Illegal streaming, 1 million per month bandwidth vanquished | Details

Searches and kidnappings in 22 Italian cities, million euros of proceeds for 70% of “pirate” streaming in the country: dismantled during the night on input from the District Prosecutor of Catania the “largest illegal streaming network in Italy”. The State Police proudly announces it during the final stages of the maxi operation called Gotha.

The “big” is now done, the Cyber ​​Security Operations Centers of the Postal Police are carrying out searches and kidnappings of members of a criminal association of character transnational. Agents are engaged in dozens of Italian cities, from north to south of the country: Ancona, Avellino, Bari, Benevento, Bologna, Brescia, Catania, Cosenza, Fermo, Messina, Naples, Novara, Palermo, Perugia, Pescara, Reggio Calabria, Rome, Salerno, Syracuse, Trapani, L ‘ Aquila and Taranto.

The network set up supported, as mentioned, about 70% of illegal streaming in the bootwith a base users of about 900 thousand and monthly profits “for million euros“. At 11 in the headquarters of the Mobile Department of the State Police of Catania a press conference will be held in which the operation will be illustrated in detail. Among the maxi operations with millions of “pirate” subscriptions we remember that of May last year, which eliminated 80% of the illegal flow of IPTV in Italy.

The CEO of Sky Italia, Andrea Duilio, issued a statement regarding the operation.

I want to congratulate – he said – the Postal Police for the important results achieved with the Gotha operation, which once again demonstrate how piracy is a phenomenon managed by organized crime. Sky is, and will always be, alongside the police in this fight to defend the audiovisual industry and to protect all those who legally subscribe.

DAZN instead stated:

900,000,000 users for a monthly profit of millions of euros. An impressive number that must make us reflect seriously on the enormous damage that piracy continues to cause to the audiovisual sector and, in our case, to sport. The work being carried out by the specialized departments of the Postal Police and the Guardia di Finanza makes it clear that there are illegal players on the market that undermine the possibility of continuing to invest in the industry of live streaming of sporting events. Sharing personal data through subscription to illicit services also puts at risk the safety of the very “customers” of these illegal services who should be aware of sharing their sensitive information with sophisticated and dangerous criminal organizations.

Thus Federico Bagnoli Rossi, president of the Federation for the Protection of the Audiovisual and Multimedia Content Industries:

As FAPAV we applaud the important anti-piracy operation announced today by the State Police and ordered by the Catania District Prosecutor, which has revealed once again how real criminal mentality and huge illicit profits are hidden behind piracy. The phenomenon of illegal streaming of audiovisual content represents, not only for the film, TV and sports industry, but for the country as a whole, a serious problem, both from an economic and industrial development point of view, and with respect to IT security and the protection of citizens’ privacy.

[…]
It is necessary to be increasingly effective and timely in law enforcement actions, and in this direction I believe it is essential that the anti-piracy law proposal, recently filed with the Chamber of Deputies, travels quickly and can become effective quickly.

15:00

Already from the words of this morning it was clear that the operation was one of those destined to make noise. And at the press conference in Catania he also wanted to participate director of the Postal Police Ivano Gabrielli, arrived in town this morning. Not surprisingly, because the numbers of the investigators dimension the story: 70 people under investigation from north to south of the country – some of which are beneficiaries of citizenship income – for having exploited the broadcasts of Netflix, DAZN, Prime Video, Sky, Mediaset, private individuals of about 30 million euros per month.

THE earnings of the organization they cannot be quantified in their interest, or rather at present only those relating to the six months of investigation are quantifiable, which would amount to about 10 million euros. A booty, in short, certainly more than a million euros per month, at least in the “golden” period.

To share the biggest slice were the leaderssome of them in England, Germany or Tunisia, while to “commercial agents”, those who placed the pirate subscriptions, got a couple of euros in their pockets for each “contract” which, with about 10 euros / month, allowed them to see everything. TO not earning anything were the unsuspecting citizens to which the prepaid cards were made out to collect the shares of those who did not pay the monthly cash.

Those who supported the black market will also lose us behind Amazon, Netflix and company: i customers they will be administratively or criminally sanctioned.

There is a criminal economic system that in fact drains enormous resources from the legal one, with organized structures behind them, now stratified and well organized and present in the area as a real commercial activity – explained Gabrielli at a press conference. Investigations have shown links to one real criminal association at various levels, with various roles, up to the summit, which called itself the ‘Gotha’.

In addition to the position of the 70 suspects – added Gabrielli – we will deepen the investigations and positions also of those who distribute and those who buy this illegal form of production. Let us remember that it is an illegal market that feeds other criminal markets. Those who subscribe illegally may think they are doing a small thing, but in reality they are effectively financing a criminal market with enormous revenues. We are talking about the 70% of the illegal market that we are disrupting by also intervening on the technical criminal infrastructure. The ‘Gotha’ is Italian, but the IT infrastructure is foreign.