Illegal streaming worth €300 million: a large-scale piracy scheme was uncovered in Italy

Italian law enforcement officers conducted a large-scale operation against a large piracy infrastructure related to the Cinemagoal application, through which users obtained illegal access to the content of Netflix, Disney+, Spotify and other digital platforms. The operation was coordinated by the financial police Guardia di Finanza, and the investigation itself is already called one of the biggest blows to the pirated IPTV market in the country in recent years.

How the scheme of bypassing streaming services worked

According to the investigation, Cinemagoal was a full-fledged shadow ecosystem of digital piracy. The service distributed movies, series, sports and music content 24/7 using data from legitimate subscriptions, which were then routed through a chain of bogus accounts and servers.

The scheme was built in such a way as to hide the source of the content as much as possible and make it difficult to trace the real network operators. Instead of direct access to official platforms, users connected to an intermediate infrastructure, where video streams were redistributed through third-party servers without binding to the original IP addresses.

In effect, Cinemagoal operated as an alternative streaming service, only without licenses, copyrights and rights holder restrictions.

More than 100 searches across the country

As part of the operation, the Guardia di Finanza conducted more than a hundred searches and seizures of equipment in various regions of Italy. European partner structures also participated in the investigation, as part of the server infrastructure and financial routes were located outside the country.

Investigators seized equipment, databases, decryption keys, platform code and tools for bypassing the protection systems of streaming services.

Law enforcement officers were particularly interested in the servers that were responsible for decoding content and distributing streams between users. They were considered the core of the entire illegal network.

Cryptocurrency, dummy accounts and anonymous payments

A subscription to Cinemagoal costs between 40 and 130 euros per year — much cheaper than official services. To receive payment, the organizers used cryptocurrency and foreign bank accounts issued through fake structures.

Such a scheme allowed to minimize the risk of financial tracing and made it difficult to identify the final recipients of money. In fact, the creators of the platform have built a full-fledged digital anonymization system, typical of large shadow online services.

Damage was estimated at 300 million euros

According to Italian authorities, Cinemagoal’s activities have caused losses to the industry of around 300 million euros. These are both direct losses of streaming platforms and losses of rights holders, media companies and sports broadcasters.

Separately, law enforcement officers intend to punish some of the users of the pirate system. The first thousands of customers who used special devices or programs to access the service may receive fines from 154 to 5,000 euros.

In this way, the authorities are trying to show that responsibility can extend not only to the organizers of illegal business, but also to the audience that supports such services.

Why the fight against IPTV piracy is getting tougher

In recent years, illegal IPTV and streaming platforms have become a serious problem for the digital content industry. The spread of high-speed Internet, anonymous payments and cheap TV set-top boxes has made pirated services a mass phenomenon.

For users, such platforms look extremely attractive: for a small amount, they offer access to several large ecosystems at once – from movies and series to sports broadcasts and music.

That is why the European authorities are gradually moving from point blocking of sites to full-fledged international operations with the removal of infrastructure, servers and financial channels.