European and international law enforcement agencies have dismantled nine organized crime groups and arrested 29 suspects in a major crackdown on illegal streaming operations.
The seven-month "Operation KRATOS 2" was coordinated by Bulgaria with Europol's support and involved authorities from 13 countries, including Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Cooperation with private sector partners also helped the investigators pin down over 18,000 IP addresses associated with illegal services and 4,370 domains linked to piracy, as well as nearly 400,000 additional URLs flagged for suspension or removal and more than 126,000 additional infringing objects.
In total, this joint action led to the removal of more than 27,000 illegal streaming URLs linked to the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted sports, film, and television content.
In addition to the arrests, law enforcement officers identified 86 suspects, conducted 148 house searches, referred 59 cases to judicial authorities, and are working on 72 other criminal investigations.
Europol said the criminal groups behind such services deliberately separate customer-facing websites from the servers hosting illegal content, allowing them to operate across multiple jurisdictions to thwart detection and prosecution.
"Rather than focusing solely on taking down websites, investigators targeted the wider criminal ecosystem supporting these services,"
Europol said on Wednesday. "This approach enabled authorities to gather intelligence on the organised crime groups operating behind the platforms and identify key suspects involved in their management and technical operation."
Europol also warned that, beyond generating significant revenue for the criminal rings that run them, these services expose their users to major cybersecurity risks, including malware infections, spyware, and data theft.
This joint action follows
Operation KRATOS, another international anti-piracy operation carried out in summer 2024 and led by Bulgaria's Ministry of the Interior with support from Europol and Eurojust.
Operation KRATOS
shut down an illegal streaming network with more than 22 million users worldwide, with law enforcement authorities also making 11 arrests, identifying 102 suspects, and conducting 112 searches.
In January, Europol, Eurojust, and Interpol
coordinated Operation Switch Off, another global law enforcement action that resulted in the seizure of three industrial-scale illegal IPTV services.
More recently, in May, Italian authorities
dismantled the CINEMAGOAL piracy platform, which provided illegal access to streaming platforms such as Netflix, Disney+, and Spotify.
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<small>Source: Bleeping Computer</small>
