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ARTICLE: Sky Italia card sharing network raided by Tax Police

AAPA

27th November 2015

The following is translated from a news report which appeared in Libero, 22 November, 2015

On Thursday, November 19 the Italian Tax Police performed a raid in different Italian cities to fight a card sharing network offering Sky Italia and Mediaset Premium packages. SKY Italia provided technical support.

The card sharing network operators offered service packages and television broadcasts for less than 80% of the legitimate offer price. The network also offered customer support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; on-line, by telephone and at home. The damage to the market has been estimated at around a million Euros. Nine people associated with the criminal activity have been accused and 83 customers identified(28 residents in Trentino, 50 in Rome, 2 in L' Aquila, 1 in Rieti, 1 and 1 in Verona in Cosenza). The large police search also led to the seizure of several decoders and computer equipment and dozens of hard drives, which are used both by the members of the criminal newtrok and customers.

The investigation, which lasted about a year, resulted from monitoring activities conducted by the web search information unit of the Provincial Command of Trento. Avezzano (AQ), the Financial Police Trentine, identified and seized computer terminals connected to the network which was the base of the operations from where they decoded protected audiovisual signals and transmitted in real time via the web to customers. Several servers, all located outside Italy were used to "support" high quailty of the distributed signals.

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