MIAMI — The FBI searched O.J. Simpson's Miami home on December 4, 2001, as one of 13 locations targeted in a two-year investigation into drugs and satellite television piracy. Simpson, who greeted officers in a white bathrobe, was not arrested, and no drugs were found at the residence on 112th Street.

Simpson's address had come up during the investigation in connection with the purchase of satellite TV pirating equipment. According to court filings, James Whalen, then senior director for DirecTV's Office of Signal Integrity, accompanied law enforcement at the FBI's request to help identify counterfeit or illegal materials associated with the theft of telecommunications services.

Whalen observed two DirecTV receiver and descrambler units hooked up to televisions inside the home, along with two bootloaders connected to the descramblers and in operation. He checked the channels on the descramblers and was able to view pay-per-view programming and other channels that Simpson was not authorized to receive. Whalen handed the bootloaders over to FBI agents during the search.

DirecTV records indicate that Simpson maintained a subscription from 1995 into 1998. At the time of the raid, he had no legitimate DirecTV account at his Florida residence.

The search came months after DirecTV rolled out an electronic countermeasure days before the 2001 Super Bowl. January 21, 2001, was known in the pirate community as "Black Sunday," when large numbers of illicit access cards were knocked out. DirecTV sent code through the satellite feed that hunted down hacked smart cards and destroyed them. The first eight computer bytes of all hacked smart cards were rewritten to read "GAME OVER." The attack code had been sent to pirate cards in about five dozen parts over the course of two months. By some estimates, 100,000 smart cards were destroyed in a single evening, removing 98 percent of the piracy community's ability to steal the signal.

Simpson had moved to Florida in 2000, a state with strong laws protecting homes and pensions from creditors and court judgments. He was acquitted of murder in 1995 following a 1994 white Bronco freeway chase and arrest, then found liable for wrongful death in 1997 in a civil suit filed the previous year. He defaulted on his California mortgage in 1997, and his Heisman Trophy was auctioned in 1999. He was charged with battery in 2001 and later acquitted.