A pan-European police operation has shut down “one of the largest” illegal streaming services in the world, used by some 22 million people and causing 10 billion euros in lost royalties, they said. announced Wednesday the EU legal agencies, based in The Hague. The name of the service is not specified.
Police from nine EU countries and the United Kingdom arrested 11 suspects on Tuesday, shutting down servers and carrying out searches, Eurojust and Europol said in separate statements.
“More than 100 searches were carried out against 102 suspects. Eleven suspects were arrested in Croatia,” said Eurojust, the EU’s judicial cooperation body.
The suspects illegally streamed audiovisual content, “including films and series” and pirated more than 2,500 television channels – including sports channels – making them accessible to more than 22 million people around the world, according to the press releases.
“They were able to make more than 250 million euros in illegal profits per month. The economic loss caused to copyright holders is estimated at 10 billion euros,” Eurojust underlined.
The suspects allegedly used encrypted messaging services to communicate and fake identities to register phone numbers, credit cards, server rentals and subscriptions to pay TV channels.
“In addition to crimes against intellectual property (copyright infringement), there are indications of other crimes, such as money laundering and cybercrime, which are currently under investigation” , noted Europol, noting that weapons, drugs, 1.6 million euros in cryptocurrencies and 40,000 euros in cash had been seized.
The operation involved Germany, Bulgaria, Croatia, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Switzerland.
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