BUTTERWORTH: Police arrested 12 people and busted what is believed to be a first-of-its-kind illegal Internet Pay Television (IPTV) syndicate in the country, which even offered five pornography channels.
Bukit Aman Commercial Crime Investigation Department deputy director II Senior Asst Comm Datuk Mohd Rodwan Mohd Yusuf said nine men and three women, aged between 28 and 40, were detained.
They were arrested in a joint operation with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) and Cyber Security Malaysia, in five separate raids in Penang, Kedah and Perlis on Thursday.
Police seized an assortment of items like servers, computers and decoders worth about RM400,000 used in broadcasting movies from Hong Kong, China, Thailand and Indonesia.
“With the arrests and the seizure, police have crippled a syndicate that had been operating over the past year,” SAC Mohd Rodwan told reporters here yesterday.
Also present were Bukit Aman commercial crime senior operations officer Supt Teh Eng Hin and Putrajaya MCMC officer Mazlan Othman.
“During a one-month surveillance, we obtained information that the company was providing IPTV services illegally,” he said, adding that the three agencies then raided the Park View Tower condominium here at about 11pm.
“We found that the suspects were using the sixth floor as their operations centre to provide applications and content to customers nationwide,” he added.
Among those arrested were a couple the husband who is believed to be the administrator while his wife is said to be a secondary school teacher.
Seven of them had since been released on bail while the other five had been remanded till Monday for questioning.
The syndicate managed to sign up at least 2,000 customers in the space of a year.