New major crackdown on one of the biggest online piracy groups in the world: international coordination led by Eurojust

by Eurojust — August 26, 2020

An alleged criminal network of copyright infringing hackers, mainly responsible for pirating movies and hosting illegal digital contents worldwide, was dismantled yesterday in a coordinated action between US authorities and their counterparts in 18 countries around the world, with Eurojust and Europol support. Over 60 servers were taken down in North America, Europe and Asia and several of the main suspects were arrested. The alleged illegal activity was causing tens of millions of USD in losses on an annual basis mainly to the US movie, television, and supporting industries.

Based on allegations contained in court documents, the organised crime group (OCG) called the ‘Sparks Group’ dismantled yesterday was one of the biggest ones in the world responsible for online piracy. By deceiving the legal distributors with fraudulent reasoning, they obtained legal copies of DVD and Blu-Ray disks of blockbuster movies, television shows, and other content in advance of their release dates, compromised their copyright protections and then uploaded and distributed the illegal copies via servers operated by the OCG.

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