Police from across Europe have taken down one of the world’s largest illegal streaming networks.
The piracy operation is alleged to have served audiovisual content to over 22 million users worldwide and generated over €250m in illegal revenue per month.
The operation, conducted this week, was coordinated by Europol and Eurojust and supported by the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA). It involved over 270 officers from the Polizia Postale carrying out 89 property searches in 15 Italian regions.
Another 14 searches were conducted by law enforcement agencies abroad, including five addresses in England, and further searches and seizures took place in the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Romania, France, Bulgaria, Germany and Croatia. 11 people were arrested by the Cybercrime Division of the Croatian Police.
Cryptocurrencies in excess of €1,650,000 and cash in excess of €40,000 were also seized.
Mark Mulready, Co-president of the AAPA, said: “We applaud the efforts of the Catania Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Croatian State Attorney Office for Suppression of Corruption and Organised Crime, Europol, Eurojust, and all of the law enforcement agencies involved in these operations. The scale of these multi-jurisdictional law enforcement actions highlights the considerable challenge our industry faces when dealing with such sophisticated international pirate networks. We are proud to have collaborated with our law enforcement partners to provide technical training and in-field support to assist them in successfully tackling the world’s largest pirate network.
“We are very grateful to the AAPA members who supported this action day, including Premier League, Sky Group, Nagravision, Deutsche Fußball Liga (DFL), beIN Sports, United Media, Friend MTS and Irdeto.”
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