In June 2020, Spanish police led a Europe-wide operation that arrested 11 people connected to a pirate IPTV platform with two million subscribers.

Europol and Eurojust announced the action with considerable fanfare but declined to name the service. However, at the time we confirmed that a key target was RapidIPTV, a platform that had been quietly running an IPTV streaming empire since at least 2014.

The authorities saw Amir Z. as the alleged mastermind behind the empire, which also offered a ‘franchise’ model. The man, known to his colleagues as “ Dash the Iranian ,” was arrested, and this week, after nearly six years of pre-trial proceedings, the prosecution formally started in court.

RapidIPTV Kingpin Goes to Trial

Spain’s National Court ( Audiencia Nacional ) began hearing the case on Tuesday against five defendants, all of Iranian origin. The charges cover membership of a criminal organization, intellectual property crimes, offenses against the market and consumers, as well as money laundering.

In sharp contrast to the multi-year wait following the arrests, the trial was relatively short-lived.

After three hours of negotiation, all defendants reached an agreement with prosecutors, according to EFE . The prosecution agreed to drop the most serious charge, membership of a criminal organization, after the defendants pleaded guilty to the three other charges.

This resulted in a large sentencing reduction. The prosecution had originally sought 22 and a half years of prison time for Amir Z., but the agreed sentence was just over two years. Similarly, the money-laundering fine that initially could be as high as €70 million was reduced to €8 million as part of the deal.

Because all sides agreed to the plea deal, it cannot be appealed by any party. This effectively ends the prosecution. The sentences for the remaining defendants were not reported.

€12 Million for the Rights-Holders

In addition to the €8 million fine to the state, the sentence also includes a damages fee of €12 million for the affected companies. The court also ordered the confiscation of all material seized during the raids, as well as all funds and accounts held by the defendants.

The private prosecution coalition was an unusually large one. Warner Bros, Universal, Columbia, Sony Pictures, Paramount, New Line, Netflix, Amazon, Disney, and LaLiga had all joined the action under Spain’s acusación particular mechanism, to hold the IPTV operators responsible.

How much money can eventually be recouped has yet to be seen, but with an estimated 2 million subscribers, the operation generated substantial revenue.

A Building in Iran, a Flat in Barcelona

The money-laundering element of the case was also notable. Prosecutors alleged that the group moved approximately €25.1 million through payment processors, cryptocurrency exchanges, shell companies, and falsified invoices.

Specific transactions identified by investigators included the construction of a residential building in Iran, the purchase of a Barcelona property valued at €1.6 million, and the purchase of two luxury vehicles worth a combined €400,000.

Those figures partially overlap with what was already public: at the time of the 2020 raids, Europol reported that police seized real estate, cars, jewelry, cash, and cryptocurrency worth approximately €4.8 million, and €1.1 million frozen in bank accounts.

The platform used various domain names, including rapidiptv.com, rapidiptv.net, iptvstack.com, and the iptv.community forum. According to the prosecution, it captured signals from licensed pay-TV platforms and routed them through a private server network of 50 servers in at least 13 countries across Europe and North America.

Interestingly, iptvstack.com and iptv.community both remain operational at the time of writing.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.