MUMBAI: What does it take shut a global illegal streaming service originating somewhere in Europe?
Try this for size: The European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation (Eurojust ). The European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol). The Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA). Italian, Croatian, Romanian, Swedish, Swiss, Dutch, Chinese and the UK authorities.
Quite a handful, right?
Well, they all worked down together late November to take down one of the world’s largest illegal streaming services, according to a press release issued by Eurojust. In a large-scale operation, over 100 searches were carried out against 102 suspects. Eleven suspects were arrested in Croatia.
The suspects illegally distributed material from streaming services online, including films and series. They also pirated more than 2,500 television channels, mainly sports. The illegal service served more than 22 million users worldwide. They were able to make over Euros 250 million in illegal profits per month. The economic damages to the copyright holders of the material is estimated at Euro10 billion.
To evade authorities, the suspects allegedly used encrypted messaging services to communicate and false identities to register phone numbers, credit cards, server rentals and TV subscriptions.
On 26 November, during an international operation, the servers hosting the illegal streaming were seized and shut down, disrupting the services.
Collaboration between authorities was set up at Eurojust to effectively pull the plug on the illegal streamer. Coordination meetings at Eurojust’s headquarters allowed authorities from Italy, Croatia, the Netherlands, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK to work together on the investigation and plan the operation to shut down the service and arrest the suspects. Europol supported the operation by deploying experts and analysing the available intelligence during the investigation phase.
The cooperation between the authorities culminated in a joint operation to take down the services on 26 November. The operation involved over 270 officers from the Polizia Postale carrying out 89 property searches in 15 Italian regions. An additional 14 searches were conducted by law enforcement agencies abroad, including five addresses in the UK, and further searches and seizures in the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Romania, France, Bulgaria, Germany and Croatia, according to the AAPA.
During the searches in Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Romania, Croatia, the UK and China, over Euros 1.6 million in cryptocurrency and Euros 40,000 in cash was seized. Croatian police arrested 11 suspects. AAPA said that "the immediately seized proceeds represent only a fraction of an illegal business that is alleged to yield approximately Euros 3 billion per annum."
The operation was massive as can be ascertained from the results achieved: 102 suspects were identified with the arrest of 11 people after searching 112 houses. 100 domains were blocked with 29 servers being taken away along with 27 different IPTV equipment and devices. During the searches 560 resellers names were discovered along with an assortment of drugs and weapons.
AAPA co-president Mark Mulready 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. We will continue to closely collaborate with law enforcement agencies in Europe and beyond to enable them to successfully identify, investigate and prosecute large-scale cross-border pirate networks.”
The authorities involved in the actions were:
* Italy: Public Prosecution Office Catania
* Croatia: The Office for the Suppression of Corruption and Organised Crime
* Netherlands: Fiscal Information and Investigation Service; Public Prosecution Service Rotterdam
* Romania: Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism; Direction for Fighting Organized Crime – Cyber Crime Fighting Service
* Sweden: National unit against organized crime at the Swedish Prosecution Authority; Swedish Police Authority
* Switzerland: Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland; Federal Office of Police
* United Kingdom: City of London Police
