UK police seize £1.2m of kit after shutting illegal streaming centre

The operation, led by the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) at the City of London Police, has disrupted thousands of illegal streams across the UK. The investigation began after PIPCU received a report of suspicious activity. 

Two people have been arrested in connection with the operation, and £700,000 was seized from one of those individuals. They have since been released under investigation. 

During the operation in Farnborough, PIPCU worked with Sky to dismantle the pirate infrastructure. The data centre hosted clusters of high-bandwidth servers that supplied illicit streams to many thousands of customers across the UK. Equipment estimated to be worth over $1m was seized and will be forensically examined.

The shutdown caused widespread disruption to illegal streaming services nationwide.

Detective Sergeant Ben Hobbs, from the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) at the City of London Police, said: “The size of this operation shows how widespread illegal streaming has become in the UK and our commitment to bringing the criminals behind it to justice.”

Matt Hibbert, Group Director of Anti-Piracy at Sky, said: “We welcome the action taken by the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit to shut down this major nationwide illegal streaming operation that stretched across the nation and exposed the wider criminal network. Illegal streaming is part of organised criminality that undermines the creative industries and causes harm to consumers.”

The Motion Picture Association (MPA) recently welcomed a UK High Court order that streamlines the process for blocking access to proven piracy services when they switch names or website domains to evade court orders. Discover more here.