DirecTV Inc. said it filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas against 12 individuals, including at least 10 former DirecTV customer service agents, who it believes engaged in a scheme to defraud the direct-to-home satellite television service provider by creating subscription accounts with false information and fraudulently linking access cards to existing accounts that enabled others to receive DirecTV programming without authorization or proper payment to DirecTV.

According to the complaint, individuals formerly employed at the call center used their positions as customer service agents to create subscription accounts with false information, activated access cards and linked them to legitimate existing accounts by misrepresenting the identity and the relationship of the person using the card and the location of the cards activated by the defendant. DirecTV also claims the defendants were acquiring DirecTV access cards to set-up additional bogus accounts and were shipping cards to locations around Texas, as well as to New York, North Carolina and other locations around the country.

In other DirecTV news, Setanta Sports said it is launching a new premium sports package on the DTH platform that it claims will offer the most extensive coverage of European soccer in the United States. The channel, which shares the same name as the company, debuts April 26 and will be available to residential subscribers for $11.95 per month and commercial subscribers for $100 per month. The channel will be on the air for 18 hours a day, seven days a week when it is launched and is expected to go to 24 hours a day beginning in September.