It is not only Italians, but also Greeks, Bulgarians, Dutch, French, Maltese, Germans and Swiss who want to see premium content in streaming IPTV without paying the due. Users of the “pezzotto“In fact, there are millions and now they risk a criminal complaint and very heavy fines. This is what emerges from the final report of the operation “The Perfect Storm”Conducted in recent days by the Guardia di Finanza of Naples in collaboration with the Postal Police.
The operation, as we have told you in recent days when it was still in progress, led to the closure of hundreds of websites and Telegram channels used by pirates to illegally broadcast major channels and on demand events Pay Tv Italian and foreign (especially football matches, but not only). Now that the operation is over, and the final numbers are in place, it is possible to understand how big the pezzotto phenomenon is and how many users are using these services to illegally view the contents of Netflix, Dazn, Disney+ and other platforms. THE numbers, we anticipate, they are scary.
Operation The Perfect Storm: 50 million users
The most impressive number is that relating to users illegal services blocked and seized by the authorities: 50 million throughout Europe, 5 million in Italy.
On the other hand, the “IT resources“Seized: servers, management platforms for IPTV, showcase sites through which illegal discounted subscriptions were sold, actual streaming sites and Telegram channels through which information on where to illegally view the contents circulated.
The way in which the police operation took place made it possible to find further “resources“: The fact that the GdF has blacked out the first handful of sites has forced the pirates to communicate the other sites where users could see the contents illegally. But since the communication channels were monitored from the financiers it was possible to immediately identify the additional resources available to the international band of the pezzotto.
There were therefore 30 search decrees of physical places, in Italy and abroad, from which the pirate signal was transmitted and 100 house searches. There are 334 PayPal accounts on which users made payments (in some cases even in cryptovalute, on special online wallets), which have obviously been blocked.
Overall, the financiers managed to locate and seize assets for 10.619.000 euro and to report 23 people.
Pirate IPTV: what users risk
During the final operational phase of Operation The Perfect Storm the illegal IPTV signal transmission sites were blocked. Instead of the video content, users saw a sign from the Guardia di Finanza explaining that the site had been blacked out and that “The access data constitute evidential material available to the Judicial Authority“.
Now that the details of the operation have been revealed, therefore, this last sentence makes even more sense: the GdF has seized the servers through which the pirated contents were conveyed. These servers also contain user data, both of the 5 million Italians and those of other European countries.
It is clear that analyzing such a large amount of data takes months, but it is equally clear that now all these users take a big risk: a fine from 2,582 to 25,822 euros and, above all, one sentenced from six months to three years of imprisonment.
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