MIAMI - Satellite television network DirecTV Inc. has accused former football star O.J. Simpson of using illegal electronic devices to pirate its broadcast signals.
The El Segundo, Calif. company wants Simpson to pay at least $20,000 for the use of the equipment and attorneys' fees, according to the lawsuit filed in federal court in Miami.
Federal agents removed satellite TV equipment from Simpson's house in the Miami neighborhood of Kendall during a search on Dec. 4, 2001. The raid occurred as the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and Miami-Dade County police were investigating Simpson and others in an alleged Ecstasy and satellite-theft ring. Simpson was never charged.
Simpson attorney Yale Galanter denied the lawsuit's allegations. "O.J. Simpson has never owned any pirating equipment, pirating cards, illegal cards," Galanter said. "He's been a loyal, paying customer of DirecTV for years."
DirecTV spokesman Bob Mercer said the company has filed more than 22,000 signal piracy lawsuits since 2002.
Simpson moved to Florida from California after he was acquitted of murder charges in the 1994 stabbing deaths of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman.
A California civil jury in 1997 held him liable for the killings and ordered him to pay the victims' survivors $33.5-million.
Simpson has not worked since, and the judgment remains largely unpaid.
