Illegal streaming, maxi operation in Italy and 7 countries

More than 2,500 illegal channels and servers were seized, through which an illegal turnover of more than EUR 250 million per month, approximately EUR 3 billion per year, was realised.

The police, coordinated by the Catania Public Prosecutor's Office, carried out the Takendown operation, the largest against audiovisual piracy conducted in Italy and Europe, dismantling the most widespread transnational criminal organisation illegally serving over 22 million users. More than 270 postal police officers carried out 89 searches in 15 Italian regions and, with the cooperation of foreign police forces, 14 searches in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Romania and Croatia against 102 persons. The Croatian police executed pre-trial detention orders against 11 suspects. The operation against illegal streaming covered eight European countries. Cryptocurrencies worth over 1.65 million were seized during yesterday's searches.

All major platforms are affected by video piracy. Sky, Dazn, Mediaset, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Paramount, Disney +. Encrypted messaging, fictitious identities and false documents, also used for the registration of telephone users, credit cards, television subscriptions and server rentals are the ingredients of a mechanism used to capture and resell live programming and on-demand content protected by television rights, owned, as mentioned, by the best known national and international television platforms. All through illegal Iptv, the pezzotto, with a system, however, that involved a territory much wider than the Peninsula.

The operation - which took shape after a two-year investigation - is in fact the largest against audiovisual piracy ever conducted in Italy and internationally. So much so that the in-depth investigations carried out by the Postal Police made it possible to identify the foreign offices, in Romania and Hong Kong, where 9 servers were traced through which the pirated audiovisual signal was disseminated throughout Europe, which the Postal Police staff, with the cooperation of the other foreign police forces, proceeded to shut down. In addition, 3 top-level administrators and 80 streaming control panels for the various channels (Iptv) in the possession of the suspects were traced to England and the Netherlands.

These are the Italian cities where searches were carried out: Catania, Naples, Bari, Palermo, Messina, Syracuse, Agrigento, Lecce, Taranto, Foggia, Brindisi, Frosinone, Rome, Latina, Cosenza, Salerno, Avellino, Caserta, Matera, Mantua, Milan, Monza-Brianza, Brescia, Turin, Alessandria, Florence, Massa Carrara, Siena, Livorno, Pisa, Lucca, Reggio Emilia, Ferrara, Bologna, Rimini, South-Sardinia, Treviso, Genoa, Chieti, Perugia, Macerata.