The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Satellite Bahamas’ principals have been accused of “attempting to hide or delay the disclosure of evidence” vital to a lawsuit against them, with the US’ largest programmer now alleging their spouses assisted the purported scheme to ‘pirate’ its signal.

DIRECTV, in a November 22 filing to oppose a protective order sought by Peter and Michael Garraway, argued that the court order sought by the duo to prevent three US banks disclosing details on their financial dealings would “deprive” it of “evidence necessary to move the case forward”.

DIRECTV had issued subpoenas on Bank of America, Wells Fargo and TD Bank but, in what appears to be at least a temporary success for the Garraways, the south Florida district court ordered that the banks be told not to hand over the requested documents “until further notice”.

In a bid to remove this setback, DIRECTV alleged in its latest filing: “Defendants seek to shield from discovery evidence that is directly relevant to DIRECTV’s claims against them for fraudulent acquisition and re-sale of DIRECTV satellite television programming and equipment.

“More immediately, by filing their Protective Order motion, defendants are attempting to hide or delay the disclosure of evidence that goes to the heart of their denial of personal jurisdiction in [the motion] pending before this court.

“The relief sought by defendants’ motion – effectively quashing subpoenas directed to certain banks – would needlessly delay resolution of this litigation, and will deprive the court and DIRECTV of evidence necessary to move this case forward in accordance with the court’s scheduling order.”

However, DIRECTV has enjoyed better luck with the document discovery requests it has served on the Garraways personally, and their Top-of-the-Hill, Mackey Street-based business.

Its filing disclosed that the south Florida courts had rejected Satellite Bahamas’, and the Garraways’, bid to stay the document discovery process until their motion to dismiss the case was heard.

Returning to the bank subpoenas, DIRECTV argued: “The discovery sought by DIRECTV is also directly relevant to proving its claims against defendants.

“At issue in this case are hundreds of subscriber accounts that DIRECTV alleges were created by defendants with false subscriber names and false service addresses.

“As shown by the discovery to date, the records sought by the bank subpoenas are expected to show defendants’ ownership and control of those fraudulent accounts by their use of interconnected bank accounts and credit cards. Notably, discovery to date has already revealed additional witnesses to, and participants in, defendants’ fraud scheme – witnesses defendants failed to identify in their initial disclosures.”

Michael Houck, an investigations manager for DIRECTV’s attorneys, alleged in an affidavit that documents provided by Citibank and other institutions had shown regular account payments were made by credit cards belonging to Caroline Burnet and Phyllis Garraway, the Garraways’ spouses.

And the US satellite programmer further alleged that it had identified another six subscriber accounts believed to have been used by the Garraways “as recently as September 2013”, with 47 satellite receivers active on those accounts.

Continuing its offensive, DIRECTV added: “The discovery sought by the bank subpoenas is expected to reveal evidence of continuing violations since the filing of this action in July 2013.

“DIRECTV has successfully identified fraudulent subscriber accounts that remained active as late as September. Given that the accounts were created with false subscriber names and false service addresses, discovery of payment information is the only realistic means available to DIRECTV to identify and shut down the fraudulent accounts.

“Defendants know that documents sought by the bank subpoenas will show their denial of personal jurisdiction to be false and reveal further information about their illegal scheme.”

Tribune Business revealed previously how DIRECTV is alleging that Satellite Bahamas received almost $8.8 million in revenues through its allegedly fraudulent scheme to ‘pirate’ the US provider’s signal.

It described the size of the scheme as “nothing short of staggering”, and alleged that “the volume of mail was so great”, in relation to account billings and the like, that one Florida mail facility ended up storing Michael Garraway’s mailings “in mail bins used by the US Postal Service”.

The satellite programmer alleged that Satellite Bahamas created hundreds of fraudulent subscription accounts to mask the unauthorised use of its signal outside the Bahamas.

“The scope of defendants’ fraudulent scheme is nothing short of staggering,” DIRECTV alleged.

“The Garraway brothers and their companies created at least 621 fraudulent DIRECTV subscription accounts – each listing a false subscriber name and false service addresses in the United States.

“Each account listed a service address in Florida or New York; 581 of the accounts also listed a billing address in Florida. Taking advantage of special rules that allow multiple satellite receivers to be activated on a single account, defendants obtained 5,803 satellite Receivers - including 539 High Definition Receivers and 2,010 Standard Receivers that were available only by lease from DIRECTV – and activated those receivers for programming service on the fraudulent accounts they created,” DIRECTV added.