In the latest phase of a global law enforcement action, authorities seized three industrial-scale illegal IPTV services.
Europol, Eurojust, and Interpol coordinated the operation, while Italy’s District Prosecutor’s Office of Catania and the Italian State Police led the effort, extending raids across 11 cities in 14 countries worldwide.
Notably, authorities focused their action on Italy because the country will host the Winter Olympics in Milan between February 6 and 22. As a result, local officials have made cracking down on illegal sports broadcasts a top priority.
Suspects Identified and Criminal Network Exposed
Beyond seizing infrastructure, police identified 31 individuals suspected of involvement in the illicit IPTV services—11 in Italy and 14 across the United Kingdom, Spain, Romania, and Kosovo.
“The investigation yielded evidence of guilt against the 31 members of a transnational organized criminal group, accused of broadcasting conditional access television programming, unauthorized access to a computer system, computer fraud, fictitious asset registration, and money laundering,” reads the police’s announcement.
“The activity made it possible to dismantle an information technology infrastructure that illegally served millions of end-users, nationally and internationally.”
Specifically, police cited copyright infringements affecting Sky, DAZN, Mediaset, Amazon Prime, Netflix, Paramount, and Disney+, whose broadcasts criminals illicitly captured and retransmitted to IPTV subscribers.
Meanwhile, service operators reportedly relied on tactics such as cryptocurrency payments and shell companies to obscure financial trails and evade taxation.
Seized IPTV Services Named by ACE
According to a congratulatory announcement from the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), authorities seized three major services during the operation: IPTVItalia, migliorIPTV, and DarkTV.
“The investigation uncovered a structured, hierarchical criminal organization operating at industrial scale, distributing unauthorized pay-tv and on-demand content to millions of users and generating millions of euros in illicit revenue each month,” ACE said.
As ACE—a global anti-piracy coalition backed by more than 50 media and entertainment companies—explained, these platforms served millions of users worldwide.
Additionally, the Italian police reported that the operation affected at least 250 resellers and 100,000 IPTV subscribers in Italy alone.
Authorities also dismantled six servers in Romania and located another server in Africa.
Although ACE announced the takedown of related websites and Telegram sales channels, BleepingComputer found active IPTVItalia and migliorIPTV sites at the time of writing. However, the outlet could not determine whether backend services—such as subscriptions, payments, or content delivery—remained operational.
For a list of legal platforms broadcasting the Winter Olympics 2026 in each country, readers can consult this official resource.
Parallel Anti-Piracy Action in Bulgaria
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the dismantling of three pirate services in Bulgaria that operated on the now-seized domains zamunda.net, arenabg.com, and zelka.org.
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Seizure banner on zamunda.net
Source: BleepingComputer
According to the U.S. DoJ, these websites distributed illegal copies of copyrighted works owned by U.S. companies, including movies, TV shows, video games, software, and e-books.
The three portals ranked among Bulgaria’s top 10 most visited domains and generated massive internet traffic, which enabled their operators to earn substantial advertising revenue.
Source: BleepingComputer, Bill Toulas
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