Operation Gotha 2: Eight arrests for criminal conspiracy and illegal television streaming.

Following a complex investigation coordinated by the Catania District Attorney's Office, the State Police has carried out aprecautionary order issued by the GIP of the Court of the Etna capital against eight people, some of whom reside abroad, investigated for the crimes of criminal conspiracy aimed at the illicit distribution of pay-TV programming, unauthorized access to a computer system, and computer fraud.

Those arrested are residents of Catania, Syracuse, Rome, Brescia, and other foreign countries.

The investigation, which the Prosecutor's Office was able to develop thanks to the irreplaceable contribution of the Cybersecurity Operations Center in Catania, coordinated by the Postal Police Service and Cybersecurity in Rome, is development of the 2022 major cybercrime counter-operation "Gotha" coordinated by the Catania District Attorney's Office, which led to the execution of over 70 searches in Italy.

Through an in-depth analysis of the seized devices (computers, smartphones, servers) and the examination of a high volume of financial flows, Material has been collected which is considered useful to confirm and outline more precisely the existence of a criminal association, organised in a hierarchical manner, with distinct and precise roles (boss, deputy boss, master, admin, technician, reseller), and with leaders present on the national territory (Catania, Rome, Syracuse and Brescia) and abroad.

According to the prosecution's theory, the purpose of the association would be: commission of an undetermined series of crimes, in particular the distribution to a very high number of users of live programming and on-demand content protected by television rights owned by platforms such as SKY, DAZN, MEDIASET, AMAZON PRIME and NETFLIX, through an illegal IPTV system, with monthly profits estimated in millions of euros.

 These are the acronyms of illegal IPTV, some of which recall the names of well-known legal platforms: “NOWTV”, “UNITY”, “PLAYTV”, “PLATINUM”, “M&S”, “ENJOY” “MOMY” "HERMES”, “LUCKYSTREAMING”, “SKYNET” and “GOLDRAKE”.

Those arrested are therefore considered by those who carried out the investigations, on the basis of the evidence collected, as a sort of top of the illegal Italian streaming market, which, in addition to promote and direct the criminal association – the crime for which proceedings are being conducted – , decided on the costs of subscriptions, suspension of service and methods of distribution of the devices, coordinating the individual operators across the national territory.

For the performance of the illegal activity, The organization exploited a complex technical infrastructure that included the use of numerous servers rented from foreign hosting companies, the management of which was entrusted to associates with specific IT skills.

In order to evade investigations, Those arrested allegedly used encrypted messaging applications, fake identities and false documents; the latter used for the registration of telephone numbers, credit cards, television subscriptions and for server rental. Furthermore, the suspects allegedly forced their recipients, the numerous resellers spread throughout the country, to follow a veritable catalogue of rules to evade investigations and contaminate sources of evidence.

Huge illicit profits: the profits ascertained on the basis of circumstantial evidence only in the months monitored during the investigations amount to about 10 million euros, but it is estimated that the damage to the audiovisual industry could exceed 30 million euros per month, considering that the operation has shed light on 70% of illegal national streaming, equal to over 900.000 users.

On the basis of the evidence acquired, the District Attorney's Office requested precautionary measure against the eight suspects.

The GIP of Catania, following the preliminary interrogations carried out by the suspects (except one because he could not be found), granted the precautionary measure of house arrest, the execution of which was delegated to the Postal Police.  The suspects have made spontaneous statements before the investigating judge during preliminary interrogation.