7 October 2022
German Authorities And FBI Seize $30M BTC From Movie Piracy Site
The authorities from Germany have seized $30 Million worth of bitcoin and bitcoin cash from a pirate streaming site Movie2K.
The Dresden public prosecutor's office made an announcement on Tuesday stating that Movie2K was illegally operated and around 880,000 pirated copies of movies and TV shows were distributed between 2008 and 2013.
The operators of the website have been charged with running the illegal movie piracy service, which enabled users to watch films without having to download them. Back in November, one of the two operators was arrested while the other was still on the run.
The Dresden Public Prosecutor’s Office, supported by the State Criminal Police Office in Saxony and the Leipzig Tax Investigation Department, reported that he has surrendered $30 million worth of BTC and BCH and is now cooperating with authorities.
However, the website’s programmer is alleged to have gotten over 22,000 BTC from advertising and subscription revenue made on movie2k.to, and mostly used the cryptocurrency to acquire properties via a real estate firm in Berlin.
German Federal Criminal Police Office and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations traced down the funds. German newspaper reads that movie2k.to was one of the world’s leading pirated movie content distribution platforms for years.
