In Kiev, the police located an office selling smart set-top boxes for illegal broadcasting TV channels. This is stated on the official website of the Cyber Police of Ukraine.
The officers of the Kyiv Unit of the Cyber Police Department of the National Police of Ukraine in cooperation with the investigators of the Shevchenko District Kyiv Police Division found out a group of people violating the copyright of famous Ukrainian TV channels.
The violators by means of special software modified settings of smart set-top boxes that allowed their owners to watch over a thousand paid TV channels without any fee. The estimated amount of Ukrainian copyright holders’ losses totals UAH 1.5 million.
The detectives revealed that the trespassers were selling smart set-top boxes (TV BOX), providing for broadcasts without any license agreement of Ukrainian TV channels. The set-top boxes were old on a specially created website, and their price ranged from 2 to 4 thousand hryvnias per unit. The staff of that online store tuned set-top boxes for the Ukrainian market, as well as configured and installed software to get more than a thousand TV channels for free. At the same time, the customers did not have to pay mandatory payments for watching those TV channels.
The Cyber Police officers conducted a number of investigative and inquiry procedures and fount out all participants in the criminal scheme, as well as the location of their office, where the police made an authorized search.
In the course of their raid, the law enforcement officers seized computer equipment, more than 20 smart set-top boxes (TV BOX), auxiliary data storage media, as well as technical specifications and draft documents. The seized equipment was handed over to the expert evaluation center for any required expert analysis.
The pretrial inquiry is underway under Part 1 of Article 176 (Violation of Copyright and Related Rights) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The police go on documenting evidence of illegal activities of the trespassers.
