The operation

Guardia di Finanza dismantles Cinemagoal: pirate system for illegal streaming with 300 million in damages

The Guardia di Finanza has uncovered the existence of technology that allows illicit access to paid content on major platforms, from Netflix to Spotify, thanks to the action of foreign servers. Thousands of subjects are involved

by Pietro Menzani

22 May 2026

2' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

2' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

Thousands of people involved, seizures throughout the country, and damages in the hundreds of millions for the companies involved. The Guardia di Finanza uncovered a sophisticated audiovisual piracy system that allowed illicit access to paid content from some of the biggest streaming services. At the centre of the investigation is Cinemagoal, an application capable of overcoming the security blocks of platforms, increasing the quality of viewing and drastically reducing the chances of end-users being tracked down by law enforcement.

The Cinemagoal system

The operation was conducted by the Gdf of Ravenna and involved about 200 financial police officers who carried out more than one hundred searches and seizures all over the peninsula. The aim was to hit the complex system of pirate subscriptions set up by Cinemagoal, which allowed to enjoy the contents of Sky, Dazn, Netflix, Disney+ and Spotify.

Following close monitoring on social media, law enforcement officers discovered that the application connected customers' devices to a foreign server to decrypt the materials they wanted to access. In order to allow this complex system to function, virtual machines distributed across the country, active 24 hours a day, instantly picked up and relayed the original codes of lawful subscriptions in the name of fictitious subjects, so that they could send an unencrypted signal to users.

Bagnoli Rossi "Su pirateria non abbassare la guardia"

How to avoid controls

In order to circumvent the controls of authorities and platforms, access to the application did not result in the use of a connection directly associated with an IP address, a dynamic that ensured greater protection for the end user.

The annual subscription to this service cost between 40 and 130 euros depending on the package chosen, and over 70 people were in charge of distributing the product throughout the territory.

In order to hinder law enforcement intervention, payments were preferably made with difficult-to-trace instruments such as cryptocurrencies, or to foreign accounts or accounts in the name of fictitious persons.

Operazione contro pirateria audiovisiva, perquisizioni in Italia e in Europa

The investigation

The sophistication of the system made it necessary to cooperate with Eurojust, the EU agency for criminal judicial cooperation. In order to seize the foreign computer media that held the data needed to decode the protected audiovisual signals and the source code of the programme that ensured the operation of the application, the Gdf also had to operate in France and Germany.

At the moment, the first thousand subscribers have been identified, who will soon be notified of fines of up to 5,000 euro, but the material seized will make it possible to trace the identity of all those involved and to quantify the extent - millions according to initial findings - of the illicit profits of the Cinemagoal system. The damage suffered by the damaged companies is estimated at around EUR 300 million.

"I want to thank the Guardia di Finanza of Ravenna and the Prosecutor's Office of Bologna for this important anti-piracy operation that demonstrates the increasing effectiveness in countering even the most sophisticated technologies," said Andrea Duilio, CEO of Sky Italia, adding that "those who choose illegal streaming not only feed the multi-million profits of criminal organisations, but also risk fines and expose their personal data to theft and fraud".