The profits
The Catania Prosecutor’s Office, led by Francesco Curcio, emphasizes that the operation “dismantled a complex, extensive, and widespread IT infrastructure that illegally served over 22 million end users, nationally and internationally” and that it generates “about 3 billion euros annually” and “causes over ten billion euros of economic damage to companies managing Pay TV.” According to the accusation, with a sophisticated IT system, that of illegal IPTV, “live schedules and on-demand content protected by television rights, owned by the most well-known national and international television platforms, such as Sky, Dazn, Mediaset, Amazon Prime, Netflix, Paramount, and Disney+” were illegally intercepted and resold. The operation is based on investigations directed by the Catania District Prosecutor’s Office and conducted by the local Cybersecurity Operations Center of the Postal Police with the direct coordination of the Central Service of Rome, which shed light on an alliance with well-defined operational structures, a distributed IT network across multiple countries, and a widespread organization aimed at reselling signals through multiple points.
The group, accused of transnational criminal association, is allegedly structured hierarchically, relying on accomplices investigated for illegal streaming of audiovisual content via IPTV, unauthorized access to IT systems, computer fraud, and money laundering. To attempt to evade investigations, the suspects allegedly used encrypted messaging applications, fake identities, and false documents, also used for the registration of phone lines, credit cards, television subscriptions, and server rentals. The postal police identified foreign locations, in Romania and Hong Kong, where 9 servers through which the pirate audiovisual signal was broadcast throughout Europe were traced and ‘shut down’. Additionally, in England and the Netherlands, three senior administrators of the investigated IT structure and 80 streaming flow control panels for various channels (IPTV) available to the suspects throughout the national territory were traced. During the searches, cryptocurrencies worth over 1,650,000 euros and cash over 40,000 euros were seized as they were considered the proceeds of the committed crimes. The monitoring carried out by the Postal Police, emphasizes prosecutor Curcio, “with extraordinary professionalism has allowed the detection of the presence on various social platforms of channels, groups, accounts, forums, blogs, and profiles advertising the sale of streams, panels, and monthly subscriptions for the illegal viewing of audiovisual content, also accessible through numerous illegal live streaming sites.”
What users risk
“We have shut down 22 million users in Europe. If we consider that Europe has about 500 million inhabitants, consider what a high percentage of individuals have rightly found their illegal connections shut down. They now risk an administrative sanction.” So said the Catania prosecutor, Francesco Curcio, to journalists, about the police operation ‘Taken down’ against illegal streaming.
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Publish date : 2024-11-27 12:00:00
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