Police nab pirate-film mogul

Department of Special Investigation (DSI) officials have arrested the administrator of Thailand’s most popular pirate movie website, which earned about 5 million baht a month from advertisements.

DSI director-general Paisit Wongmuang said yesterday that investigators found the website, movie2free.com, was run by a Thai man living abroad. The website operator, aged around 30, had hired a 22-year-old man living in the North as its administrator.

The administrator was arrested early this month and the website was shut down, Pol Col Paisit said.

He did not disclose the administrator’s name. The DSI’s Bureau of Technology and Cyber Crime was gathering evidence to back both criminal charges and tax penalties that will be pressed against this and other suspects in the criminal network, he said.

The site used sophisticated equipment that made it hard for authorities to track it down, and had set up a server abroad. Movie2free.com earned about 5 million baht a month from online gambling advertisements, the DSI chief said. The action followed a request by the US Motion Picture Association and Hollywood copyright agents from eight movie companies, who asked the DSI to investigate the website for streaming more than 3,000 pirated films.

Investigators found the website opened in 2014 and drew about 10 million views a day, earning a place on the list of the world’s most popular pirate movie sites.