14 DAY TRIAL // Italian authorities have arrested a 49-year-old man, suspected of being the operator of file sharing websites such as ItalianShare, MusicShare, FilmShare and ItalianSexy, all hosted on servers in Las Vegas.
Known in the cyber world as Tex Willer, the man is accused of forgery, tax evasion, copyright infringement and fraud, activities that earned him around $707,000 (580,000 EUR), TorrentFreak reports.
Furthermore, investigators believe that he commercialized the email and IP addresses of those who registered accounts on his sites, all 300,000 of them.
Authorities state that the suspect sold his customers’ details for the price of $45,000 (37,000 EUR). Since he didn’t pay any taxes and most of his invoices were fake, the fraudster didn’t have any difficulties in making bundles of money.
It’s estimated that the content he provided on his websites since 2007 is worth around $39 million (32 million EUR).
In November 2011, we reported that the Italian Guardia di Finanza pulled the plug on his operation. Now, since the investigation came to an end, Willer has been taken into custody, five other individuals being charged with various offences for their involvement in the scheme.
And this is not the end of this story. An investigation that targets the advertisers who worked with Willer has been launched.
As expected, representatives of the media industry and anti-piracy organizations are satisfied with how this case developed.
“For the first time the Fiscal police did a very sophisticated analysis of the economics behind an infringing site using the standard procedure they are using for the money laundering investigation,” Enzo Mazza, president of the FIMI anti-piracy group, told TorrentFreak.
“We applaud the investigation of the fiscal police and the action taken by the public prosecutor from Salerno.”