? I’ll give you three words to Google while you play the role of the denier: Hew Raymond Griffiths.
      
      And a little bit more research for you. plea bargaining controversy
      
      Perhaps when you have a better argument than random ad homs, I’ll actually take you seriously. Back to the drawing board, kid.
    - Anon
      
      @ Jay.
      Oh for heaven’s sake, you must be 15 years old for the kinds of asinine things you’ve commented here.
      
      Convicting and punishing Phara is as correct and deeply satisfying as anything else previously in this debate. The future does not belong to digital content theft. The future will turn back to the artists because never will piracy ever gather the kind of majority thinking needed to make it mainstream and consequently accepted. The people will return those who fight piracy to office of their own free will again and again and again, because punishing piracy is right.
      
      And you know it.
    - Rekrul
      
      @Piratescum,
      
      She was drunk at the time, so there was really no physical evidence of forcible rape, just sex. She didn’t say anything because the kid was a neighbor and she didn’t want to ruin his life, but he started bragging to his buddies about having sex with her. The parents found out and filed charges against her. She was told that it was her word against his and that since he was a minor with no prior record, the jury was more likely to believe him than someone with a drinking problem. She was threatened with a much longer jail sentence if she lost at trial. Because she’s sort of a meek person who rarely stands up for herself, she took the deal.
http://ompldr.org/vYWN3ag/see-what-i-thought-id-do-was-id-pretend-i-was-one-of-those-slut-whores-LOL.html w3ts1ut

Okay, now lets put the corrupt spearheads of MPAA in prison for their conspiracies and shady lobbying.
- Bruddah
  
  this i agree with, but sadly they appear to be not only above the law, but able to easily manipulate it :/
  - Guest
    
    government only answer to people who have money! sadly…
Pbigmoon

Bruddah did ya murder someone :)
- Bruddah
  
  haha, nah man, i aint that bad ;)
- Bruddah
  
  haha, nah man, i aint that bad ;)
http://www.facebook.com/people/Don-Dilly/1624894683 Don Dilly

Thank god the grand jury system was got rid of in the UK. OK a magistrate usually just rubber stamps the charge without going through the evidence so long as they consider there is a case to answer.
The reason they got rid of grand juries is that they are untrained nor have legal knowledge and while they agree to the charges, unlike at even a commital hearing in the UK, the suspect is not present or represented however the fact it has been heard by a ‘jury’ applies undue pressure on the suspect. You combine that with the US form of plea bargaining and you have is not justice.

As we’ve seen the highly misleading and false claims made by the FBI/ICE when applying for domain seizures lying in court doesnt seem to bother them so long as it gets the result they want.

What the feds are after for their corporate paymasters is the right headlines. With the plea bargain effectively allows the feds to say what they want and their claims will never be challenged.
- Johnq
  
  the old saying the Feds could indict and convict a ham sandwich, on the federal level the system is stacked against defendants. The evidence rules are screwy, no state or even other major world government follows the rules they do, there is way to much discretion for the prosecutors and not enough freedom for the defendant with regards to evidence admission.
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Don-Dilly/1624894683 Don Dilly
    
    As a footnote to my previous post. While I said that a UK commital hearing is a mere rubber stamping exercise with the charges stated and a case outline including the part the suspect is believed to have played in the alledged crime. One of the more important aspects is that it is at this point, where the maagistrate refers the case to a higher (usually crown) court it is the defendant’s first chance for a full bail hearing.
http://profiles.google.com/orfetheo Orfeas Theofanis

“They included NinjaVideo.net, at the time one of the Internet’s most prominent video streaming sites.”

Anyone else thinks torrentfreak refers to every site as prominent, popular, famous:
Noone even knew about NinjaVideo.net before you covered their story…
- http://TorrentFreak.com Enigmax (Andy)
  
  NinjaVideo was one of the most famous sites of its type, which was probably one of the reasons why it was busted. You may have not heard of it, many thousands did, including the US government :)
- Nope
  
  NinjaVideo was a really large site. It use to get like 2 or 3 million unique views a month. Thats how it make 500k dollars.
- Anon
  
  Leave research to the people willing to put more than 2 minutes into covering a story :P
  
  TF has mentioned small sites in the past that still remain small and private.
http://twitter.com/AlyssaBlindy Alyssa Blindy

The wall Street protests seem to simply be a bunch of people, mostly college people, riled up with the economy, debt, and dealing with the unemployment rates. I don’t know if file sharing makes a link, but, I just, from what I read, see that it is a few thousand people (out of the millions of people in the USA) who are fed up, and decided to go out there and scream about it.
“Beshara will be sentencd (sic) 6th January 2012, where she faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison on each count.”
Add an E to sentenced there, will you?
#grammarnazi.
Great thing about using a screenreader: Mistakes are clearly noted by the program. It says a word wrong, and you know there is a mistake.
- ehiowerugh34o8y390
  
  Women in forums, without IMG codes!
  What the fuck is the point
Anonymous

Dude thats really messed up man, seriously.
privacy-web.it.tc
- Anonymous
  
  “Dude thats really messed up man, seriously.”
  so is your retarded spam
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Blah blah and blah

People need to educate themselves about the history of the printing press and then wonder what is going on today, to see if there is any resemblance to it.

This case prove that the only way to get the attention from ICE are two things: Creating a website of promoting live streaming videos of pirated contents, and making a profit from it.
GeoDuck

The article says “…faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison on each count” three times. You’d think that would be important. But it doesn’t once say how many counts. It was only Ven who said 6 counts.
Anonymous

http://delimiter.com.au/2011/10/01/us-style-mass-piracy-lawsuits-come-to-australia/
- Anonymous
  
  Can’t edit quote (keep getting You broke Torrentfreak =X )
  
  Speculative invoicing coming to Australia soon.
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Meh

hahahahahahahaha!

she best practice her cunnilingus skills cos shes a prison bitch in training
Lol

phara if your reading this, which we all know you are cos your a self obsessed narcissist. flumpy is laughing his ass off!

i always knew you were a useless sack of shit
Anonymous

“But with this profile came enemies and at least one site dedicated to revealing her real identity. When photographs and details of her personal life appeared on the Internet in 2009, it was a question of when, not if, the site would eventually be brought down.”
She should try to sue the person who did that – it’s privacy violation.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1275761203 Anthony J Bambari

You shouldn’t steal fro Lars Ulrich or else!!!!
ThumbsUpThumbsDown

Question: Is this specific action likely to effectively supress the emergence of more competent site admins and more robust, efficient, and more secure p2p sites? Phrased another way, is this the level of criminilization or coercion that will induce the p2p file sharing opposition to current copyright law (as a legislated monopoly in perpetuity, in which no intangible intellectual asset ever enters the public domain) to wither and die?

Copyright holders understand the scale of what’s at stake for them. In the digital universe their costs of replication, transmission, and storage (ie., their post-production distribution costs) have become Zero and their unit volume market for each transmission is potentially
the complete global population. No economic entity in history has ever enjoyed pure profit on this scale; not pharonic Egypt, not the roman empire, not the sultans of the silk routes, not the British Empire. This is the scale of economic booty at stake for copyright holders. One must admit that they wake up at the bell like they know what their fighting for.

Now, exactly who is the opposition? Do these people have a sense of what their legitimate complaints are? If they wake up at the bell at all, do they know that or if there’s anything worth fighting for? Frankly, these Ninja people don’t cut it as Ninjas.

Yet, copyright holders are deluded if they think that the opposition to the copyright laws which grant them non-competitive rentier profits is the brainchild of incompetent, lazy, unattentive and cowardly neerdowells.

I conclude with some comments on the questions with which I started: These arrests and prosecutions make all too clear the existential threat to the p2p community implicit in the level of criminalization that copyright holders are trying to apply. Yet, these prosecutions and the ones to follow will only achieve their intended opposite; more intelligent. more courageous, and more determined p2p admins armed with more politically focused opposition to the copyright perpetuities. My only fear is that these talanted entrepeneural p2p admins will move further into the darknet and abandon the political debate about copyright. That would be great for copyright holders, but tragic for the rest of society; afterall, what about us makes us relish the idea that two or three corporations should be the beneficeries of a one hundred year law making them exclusive paid custodians of every shred of information by which we guide our spiritual, moral. and intellectual lives.
- True Freedom
  
  The intellectual property debate is too narrow for the average American to give a shit. You first need to address the issues that the average American cares about: The Economy. Jobs. Taxes. Debt. Wars. Education. Healthcare. Food. Housing. Environment. Retirement. Fortunately, most of the problems in these areas have the same root cause: special privileges handed out by Big Government. Everybody needs to be educated about know how harmful special privileges are to a free society and a free market. Intellectual monopolies are just a few of many special privileges that career politicians eagerly hand out to their biggest campaign contributors. Remember: special privilege = fascism against the unprivileged, such as the poor girl in the video. You can help weakening the privileges given to special interest groups, corporations and federal government agencies by voting on a hardcore libertarian and constitutionalist republican in 2012: Ron Paul. An educated public is what he needs to get elected. Educating the public about these issues is something everybody can contribute to. Actually, that is what I am doing right now by writing this comment. Now you do the same.
Anonymous

America land of the enslaved
LOLZ-NINJA

America: Land of the Fascist Government

A conviction following the arrest of the ninjavideo operators could only mean that they will soon be going after the other guys and trying to land more convictions. A conviction means there could be a scare-tactic for others to think twice about starting such sites. When less start such sites, there will be less media available for free on the internet.

Whoever doesn’t side with this idea is a moron and doesn’t belong here.

As much as your hatred for Phara has blurred your objective opinion about a conviction of a site operator, this is not good at all!!!
Hjkl

Poor lady needed to find which creep to bribe long ago, obviously the FBI wasn’t getting their cut. She will know better in the future.
Anonymous

http://www.lovetoshopping.org Cheapest Vans Shoes,Tiffany Jewelry Company,Wholesale Hollister Clothing
Anonymous

why don’t go after pedophile and real criminals then people watching a movie.. geez’s i guess they are way to distracted by video sharing… then preventing drug mules, Mexican border, drug dealers, .and oh yes terrorists.
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Kab2222

I use to download movies all the time. With the criminal charges that one can face, I decided it wasn’t worth it. It is AGAINST the law to download copy right material without permission. I feel sorry for Queen , but everyone is aware of the consequence. I knowingly
decided that instead of waiting I would take my chance. I would say wait until it hit Redbox
to rip it. Good luck.
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Phara, Queen of NinjaVideo, Pleads Guilty To Conspiracy and Copyright Infringement

Hana Beshara (aka Phara) speaking earlier on her indictment

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Hana Beshara (aka Phara) speaking earlier on her indictment

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