Madrid, Apr 5 (EFE).- Starting on Tuesday, the National Court is judging several alleged members of a plot that would have obtained 15 million euros from the illegal sale of audiovisual content, both broadcasts of football matches and films and series, which it obtained by pirating the signal of numerous payment platforms.
They will sit in the dock for the alleged commission of criminal organization crimes, against the market and consumers, against intellectual property and money laundering.
In its indictment, the Prosecutor’s Office requests the highest sentence for the alleged leader of the organization (22 and a half years in prison), while for the other four defendants it requests sentences of between 8 and a half years and 16 and a half years in prison.
For several of them, it also demands million-dollar fines amounting to 70 million euros for the alleged leader for the crime of money laundering, and 60 million for others involved, and asks the court to order the closure of the domains used to definitively put an end to access to television channels.
The judge who investigated the case estimated there were two million users of the illegal services offered by the organization and its subsidiaries, and calculated that there were about a thousand web pages that offered access to just over 40,000 television channels, series and platforms as a whole.
Illegal distribution of audiovisual content
The investigation brought to light the existence of an alleged international organization whose objective was the illegal distribution of audiovisual content through the IPTV system (internet protocol television) and the use of M3U links, offered through the domains rapidiptv.com, rapidiptv.net, www.iptvstack.com, the forum https://iptv.community and various web pages.
The ‘modus operandi’ consisted of capturing the signal from numerous platforms and television channels to be communicated through a private network to its own server structure, located in at least thirteen countries in Europe and North America, from where it was redistributed to its subscribers.
Warner Bros Entertainment, Universal City Studios, Universal City Studios Productions, Columbia Pictures Industries, Sony Pictures Television, Paramount Pictures Corporation, New Line Productions, Netflix Studios, Netflix US, Netflix international, Netflix Gobal, Netflix Worldwide Entertainment, Amazon Content Services, Disney Enterprises and the National Professional Soccer League appeared as private prosecutors in the case.
According to the order that proposed judging these facts, the contents were offered in an attractive web environment at prices much more competitive than those in the legal market, offering a very wide range of channels, movies, series or documentaries, with a guarantee of quality and even its own customer support website.
A total of 10,072 channels were viewed through the different IPTV television channels that were offered through the M3U list.
This organization also offered the so-called ‘resellers’ or resellers the possibility of creating their own brand and illegal service as a “franchise” or subsidiary.
It had 50 servers installed in the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Romania, and Luxembourg.
Judge José Luis Calama, who investigated the case, concluded that the alleged plot would have generated profits of at least 15 million euros, apart from the income that the resellers could have obtained independently.
To launder these amounts, the organization allegedly used a sophisticated network consisting of sending the money obtained to payment gateways, cryptocurrency exchanges, shell companies and the generation of false invoices.
The alleged money laundering operations include the construction of a residential building in Iran, the acquisition of a property in Barcelona valued at 1.6 million euros and the purchase of two high-end vehicles with a market value of 400,000 euros.EFE
