Extensive international operation of the Guardia di Finanza in synergy with the State Police to protect copyright carried out in 19 foreign countries
Over 5.500 illegal live streaming sites and Telegram channels that illegally broadcast protected content around the world have been blacked out.
Seizures aimed at confiscation for an equivalent amounting to over 10 million euros against the criminal organization. Subscription payments were also made through cryptocurrencies.
15 of the suspects, while earning large sums from their illicit activity, received citizenship income.
The Special Unit for the Protection of Privacy and Technological Fraud of the Guardia di Finanza, in synergy with a rate of highly specialized personnel belonging to the Postal and Communications Police Service of the State Police, as part of the criminal proceeding 11226/17 in place at the Prosecutor's Office della Repubblica at the Ordinary Court of Naples, concluded an important operation to combat the phenomenon of audiovisual piracy through unauthorized transmission on the Internet, the so-called “IPTV” - Internet Protocol Television, called “THE PERFECT STORM”.
The complex investigation activity, coordinated by the Public Prosecutor Giovanni Melillo and directed by the Deputy Prosecutor Vincenzo Piscitelli and by the Deputy Prosecutor Valeria Sico, made use of the international judicial cooperation channels through the Eurojust European Agency, through the Italian desk, directed by Prosecutor Filippo Spiezia, assisted by Deputy Prosecutors Aldo Ingangi and Angela Continisio.
Simultaneously with the reproduction of numerous on-demand events, including football matches of the main European leagues, hundreds of thousands of unwary users who had entered into subscription contracts with pirate IPTVs, suddenly displayed a panel on their devices that warned that the site through which they were illegally viewing the program had been seized.
In fact, the Guardia di Finanza, in execution of measures issued by the Public Prosecutor's Office at the Court of Naples, starting from the afternoon of November 6, gradually put in place preliminary technical monitoring activities consisting of the progressive remote shutdown of platforms, servers and smart cards used by pirates, as well as in the obscuring of websites and Telegram channels dedicated to the sale and reproduction of illegal IPTV contents.
The preliminary activities have allowed the seizure and blackout of over 5.500 IT resources including transmission servers, management platforms, showcase sites and live streaming sites, as well as 350 Telegram channels: following this activity, as expected, the managers of the organization, in order to make it possible to transmit illegal contents to their customers, they were forced to disclose the additional backup resources already prepared to deal with any repressive actions.
This preliminary blackout and subsequent monitoring action thus made it possible to identify an additional 350 showcase sites and 370 Telegram channels; these resources were therefore the subject of a new urgent seizure ordered by the Public Prosecutor's Office, which eliminated any residual possibility for the organization to reproduce video content in violation of the rules set up to protect copyright.
During the Action Day, set at the same time in all the countries involved on yesterday 10 November, the following were therefore carried out overall:
- a measure of pre-trial detention in prison in Italy;
- a seizure and confiscation order for the equivalent of € 10.619.000 against 23 suspects with simultaneous execution of searches in Italy and abroad;
- seizure orders of over 5.500 IT resources used by the organization for the dissemination and illegal sale of content in violation of copyright located in the national territory and in each of the foreign countries that has provided its collaboration;
- 30 search and seizure decrees at the retransmission centers of the pirate signal in Italy and abroad;
- 100 house and local searches against the main Italian re-sellers;
- a seizure order of 334 PayPal accounts intended for the collection of profits from the illegal activity
- searches and seizures of equipment and money or other benefits in 12 European countries, including Malta, Spain, Germany, Bulgaria, Greece, Lithuania, Slovenia, Sweden, Belgium, Romania, the Netherlands and France.
The surveys were conducted using innovative technological tools including sophisticated Artificial Intelligence software for Big Data analysis; these software resources, in addition to allowing the identification of each member of the association under investigation, also made it possible to identify the entire network of re-sellers operating in the national territory, as well as the complete list of identification data of illegal users worldwide.
The activities were carried out on the entire national territory and in 12 other member countries with the coordination of the European Agency Eurojust and in a further 5 non-EU countries (USA, United Kingdom, Russia, Ukraine and Switzerland) through the connection activity. Info -operative carried out by the II Department of the General Command of the Corps and required the intervention of over 600 financiers belonging to 91 different territorial Commands of the Corps and over 300 belonging to foreign collateral.
The operations were also attended by a number of highly specialized personnel belonging to the Postal and Communications Police Service of the State Police, who provided their invaluable technical support to the weighty digital forensics activities at the main pirate signal relay stations.
The investigations made it possible to identify an articulated system, with a pyramidal character, represented by the latest generation of IT platforms, powered simultaneously by numerous "content sources" located in Europe and aimed at transforming the audio-video signals protected by copyright attributable to the main pay TV and 'Over The Top' cd services (Netflix, DAZN, Disney +), in data streams systematically redistributed through servers identified in data centers located all over the world.
Through this technique, cybercriminals, faced with economic transactions also arranged through cryptocurrencies, were able to feed thousands of illegal IPTV services, as well as live streaming web services, mobile applications and Telegram channels.
In order to fully illustrate the dimensional and international aspect of the operation, it should also be emphasized the unprecedented impact that the "THE PERFECT STORM" operation reverberates on the world audience of illegal streaming, given that, at the moment, by default - stopped it being understood that more detailed and complete data will be available following the examination of the numerous resources that have been seized, over 50 million users have already been identified, of which about 5 million in Italy alone.
The Guardia di Finanza, in its role of economic and financial police to protect honest operators and to ensure conditions of fair competition, decisively opposes this illegal business which causes massive damage to the Italian economy to the detriment of the audiovisual industry which , in a moment already severely marked by the difficulties deriving from the COVID 19 pandemic, it is estimated to have lost over 2019 jobs in 6.000 alone (FAPAV data) precisely as a result of these criminal phenomena.
We report that this operation, despite the practical difficulties deriving from the Covid 19 emergency, was carried out with great effectiveness and a spirit of collaboration and cooperation by all the Italian and European police forces and all the magistrates involved in the activities, both those in service at Eurojust and in the various offices of the Member States, recipients of the n. 23 EIO.