Authorities in Italy say they have dismantled a sophisticated streaming piracy network accused of causing approximately €300 million ($348 million) in losses to major entertainment platforms, including Netflix, Disney+, Spotify, DAZN and Sky Italia.
According to Italy’s financial police, the Guardia di Finanza uncovered an advanced system centred around an application known as CINEMAGOAL, which enabled users to access illegally decrypted streaming content through foreign servers.
Investigators said the operation relied on virtual machines running continuously on Italian territory to capture and retransmit access codes from legitimate subscriptions registered under fake identities every three minutes. Authorities added that the system bypassed the security protections used by streaming services and avoided direct links to specific IP addresses, making detection more difficult.
Police said subscriptions to the illegal service were sold for between €40 and €130 annually. Prosecutors in Bologna, working alongside the European judicial cooperation agency Eurojust, secured the seizure of foreign servers containing decryption data and the application’s source code. Parallel operations were also carried out in France and Germany.
Authorities further revealed the widespread use of illegal streaming devices commonly referred to in Italy as “pezzotto.” The Guardia di Finanza said fines ranging from €154 to €5,000 would be issued to about 1,000 users identified as subscribers to the pirate network.
Melissa Enoch
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