DirecTV Inc. said that Martin Mullen, also known as Martin Stewart, was sentenced earlier this week by the U.S. District Court of the Middle District of Florida to seven years in prison and ordered to pay DirecTV and a subsidiary of NDS Ltd., DirecTV’s smart card provider, $24 million in restitution.

According to DirecTV, Mullen admitted he was engaged in a comprehensive satellite television piracy scheme involving an army of more than 100 sub-dealers and the distribution of thousands of illegal smart cards in Canada and in the United States.

Mullen ran his operation like it was a legitimate corporation. According to the Dec. 9 London, Ontario’s London Free Press, Mullen held training seminars complete with instructional video for attendees, to help guide his distributors on how to sell the smart cards. The paper reported that in one three-month period, Mullen distributed 16,000 pirate smart cards in the United States and Canada.

The London Free Press also noted that this is not the first time Mullen got in trouble for satellite television piracy, as DirecTV was awarded a $5 million judgment from him in 1996.