Europol and the Spanish Police have arrested six individuals in a big hit to illegal streaming TV networks, that were offered at over 14,000 points of sale.
In March 2018 the Spanish National Police supported by Europol’s Intellectual Property Crime Coordinated Coalition (IPC), arrested six individuals from a crime ring suspected of selling illegal television streams from more than 14,000 international points of sale. The pirate service sold through a company which designed the application needed to illegally stream films, television series and sport events.
The investigation began when EGEDA, Mediapro and the Spanish Football League filed a complaint with the police. During the course of the investigation police officers discovered a company, seated in Galicia, Spain which was suspected of transmitting signals for paid TV channels illegally.
The company developed both the decoder device and the application needed to illegally access the paid channels. The decoder was sold for EUR120 and the server to distribute the illegal signal was hosted in France and controlled from the business in Spain.
In total eight house searches were carried out in Spain, resulting in the arrest of six members of the organised crime group and the seizure of 4,600 IT devices.
On the action day Europol supported the investigation on the ground by deploying an analyst and a specialist to Spain equipped with a mobile office and a data extraction device. This allowed for real-time information exchange and cross-checks of the data gathered during the course of the action against Europol’s databases.
