March 12 – A major illegal streaming network that had over 100 million downloads of its app and had made profits estimated at €5 million has been shut shutdown following raids by Europol and the Spanish National Police.
Law enforcement in Andorra and Portugal helped with the investigation which is being hailed as a major success in the battle against piracy.
The investigation began in October 2018 following complaints to the Spanish National Police from the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, Football Association Pretoria, the Premier League and La Liga about the Mobdro app.
Europol said: “The investigation identified a number of connected websites and platforms located in Spain and Portugal with connections to servers in Czechia. The Spanish company behind the illegal activity earned its profits through advertisements. Through the computer infrastructure and power, they were able to sell user information to a company related to botnet and DDoS attacks. Investigators estimate the overall illegal profits at more than €5 million.”
Europol said that action included three house searches (two in Spain and one in Andorra), four court orders to take down domains, 20 web domains and servers blocked; four arrests (three in Spain and one in Andorra), Bank accounts frozen, and one server taken down in Portugal and another one under investigation in the Czech republic.
The investigation is an important success for cross border law enforcement across different agencies. Europol said it “supported the investigation with operational coordination and analysis. Europol supported the action day with the deployment of a virtual command post.” Europol’s IPC3 (Intellectual Property Crime Coordinated Coalition) which supported the investigation is a project co-funded by the EUIPO to combat intellectual property crime.
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