Italy Dismantles Major TV Piracy Network with 22M Users
MILAN (Reuters) - Italian police said on Wednesday they had dismantled the most widespread transnational criminal video piracy network, which had over 22 million users in Italy and Europe.
The alleged network had an estimated illegal turnover of over 250 million euros ($260 million) a month, hurting the revenue of pay TV companies to the tune of 10 billion euros, Italian police in the Sicilian town of Catania said.
They said 270 officers had carried out 89 searches in 15 Italian regions.
"Operation Takedown" was coordinated with the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation (Eurojust) and Europol, with the help of several European police forces.
Another 14 searches were made in Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Romania and Croatia, leading to 11 arrests, Italian authorities said in a press conference in Catania.
The suspects are likely to be charged with copyright infringement, abusive access to computer systems, possession of access codes, and computer fraud.
The affected companies include Sky, Dazn, Mediaset, Amazon Prime, Netflix, Paramount and Disney+, investigators said, according to the newspaper Corriere della Sera. ($1 = 0.9499 euros)
(Reporting by Alessia Pe; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
