An international group of investigators has dismantled nine criminal networks for illegal streaming and arrested 29 suspects, Europol said on Wednesday. During Operation KRATOS 2, authorities also removed 27,332 illegal streaming links.
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The operation ran from September 2025 to April 2026 and was coordinated by Bulgaria in cooperation with Europol, according to Europol’s statement. Law enforcement agencies from 13 countries were involved, including Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Separation of infrastructure
Investigators identified 86 suspects and searched 148 properties. According to Europol, the criminal groups deliberately spread their structures across several countries in order to avoid detection. Instead of just shutting down individual websites, the authorities targeted the underlying infrastructure. In total, Europol says it has identified more than 720,000 infringing objects. There are also 4,370 additional domains and over 18,000 IP addresses that are connected to the illegal services.
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Private sector partners assisted in the investigation. According to Europol’s announcement, these include UEFA, LaLiga and the beIN Media Group. Europol does not name individual domains or networks that were broken up.
Warning to users
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KRATOS 2 is the continuation of Operation KRATOS from the summer of 2024, which was carried out by the Bulgarian Ministry of the Interior with the support of Europol and Eurojust. At that time, the authorities were primarily concerned with football streams as part of the 2024 European Championship. Rights holders are also taking action against illegal streams in Germany. At the beginning of May, DAZN and the DFL managed to strike a blow against the streaming platform Livetv.sx, which was blocked by DNS block following a decision by the Cologne Regional Court (Az. 14 O 68/26).
In the communication, Europol also includes a warning to users of such offers: Anyone who uses illegal streaming providers is not only supporting criminal networks, but is also exposing themselves to the danger of malware, spyware and data theft. “What looks like cheap access to premium content to consumers is operated by complex criminal organizations,” the statement said.
(dahe)
