Overview
- The Guardia di Finanza, which launched Operation 'Tutto in Chiaro' Friday, deployed about 200 officers for more than 100 searches and seized devices, servers and source code across Italy with Eurojust‑coordinated actions in France and Germany.
- Investigators say Cinemagoal routed user devices to foreign servers to decrypt paid content and used always‑on virtual machines in Italy to replay codes linked to legitimate subscriptions registered to fictitious accounts.
- Authorities have already identified roughly 1,000 users who will face administrative fines of €154 to €5,000 and are processing seized data to trace an estimated wider user base of about 100,000 people.
- The service was operated as a commercial product with a branded sales network of about 70 resellers, annual subscriptions of €40–€130 and payments channeled through cryptocurrencies or foreign and fake accounts to limit traceability.
- Prosecutors will pursue criminal probes for audiovisual piracy, unlawful access to computer systems and fraud as forensic analysts quantify illicit proceeds and prepare further seizures and charges.