Italian arrested for ‘p2p scam’

The Italian police have arrested the administrator of several torrent sites. He is suspected of tax fraud and copyright infringement. He would also have sold email addresses of users without permission.

TorrentFreak reports this on its website. The man known on the Internet as Tex Willer owned several file-sharing websites, including ItalianShare.net. The police had previously taken the websites offline, but have now also arrested the people behind them.

The administrator is suspected of copyright infringement, facilitation thereof and tax fraud. In addition, he would have sold more than 30,000 email addresses in combination with IP addresses to advertisers without the permission of those involved.

Enzo Mazza, director of the Italian anti-piracy organization FIMI, tells TorrentFreak that this is “a very important matter”. “This is the first time that the tax police have conducted a large-scale analysis of the economics behind a filesharing website, using the same methods used to investigate money laundering,” said Mazza.