A local YouTube star, who has garnered a massive following with skillfully produced videos, where he often shows off his fleet of sport and luxurious cars, a collection of diamond-studded jewelry, and his spacious Swedesboro home has been sentenced to give up almost everything following court judgement on Monday.
Bill Omar Carrasquillo — better known to his more than 800,000 online followers as “Omi in a Hellcat” — pleaded guilty last year to directing one of the brazen and most successful TV piracy shows ever prosecuted by the US government.
As part of Tuesday’s sentencing, he was ordered to forfeit more than $30 million in assets, including nearly $6 million in cash; cars including Lamborghini, Porsche, Bentley and McLaren; and a portfolio of more than a dozen properties he has amassed in Philadelphia and its suburbs.
“Thirty million dollars is a lot of money, but tangible things aren’t everything,” US District Judge Harvey Bartel III said while delivering the verdict during a federal court hearing. “You have a huge following and there might be people who think if you can get away with it, so can they.”
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Carrasquillo, 36, apologized to his family, employees and the cable companies he deceived through his business, which illegally sold content hijacked from set-top boxes to thousands of online subscribers, charging fees of up to US$15 -Pay dollars per month.
He said, “I didn’t really know the significance of this crime until I was arrested [by the FBI] at my home. I feel like I let everyone down.”
But while prosecutors found Carrasquillo’s crimes – which included charges of conspiracy, copyright infringement, fraud, money laundering and tax evasion – to be serious, the bulk of Tuesday’s hearing focused on Carrasquillo’s remarkable poverty-to-riches story.
He hails from North Philadelphia and was raised as one of 38 children. His mother was deported and died of an overdose when he was a child. His father was a drug dealer and taught Carrasquillo to cook cocaine at the age of 12.
He alternated between houses and caring for relatives, including a stint with a caretaker who purposely hired him into a psychedelic facility in order to gain access to psychedelic drugs that he could later sell on the streets. He spent much of his youth and early twenties in and out of prison for drug and other crimes.