Europol and Spain’s Cuerpo Nacional de Policía (Spanish National Police) have arrested six individuals in what they suggest is a “big hit” to illegal TV streaming networks.

The Spanish National Police, supported by Europol’s Intellectual Property Crime Coordinated Coalition (IPC³), arrested six individuals from a crime ring suspected of selling illegal television signals from more than 14,000 international points of sale. The signals were sold through a company which designed the application needed to illegally stream films, television series and sport events.

The investigation began when copyright protection trade body Entidad de Gestión de Derechos de los Productores Audiovisuales (EGEDA), multimedia communications group Mediapro and the Spanish football league La Liga filed a complaint with the police. During the course of the investigation, police officers discovered a company, based in Galicia, Spain which was suspected of transmitting pay-TV channels signals illegally.

The company developed both the decoder device and the application needed to illegally access the paid channels. The decoder was sold for €120 and the server to transmit the illegal signal was hosted in France and controlled from the business in Spain.

In total, eight house searches were carried out in Spain, resulting in the arrest of six members of the organised crime group and the seizure of 4,600 IT devices.

On the day of the raids, Europol supported the investigation on the ground by deploying an analyst and a specialist to Spain equipped with a mobile office and a data extraction device. This allowed for real-time information exchange and cross-checks of the data gathered during the course of the action against Europol’s databases.

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