FIVE men suspected of being the masterminds behind a huge illegal streaming operation have been arrested in the latest police crackdown.
The group are accused of reselling premium streaming services including Netflix on the cheap.
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Illegal streaming has become a massive problem for organisations like Sky and the Premier League as cyber crooks look to cash in on viewers frustrated by bill rises.
Nine properties were raided in June as part of a coordinated anti-piracy effort by police in Germany.
More than 100 officers were involved, covering areas of Munich and Hamburg.
Police obtained an entire “server landscape” thought to be used to host the illegal streaming “IPTV” service, as well as a large number of mobile phones, USB sticks, game consoles, and backups of extensive cloud data.
Read more on illegal streaming
They also confiscated cash, gold coins, and cryptocurrencies worth over £432,000 that are believed to be linked to the accused crimes.
Five men were arrested, including three 25-year-old Germans, a 25-year-old Austrian, and a 27-year-old Azerbaijani.
Three of the five were remanded in custody initially.
But an arrest warrant for a 25-year-old from Munich has since been lifted as police failed to confirm strong suspicion based on preliminary analysis of the seized data, Zentralstelle Cybercrime Bayern said.
However, one of the men faces more accusations, including inciting serious sexual abuse of children, producing child pornography and providing possession of child pornography.
It comes months after a major illegal streaming site used by 22million to watch Sky Sports and more at a cut price was shut down with five UK properties raided.
The joint police, Europol and Eurojust operation spanned several countries across Europe with more than one hundred houses searched.
Closer to home, an illegal streaming kingpin who made £1million from three sites was jailed.
Stephen Woodward, 36, splashed out on designer clothes and jewellery, expensive holidays and a Jaguar F-Type V8 coupe worth £91,000 from his ill-gotten gains.
He ran three websites – IPTV Hosting, Helix Hosting and Black and White TV – with access to Sky Sports and 4,500 other premium channels for a small fee.
Stephen was sentenced to three years and one month in jail on July 11.
Warning over ‘jailbroken’ Fire Sticks
Illegal streaming can be delivered by a number of devices by one of the most common are ‘jailbroken’ Fire Sticks, which means a third-party media server software has been installed on to it.
The software most commonly used is called Kodi.
It can grant users unrestricted access to new features and apps the normal version of the device wouldn’t allow – but it is not legal to use in the UK.
But it becomes illegal when a box is used to stream subscription channels for free.
It is also illegal to buy or sell these modified devices which have become known as “fully-loaded” – a term that describes how the software has been altered to allow access to subscription-only channels.
“These devices are legal when used to watch legitimate, free to air, content,” the government said at the time.
“They become illegal once they are adapted to stream illicit content, for example TV programmes, films and subscription sports channels without paying the appropriate subscriptions.”
