Police Throw the Book at Alleged Pirate Site Admin

[Ernesto]

The Intellectual Property Crime Unit operated out of City of London Police were once again flexing their muscles this week with yet another raid in the UK.

PIPCU, as the unit is known, teamed up with police in the north of England to swoop on what is being described as a major sports streaming operation.

Early Monday, some 200 miles away from London, officers teamed with police in Manchester to raid a property in Cheetham Hill. Their target was an unnamed 27-year-old said to be providing access to subscription TV services.

In their announcement, police used terms including “industrial scale” to describe the size of the operation after seizing 12 computers servers and other equipment. Police withheld the arrested man’s name and the sites involved.

The streaming operation shutdown on Monday[/url]credit

Yesterday, however, Zain Parvez of Cheetham Hill Road, Manchester, appeared before Manchester magistrates court charged with running the operation that was shut down earlier in the week.

Things certainly don’t look good for the 27-year-old. Not only has Parvez been charged with offenses under the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988, he also faces allegations of money laundering, conspiracy to defraud and possessing or controlling an article for use in fraud.

In respect of the names of the sites Parvez allegedly controlled, the pieces have been coming together all week but with no straightforward way of joining the dots. We can now confirm that the domains involved are CoolSport.se, CoolSport.tv and KiwiSportz.tv.

As can be seen from the Alexa data below, CoolSport.tv dropped off the radar in July with Coolsport.se immediately taking over, a domain switch [url=https://twitter.com/kiwisportz/status/491261018879066112]that was announced on the site’s Twitter account.

Parvez, who has been in custody since his arrest, will be further detained until he appears before Manchester Crown Court on September 16.

This week’s arrest is the third involving a streaming site in the UK. Although the sites in previous actions were not announced by police, TorrentFreak previously revealed that the operator of BoxingGuru.co.uk, boxingguru.eu, boxingguru.tv and nutjob.eu was arrested during April in the north of England.

Originally Published: Sat, 06 Sep 2014 08:59:59 +0000
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[ViperScale]

If he was selling stuff he pirated he should be in jail. (i really don't mind making money off adds etc as long as they aren't outright selling for access to data)

[Ernesto]

Early September news broke of another significant anti-piracy action carried out by City of London Police’s Intellectual Property Crime Unit.

After traveling 200 miles from their London base, PIPCU officers were assisted by Greater Manchester Police in raid carried out on a residential address in the Cheetham Hill area.

Their target was Zain Parvez, a 27-year-old whom police believed was the operator of a series of websites (CoolSport.se, CoolSport.tv and KiwiSportz.tv) which allegedly offered unauthorized access to subscription-only TV services, including matches from the Premier League.

Following Parvez’s arrest, police used the word “industrial” to describe the scale of the operation, having seized 12 servers said to have illegally streamed sports globally. The picture below was released to the press to underline the gravity of the situation.

Instead of releasing him on bail, Parvez was kept in custody under suspicion of offenses under the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988, engaging in money laundering, conspiracy to defraud and possessing or controlling an article for use in fraud.

But now, six weeks later, a surprising development appears to have undermined the case. After an appearance before magistrates the case went to Manchester Crown Court, at which point it was dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

“Following consultations with the CPS, a decision has been made to cease the initial charges put before the court in relation to a man arrested by the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit on September 1 in Manchester,” a PIPCU spokesperson said.

PIPCU says the investigation into Parvez’s alleged operation is still ongoing but with all the main charges now dropped, it’s unclear where the case can now go.

Parvez’s detention marked the third occasion an alleged streaming site operator had been arrested in the UK, but to date there has been no news of a successful prosecution.

The domains previously operated by Parvez are now all redirecting to a suspicious-looking site promoting Alibaba share deals, not City of London Police’s ‘seized site’ banner as previously might have been expected.

TorrentFreak contacted Parvez for comment and will update this article with any response.

Originally Published: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 08:02:26 +0000
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