ILLEGAL TV PROVIDERS SHUT DOWN
The Spain-based operation had been denounced by the UK's Premier League
A CRIMINAL gang which ran two internet service providers (ISPs) in Spain and Bulgaria, illicitly offering more than 1000 TV channels to clients across Europe, has been dismantled.
Eight suspects were arrested and the servers used to provide illegal access to the channels were terminated.
A joint investigation was led by National Police in Spain, with the support of the Bulgarian authorities, Europol and Eurojust.
A spokesman for Europol said their actions had resulted in the dismantling of a criminal network specialised in the illegal distribution of pay TV channels on a European scale.
They allegedly did this in Spain through a legally estab- lished company in Málaga by using something called internet protocol television technology.
A spokesman for Europol said: “Investigators seized the servers used to provide illegal access to the channels, alongside numerous documents.”
Operation Casper began when a representative from a broadcast rights holder filed a complaint against the Málaga-based company.
The National Police revealed this week that this was in fact the UK’s Football Association Premier League Ltd.
The Europol spokesman said that an investigation revealed that the ISP owner, a Danish citizen, was the leader of a criminal network which operated on a Euro- pean scale. The probe also uncovered the existence of a second ISP in Silistra, Bulgaria owned by the network, ‘which was permanently connected to the ISP in Spain and provided coverage to other European countries’.
“The crime group used a network of shell companies which relied technically on the ISPs and were in charge of distributing the illicit TV signals to the clients,” noted the spokesman.
He stated that Operation Casper represents a ‘great example of cross-border cooperation against intellectual property rights infringements’.
“Intellectual property crime is a significant problem that hits the EU particularly hard. Criminal groups get involved in these illegal activities, attracted to its relatively low risk and high levels of revenue,” he said.
To strengthen the fight against counterfeiting and pi- racy online and offline, Europol and the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) joined forces to launch the Intellectual Property Crime Coordinated Coalition (IPC3).