Illegal streaming: police take action against providers from Germany

German authorities continue to take action against illegal streaming services. Officers from the Bavarian Cybercrime Center (ZCB) caught a big fish in the net at the beginning of June. Together with the Weiden criminal investigation department, officers searched nine properties in the Bavarian districts of Tirschenreuth and Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm as well as in Munich and Hamburg. The main suspect is said to be a 25-year-old software developer, as the authorities announced on Friday.

Suspects with a high level of IT knowledge

In this case, the police reportedly came across suspects with a high level of IT knowledge and correspondingly high-quality equipment. The investigation therefore focused in particular on securing digital evidence and clarifying the complicated server network. The "Paladin" mobile forensics laboratory from the Upper Franconia police headquarters was used on site. This made it possible to secure extensive hardware and storage media and to open encrypted data carriers on site.

According to the ZCB, a complete server landscape, a large number of cell phones, USB sticks and games consoles as well as "many terabytes of data to be analyzed" and assets, including cash, gold coins and cryptocurrencies, worth around 500,000 euros were seized. In addition, several servers in Germany and abroad were confiscated on which the perpetrators are said to have operated their illegal streaming services. Customers of the services must also expect investigation proceedings to be initiated.

Suspicion of child pornography

Five men, three 25-year-old Germans, one 25-year-old Austrian and one 27-year-old Azerbaijani, are suspected of illegally distributing paid streaming services. They are accused of the commercial unauthorized exploitation of related rights under the Copyright Act. According to the ZCB, a German provider and international services such as Netflix are once again affected.

Arrest warrants have been issued for three of the five suspects. The arrest warrant for a 25-year-old from Hamburg has since been extended because he is now suspected of inciting serious sexual abuse of children via a messenger service and producing child pornography content, among other things. The seized data is currently being analyzed.

In another case, the police carried out searches on 18 suspects at 17 properties in several federal states in February after two years of investigations. Three suspects were arrested.

Since then, a 36-year-old man from the Bavarian district of Wunsiedel has been under investigation on suspicion of commercial computer fraud. Together with the two other suspects, a 59-year-old man from the Rheinisch-Bergisch district in North Rhine-Westphalia and a 37-year-old man from the district of Tuttlingen (Baden-Württemberg), he is alleged to have illegally made programs from a major German pay-TV provider available to over 30,000 customers worldwide.

"Damage in the millions"

During the searches, 150 officers from Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Schleswig-Holstein and Saarland seized cash amounting to around 16,000 euros and around 35,000 euros in cryptocurrency. The ZCB also seized several accounts. The officers also seized more than 200 digital devices.

They also shut down several servers suspected of being used for illegal streaming. The suspects face prison sentences of between six months and ten years. "The pay-TV provider suffered damage in the millions as a result," the ZCB announced without providing further details. The content providers speak of high revenue losses due to piracy on an "industrial scale".

In March, police in Cologne busted an illegal streaming operation involving around 4,000 customers and searched the home of a 57-year-old suspect. At the end of last year, some of those responsible for an illegal streaming service were sentenced to long prison terms.

In the recent past, the dismantling of large illegal streaming services abroad has also made headlines, such as the shutdown of BestBuyIPTV, LiveHD7, which specializes in live soccer, and Fmovies, allegedly the world's largest provider of illegal streams with over 6 billion hits in one year.

(vbr)