The latest phase of the global law enforcement action resulted in seizing three industrial-scale illegal IPTV services.
The operation, coordinated by Europol, Eurojust, and Interpol, was led by Italy’s District Prosecutor’s Office of Catania and Italian State Police, extending to 11 cities and 14 countries worldwide.
The focus of the action in Italy is because the country is hosting the Winter Olympics in Milan, scheduled to take place between February 6 and 22, hence cracking down on illegal broadcasts of the sports events is a priority for the local authorities.
Apart from seizing infrastructure, the police also identified 31 individuals suspected to be connected to the illicit IPTV services, 11 in Italy and 14 in the United Kingdom, Spain, Romania, and Kosovo.
“The investigation yielded evidence of guilt against the 31 members of a transnational organized criminal group, accused of broadcasting conditional access television programming, unauthorized access to a computer system, computer fraud, fictitious asset registration, and money laundering,” reads the police’s announcement.
“The activity made it possible to dismantle an information technology infrastructure that illegally served millions of end-users, nationally and internationally.”
The police specifically mention copyright infringements impacting Sky, DAZN, Mediaset, Amazon Prime, Netflix, Paramount, and Disney+, whose broadcasts were illicitly captured and re-transmitted to IPTV service subscribers.
The operators of these services reportedly used tactics such as cryptocurrency payments and setting up shell companies to obfuscate the money trail and evade taxation.
According to a congratulatory announcement by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), the three major services seized in the latest law enforcement action are IPTVItalia, migliorIPTV, and DarkTV.
“The investigation uncovered a structured, hierarchical criminal organization operating at industrial scale, distributing unauthorized pay-tv and on-demand content to millions of users and generating millions of euros in illicit revenue each month,” ACE said.
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