Mammoth profits had been obtained by members of a criminal organisation active in the professional and continuing illegal provision of subscription television services.
The organization was deconstructed by executives of the Department of Combating Organized Crime of Crete. The investigation identified a database showing more than 86,000 end-users, with the total asset benefit obtained by members of the criminal organisation being calculated at least 7,000,000 EUR 50 million and the total damage of legal providers to be estimated to exceed EUR 50 million.
The firm set up
In order to end their action there were morning hours yesterday, Tuesday, June 16, 2026, in areas of Heraklion Crete, Attica, Agrinio, Corfu and Samos, a coordinated police operation with the assistance of police officers of the Division for the Prevention of Economic Crimes of the Directorate for the Management of Organized Crime, the Sub-Directorate for the Prevention and Detection of Crimes of Corfu, Samos and Agrinio, as well as specialised officials of the Department of Digital Criminal Investigation and Analysis of the Directorate for Criminal Investigation, and a specialised staff of the Society for the Protection of Audiovisual Works (EPOE).
Seven arrests
Six men and one woman, aged 63, 40, 73, 39, 31, 42 and 36 years of age, were arrested and five accomplices, members of the organization and 71 end users – subscribers of the illegal service are charged.
They acted as of 2017
As a result of the investigation, the members of the organization, at least since 2017, had developed a highly organized and multi-level infrastructure for the illegal transmission of subscriptions via the internet (IPTV), which operated uninterruptedly for several years and served a large number of users in both Greece and abroad.
More specifically, members of the organization were illegally gaining access to protected audiovisual content legally available from subscription television platforms and streaming service providers.
In support of this illegal activity, they had developed extensive network infrastructure consisting of servers, established in Greece and abroad, while using intermediate servers, virtual private network services (VPN), mechanisms to hide the actual location of their systems, as well as systematic exchange of Internet addresses and domain names, in order to facilitate their identification and bypass the exclusion measures applied by the competent authorities and legal providers.
At the same time, the organisation had a central subscriber management system through which new customers were registered, activation and renewal of subscriptions, user accounts management and monitoring the operation of the services provided.
Its structure featured features of a professional enterprise, as its members had taken on distinct roles, such as technical infrastructure management, the provision and updating of the available content, the management of subscribers, and the provision of continuous technical support to address problems and ensure the seamless operation of the service.
Users' access to illegally provided services was achieved either through specially designed decoding devices supplied by the members of the organisation or through installation of specialized applications on "smart" televisions and other compatible devices.
To this end, the subscribers were provided with special activation links and technical installation instructions, while in many cases the members of the organisation also undertook the configuration of the equipment.
Furthermore, it was found that the criminal organisation was exploiting multinational technological infrastructure and providing services to customers established in a number of countries, indicating the international nature of its activity.
Its operation was based on an extensive network of technological instruments and services, which ensured the continuous provision of illegal content and the maintenance of its operational capacity even in cases of exclusions or technical interventions.
At the same time, with the illegal provision of subscription services, the members of the criminal organisation had developed a mechanism for managing and distributing the proceeds derived from their criminal activity, in order to hide their origins and to hinder their financial detection by the competent authorities.
As demonstrated by the analysis of the financial data, they used a number of bank accounts and means of payment in both domestic and foreign countries, channelling money through successive transactions to different countries. In addition, they used electronic payment services, digital wallets, prepaid means of transaction and other alternative methods of transfer of funds, while part of the payments were made directly in cash by the subscribers of illegal services.
It was also found that money from the illegal activity was used to cover personal expenses, travel, high-cost living, as well as to acquire movable and immovable property. In this way they attempted to integrate illegal revenue into legal economic activity and to conceal their actual origin.
The overall organisation, the specialisation of members' roles, the duration of action, the technological infrastructure that had been developed, the range of the clientele and the significant economic benefit resulting from the illegal exploitation of protected content demonstrate the systematic, professional and continuous action of the organisation in the area of online piracy of audiovisual content.
What was seized
In investigations conducted in houses in the presence of a judicial officer, they were found and seized:
· fully operational specialized iptv box programming equipment, under which they had an illegal subscription channel signal of legal subscription companies and access to thousands of film projects, multiple satellite devices from which they were illegally transmitting channels to the Internet and their clientele, multiple management panels installed on laptops and mobiles, purchasing and server maintenance data to foreign services, as well as management of multiple domain names used to avoid blocking legal providers,
· a number of new devices and equipment intended for sale to third-party end-users – subscribers (digital download/reproduction devices, wireless antennas, IPTV Box / TVBox / Android TVBox, remote control, connection cables, power supplies, HDMI/video signal converters, rack-mount type devices with network and video ports, etc.,
· customers, handwritten notes, agendas,
· the amount of money over eur 18,885,
· 4 vehicles and bicycles, as means of crime,
· precision scales.
The confiscated digital evidence will be sent to the Criminal Investigation Directorate, while the confiscated funds will be sent to the Deposit and Loan Fund. In addition, the corresponding administrative fines will be imposed on end users – subscribers of the illegally provided service in accordance with the relevant legislation.
Arrested persons are taken to the competent prosecutor, while the investigation is continued by the Department of Combating Organized Crime of Crete to fully identify the scale of the criminal activity of the organization.