The Judicial Police, through the Criminal Investigation Department of Aveiro, have identified and detained an individual aged 40 for aggravated computer crime, illegitimate access, possession and sale of protected equipment, copyright infringement and tax fraud, committed through the “cardharing” method.

The detainee maintained an unlawful structure for the provision of the protected TV services, recruiting customers, selling specially tampered equipment to receive the coded signal, making the access available and receiving the agreed payments. For this purpose the structure comprised servers installed outside the national territory in Germany and Italy.

With this procedure, about four hundred customers illegitimately had access to the paid TV signal without the operators receiving the price due, to the detriment of these and the Public Treasury for the non-settlement of the corresponding tax revenues.

In the course of the searches carried out, relevant evidence was detected, notably a computer system dedicated to the control of the accesses made by the “customers” to the servers dedicated to “Cardsharing” and about three dozen “set-top-boxes”,  of receiving the satellite signal, tampered with to provide access to the protected signal.

The detainee was present to the Judicial Authorities, in the Region of Aveiro, for first judicial interrogation and determination of the appropriate measures of coercion.