The man behind the pirate IPTV operation ‘Rapid IPTV‘ has finally been sentenced to prison.

Amir Z., known as “Dash the Iranian,” ran Rapid IPTV for years before Spanish police shut it down in 2020. His day in court came nearly six years later.

Rapid IPTV operated since at least 2014, growing to an estimated 2 million subscribers worldwide. The IPTV platform captured signals from licensed pay-TV providers and routed them through roughly 50 servers across 13 countries. It even offered a franchise model, letting others run the service under its infrastructure.

This wasn’t a small-time operation. Major studios and leagues including Netflix, Disney, Amazon, Warner Bros., and LaLiga all joined the legal action against the defendants.

Rapid IPTV Operator Gets a Fraction of What Prosecutors Sought

Spain’s National Court started the trial Tuesday against five defendants, all of Iranian origin. Prosecutors had sought 22.5 years in prison for Amir Z. After just three hours of negotiation, all five pleaded guilty and accepted a plea deal.

The result: just over two years in prison for the ringleader. The money laundering fine dropped from a potential €70 million to €8 million. An additional €12 million in damages goes to the affected media companies.

Because all parties agreed to the deal, the sentence cannot be appealed. That’s a wrap on one of the biggest IPTV prosecutions in European history.

The Money Trail Was Massive

Prosecutors traced roughly €25 million through payment processors, crypto exchanges, shell companies, and fake invoices. Investigators found specific purchases: a residential building in Iran, a Barcelona apartment worth €1.6 million, and two luxury vehicles totaling €400,000.

During the 2020 raids, police seized real estate, cars, jewelry, cash, and crypto worth around €4.8 million, plus €1.1 million frozen in bank accounts.

Final Thoughts from Troy

This case shows enforcement agencies do catch up to large IPTV operations, even if it takes years. The plea deal meant a dramatically reduced sentence of two years for running a platform with millions of subscribers is a fraction of what prosecutors originally sought.

Worth noting: The iptvstack.com and iptv.community domains that linked to the operation are still live at time of this article. That tells you how difficult it is to fully shut down these pirate streaming operations.

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For more details on this story, refer to the reports from EFE and TorrentFreak.

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