Just two years after a previous incident where his home was also raided, Bill Omar Carrasquillo — commonly known as “Omi in a Hellcat” on YouTube — received an abrupt awakening from federal authorities. 

On the morning of Sept. 21, the YouTuber was placed in handcuffs and indicted for an ongoing internet piracy scheme in his New Jersey mansion.

Carrasquillo — a YouTuber who once boasted about his 790,000 subscribers on the social platform — has flashed his lavish lifestyle over the years, which includes millions of dollars in assets, 52 properties, and 57 vehicles, according to CBSPhilly.  A large portion of the YouTuber’s wealth is said to be illegal — coming from the Internet protocol television service, (IPTV) Reboot, Gears TV, Reloaded and Gears Reloaded. 

 

“I don’t think I ever did anything wrong. I was running businesses wide open in the public. So now we just gotta see. We are going to have our day in court now. So finally I get to not be depressed, not be stressed out anymore. Now I get my day in court,” he said in an interview to FOX 29 Philadelphia.

The New York Post reports that according to the “62-count indictment, the partners ran an illegal streaming service from 2016 to 2019 — at various times called  Reboot, Gears TV, Reloaded and Gears Reloaded — that offered subscribers all-inclusive access to content from the likes of Comcast, Verizon FiOS, DirectTV, HBO and others for as low as $15 a month.”

And for what it’s worth, the business scheme appeared to be quite successful. Carrasquillo and his associates reportedly earned over $30 million between March 2016 and November 2019.

“I became a millionaire straight off an idea. I saw a hole in the system, and I exploited it,” Omi in a Hellcat said in a 2019 YouTube video.

The YouTuber faces 62 counts of the indictment. If convicted, he will face up to 514 years behind bars for charges that include copyright infringement, wire fraud and tax evasion.

“Mr. Carrasquillo tapped into a brand new unregulated industry and was very successful. Most people are called pioneers when they do that. Omar is called a criminal. The government assumes my client was not smart enough to do this legally because of his background. He was and we’ll prove that,” Carrasquillo’s attorney said to CNBC Philly.