May 23, 2023 – 4:01 PM
The FIOD and the Public Prosecution Service have taken an unnamed TV service off the air, which was offered via the internet (IPTV). Four people have been arrested in Almere and Den Helder. Their homes have been searched.
It concerned a service that was sold, among other things, via call shops against cash payment. With a box and a subscription of about 10 euros per month, subscribers could watch all films and series from, for example, Disney +, Netflix, Viaplay, Videoland, ESPN and more than 10,000 TV channels.
The service had hundreds of thousands of subscribers and was distributed from a data center in Den Helder. This data center has been shut down and searched. As of today, the IPTV subscriptions will no longer work.
The technology of IPTV, watching television via the internet, is legal in the Netherlands. However, it is a criminal offense to offer and take out subscriptions if you use them to watch films, series and programs for which no license fee has been paid.
The research team suspects that the proceeds resulting from the provision of the illegal IPTV were laundered on a large scale. That is why business premises in Den Helder, Almere, Hengelo and homes in Amsterdam, Almere, Enschede, The Hague and Den Helder were searched for the presence of cash. The Advanced Search Team of the police and money dogs were used for this. In addition, Europol played an important role in the analysis of the exchanged investigative information. Administration, bank accounts, five cars, computer equipment and large amounts of cash were seized.
BREIN Foundation talks about the largest criminal investigation into digital piracy in the Netherlands ever. ‘Illegal IPTV is the most serious threat to the legal supply of films, series, television and sports broadcasts. In this case, it concerns a criminal organization behind the large-scale sale of illegal IPTV subscriptions in, among others, the Netherlands. This concerns tens of millions of euros in damage in the Netherlands alone,’ says BREIN director Tim Kuik.
