One of the world’s largest networks has been dismantled, following coordinated and organised actions by police authorities in 19 countries, including Cyprus, according to a statement issued by Europol. Two suspected members of the “Sparks” film piracy group have been arrested – one in Cyprus and the other in the US. The suspect arrested in Cyprus is “Bridi”, a British national, who was arrested by Interpol on Sunday and is expected to be extradited to the US. At the same time, a third suspect who is also allegedly a member of this group is still being sought by the authorities. In particular, Europol announced that on August 25, a criminal network of hackers involved in copyright infringement, film piracy and hosting illegal digital content was dismantled thanks to coordinated action between US authorities and their counterparts in 18 countries around the world, with the support of Europol and Eurojust. In addition, dozens of servers in Europe, North America and Asia.
The Sparks Group, which is involved in film piracy, has been under investigation since September 2016, and is believed to have successfully reproduced and distributed hundreds of films and television programs before their release date, including nearly every film released by major studios in the United States. The Sparks Group has caused tens of millions of dollars in losses to film studios, primarily in the U.S. film, television and supporting industries, through copyright infringement
To obtain unreleased films, Sparks members posed as DVD and Blu-Ray retailers in order to trick legitimate distributors into giving them the films ahead of their release dates, while pledging not to sell the content before the release date. However, once they received the products, the group members used special software to remove any copyright protections as well as to reproduce and encode the content in high definition. The content was then leaked and played on streaming platforms, peer-to-peer and torrent networks from their platforms.
60 servers controlled by Sparks Group were located in countries around the world, including the following: United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Canada, Czech Republic, Latvia, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, South Korea and Switzerland. These servers were seized and taken offline today, with the help of law enforcement authorities in those countries. Other measures were also taken in Italy, Romania and Canada.
Europol said the successful operation was the result of this and Eurojust's cooperation with the police and judicial authorities of the countries involved. In particular, Europol provided support during the investigation to dismantle the criminal network and facilitated the exchange of information between the police authorities involved, via the secure communication system SIENA .
