IPTV: The largest pirate IPTV circuit in Europe was dismantled by Europol

A huge operation is currently underway in Europe, with the police forces of Spain, Denmark and the United Kingdom cooperating with the Europol so as to dismantle the larger pirate IPTV network on the continent.

Μhave made 5 arrests so far and are preparing to file charges of fraud, money laundering and copyright infringement.

In recent years there has been a very large increase in the turn of consumers to illegal service providers IPTV, so as to gain access to subscription platforms (e.g. COSMOTE TV, Nova), live content and on-demand video at a very low cost compared to what they would legally pay for each service. This results in huge amounts of money being lost by copyright holders and of course by companies that maintain such platforms.

For this reason, the aforementioned forces coordinated their actions for the largest operation to date to dismantle this circuit in Europe. At the same time, 14 raids were carried out in Spain (8), Denmark (4) and the United Kingdom (2), 5 arrests were made and another 10 people have given statements to the Police.

The research started in 2015 after a complaint lodged by the Premier League against a Malaga-based website (Spain) which offered IPTV packages through subscription. Spanish police have confirmed the illegal activity of showing content from 800+ TV channels, on-demand video services and radio stations. The packages offered by this website cost from € 40 / month and reached up to € 460 depending on the duration of the contract.

The research revealed various accounts on social networks that were used to reach customers, as well as a network of 20 additional websites that offered the exact same service.

Spanish police found that the whole operation was carried out by Spanish companies, however, payments from customers coming from 30+ countries, was done through a company based in Gibraltar. In the course of their investigations, they concluded that they had in front of them a highly organized and specialized criminal organization with a network in Spain, Denmark, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Latvia and Cyprus.

After a detailed investigation, the police managed to link the joint-stock companies to the bank accounts where the customer subscriptions were paid.

During the operation, the police disconnected 66 servers and discovered another 11 sites with multiple servers intended to serve the service. IPTV. According to their calculations, the organization managed to make a profit of € 8 million. from this activity, which were laundered through the shareholder companies in theoretically legal ways.

The operation is still ongoing to dismantle other such IPTV services, therefore, are in danger and quite "broken" that operate in our country.

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