A friend of mine was helping the cable guy make his installation and in the process the ladder got hit and my friend fell off the ladder. He was banged up but figured he’d be okay. They never ever got a cable bill for 5 years until they moved.
So your friend accepted stolen cable as an implicit bribe in exchange for not ratting out the cable guy who would’ve lost his job for a serious workplace safety violation. Not an easy ethical call as I’m sure he didn’t want his own contributory poor judgment to be the cause of the cable guy’s firing, but the basic facts are pretty clear.
One wonders how many friends of the cable guy got similar deals. As a teenager I had a girlfriend whose father (probably knowingly) was stealing electricity from the power company. He could easily have afforded it.