Yet another modern day crook caught up to no good has been jailed recently for three years, for pirating the film Fast & Furious 6. Phillip Danks, a computer programmer from West Midlands, California, was the first person in the world to record and pirate the film upon its release on May 17th of this year.

Filming the flic from the back of the theater and catching some of the sickest rides on the planet on film, Danks then quickly uploaded it to the internet, leading to 779,000 downloads of the pirated film. Universal Studios, one of Hollywood’s biggest filmmakers, claimed more than $4 million in lost revenue and the law has hammered the throttle down on this thief.

Two days later Danks boasted on Facebook of his crime posting, “Seven billion people and I was the first. F*** you Universal Pictures”. This not so bright criminal was arrested at his home just five days after the crime was committed on May 23rd. Following his arrest, Danks was freed on police bail pending further inquiries but amazingly continued to offer a dozen films he had copied after being charged.

With the highly anticipated release of the film and the loss of one of the franchises main characters, Paul Walker, in a tragic car accident, a special webwatch team was set up by the L.A.- based Universal Pictures to catch film pirates. Quickly spotting the copies spreading on the net, Universal Studios immediately reported their findings to the authorities. Caught through an online tag placed on the video, the fraud investigators noticed that this tag was identical to his profile on the dating website Plenty of Fish.

Banking only an estimated $1,650 in cash, this crook did this primarily for street cred; wanting the recognition as the first to capture the film on video was the motivation for his crime. Appearing in court recently, Danks pleaded guilty to three charges of distributing pirate copies of films and has now been sentenced to a duration of 33 months in jail.

Copyright laws in full affect are quickly catching up with technology and are better able to catch perps of high tech crimes. Costing the iconic film chain over $4 million dollars, this tech savy crook could not outrun the law. With Fast and Furious 7 on the horizon, what precautions do you think should be put in place to protect the next installment of the film from pirating?