AEPOC stops largest incident of card sharing piracy

A joint police and AEPOC operation has foiled the actions of a card-sharing pirate in Cyprus.

AEPOC, the the European Association for the Protection of Encrypted Works and Services, initiated a police investigation into a 49-year old Cypriot man who was alleged to be illegally providing subscriptions to the pay TV services of BFBS, BSkyB and Nova. The operation, backed by AEPOC members and partners, including the affected operators and content security specialist Irdeto, led to the arrest of the man who has subsequently admitted the charges. The police are still seeking a second suspect. Servers, computers and associated equipment have been seized to undergo a forensic examination.

The man is accused of having provided illegal pay TV subscriptions to nearly 1,400 people across Europe between October 2010 to May 2011, earning a minimum of €100,000 in the process. For giving illicit access to the pay TV channels the man and the second suspect established a network of five servers that distributed the required access codes from single, legitimate but abused smart cards to the clients’ equipment. “This case represents one of the largest incidents of commercial pay TV piracy based on card sharing, given the harmful potential of five robust servers – and is the biggest case for Cyprus,” AEPOC said in a statement.

The arrested man is said to have sold illegal three, six and 12-months subscriptions for €55, €89 and €155, respectively.