Suspected Movie Pirate Arrested

The FBI arrested an Illinois man Thursday on criminal charges in connection with bootlegged copies of “The Last Samurai” and other Oscar candidates that have turned up on the Internet in recent weeks.

Agents took Russell W. Sprague Sr. into custody in the Chicago suburb of Homewood on a federal complaint that charges him with copyright infringement and the illegal interception of a satellite signal. The FBI said that agents seized copies of at least 11 movies related to the infringement charges -- including “Mystic River,” “Calendar Girls” and “Something’s Gotta Give” -- as well as more than 150 other films.

Sprague, 51, is scheduled to appear before a federal judge in Chicago today.

According to the complaint, Sprague obtained videocassettes of the Oscar candidates from Carmine Caridi, a friend who is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Warner Bros. triggered the investigation early this month by notifying the FBI that illegal copies of “The Last Samurai” and “Mystic River” were available for downloading on the Internet.

Caridi, a veteran film and television actor, cooperated with authorities after the copies on the Internet were traced to videos that, as an Oscar voter, he had received from the studio.

Hoping to snare movie pirates, the studios had placed identifying marks on every so-called screener video distributed to academy members this awards season. The academy required all of its members to sign waivers pledging that they wouldn’t share their screeners with anyone. Members who don’t honor the pledge could be expelled.

Caridi said he had been sending his screeners to Sprague for five years, believing his friend “was a film buff and only wished to view the films,” according to the complaint. Every awards season, Sprague sent Caridi the FedEx envelopes and shipping labels that the actor used to dispatch the videos to Sprague, the complaint says.

For his part, Sprague said he gave copies of Caridi’s screeners to an unidentified third person in exchange for the free use of a FedEx shipping account, the complaint says. It also says he told authorities that he made as many as six copies of each screener and distributed them to relatives and friends.

The 69-year-old Caridi “was embarrassed to learn that his name was associated with the film that was being improperly distributed,” said his attorney, Richard Millard.

Millard said Sprague and Caridi, who played Det. Vince Gotelli on “NYPD Blue,” had been introduced by a mutual friend a decade ago. Millard said Caridi never suspected Sprague would do anything illegal with the screeners. “He had no idea anyone else would be seeing them,” Millard said.

As for the illegal interception of a satellite signal charge, the complaint says Sprague reprogrammed DirecTV access cards so he could watch premium satellite channels for free.

The academy declined to issue a statement on the arrest.

In September, a federal judge in New York sentenced Kerry Gonzalez, a 24-year-old insurance underwriter, to six months of home confinement for posting a rough, pre-release version of the movie “The Hulk” on the Internet. Gonzalez had gotten a copy of the film from a friend who worked at a Manhattan advertising agency working on the movie’s marketing campaign.