Plug pulled on illegal TV streaming network in Spain

NATIONAL POLICE officers in Spain have busted a crime ring that provided illegal access to TV channels.

The National Police, supported by Europol, arrested six individuals from a crime ring suspected of selling illegal television signals from more than 14,000 international points of sale.

The signals were sold through a company which designed the application needed to illegally stream films, television series and sport events.

During the course of the investigation police officers discovered a company, based in Galicia, Spain which was suspected of transmitting signals for paid TV channels illegally.

The company developed both the decoder device and the application needed to illegally access the paid channels.

The decoder was sold for €120 and the server to transmit the illegal signal was hosted in France and controlled from the business in Spain.

In total eight house searches were carried out in Spain, resulting in the arrest of six members of the organised crime group and the seizure of 4,600 IT devices.

On the day of the raids Europol supported the investigation on the ground by deploying an analyst and a specialist to Spain equipped with a mobile office and a data extraction device. This allowed for real-time information exchange and cross-checks of the data gathered during the course of the action against Europol’s databases.

The investigation began when EGEDA ((Entidad de Gestión de Derechos de los Productores Audiovisuales), Spanish multimedia communications group Mediapro and the Spanish Football League filed a complaint with the police.