Fake Netflix That Uses Cryptocurrency For Payments Busted By Europol

Europol seized an illegal streaming service that operated for 5 years while providing access to pirated shows and movies to its 2 million users for a fee.

According to Bloomberg, the pirate streaming site offered, “… [over] 40,000 channels, movies, documentaries and other content.” They also stole content from legal streaming sites like Netflix and Amazon Prime.

The operation was very sophisticated in that it even had a customer service team to provide technical help to users.

The pirate ring reportedly earned around $17 million coursed via PayPal, bank transfers, and crypto currencies, of which $5.4 million were seized. Authorities have frozen another $1.2 million sitting in bank accounts. Their base of operations was in Spain, but the authorities arrested 11 people from all across Europe.

With the world on lockdown and people spending most of their time at home, content streaming increased in demand, to where countries asked Netflix to drop streaming quality to ease up on capacity. Netflix itself added 15 million subscribers in the first 3 months of 2020 and they expect this number to rise soon. This affected investor outlook, with Netflix up 42% since the March 12 crash.

NFLIX since March 2020 by vmislos on TradingView.com

However, Netflix is facing a streaming landscape with an increasing number of competitors, such as Disney Plus and the recently launched HBO Max, all vying for customers’ attention and dollars. A natural response might be to add cost, but it might have a negative effect on legal streaming sites vs. illegal streaming sites. Analyst for Midia Research, Tim Mulligan, told Bloomberg that the background threat of piracy means on-demand subscription sites like Netflix will have to consider “the threat of piracy as a pricing factor.”