Paypal Tips Off US Authorities About Movie Pirate Who Bought $1 Million In Crypto From Coinbase

Paypal Tips U.S Authorities About Movie Pirate Who Bought $1million Cryptocurrency From Coinbase

The Homeland Security Investigations (HIS) and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) have seized over $4million worth of cryptocurrency and cash following and inept movie piracy investigation conducted by the U.S regulatory agencies. The interesting part of the whole scenario is that it was PayPal that tipped off the regulatory agencies of the case.

Illegal Streaming Service

In 2013, Paypal pointed HIS to two supposedly illegal streaming services, named Noobroom.com and Noobroom7.com, TorrentFreak reports. The owner of the pirate sites curiously possesses a rather diversified portfolio of cryptocurrencies including Litecoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.

According to the documents obtained by the court, a federal high court in Oregon is already reviewing the case. Authorities are thus seeking the full forfeiture of all the seized funds on the basis that the owner of the streaming sites went against both the copyright and money laundering acts.

A thorough investigation by the Motion Picture Association of America revealed that the website illegally distributed copyrighted works. The regulatory body also noted that Noobroom generated a lot of revenue by collecting subscription payments via Paypal and Stripe.

MPAA acted swiftly after the conduct of the investigation by sending a cease- and- desist letter to Noobrom and all its associated websites. Noobrom defiled the order of MPAA but rather notified their users that their accounts were being moved to a new domain, called SuperChillin.com. The regulatory body later linked Superchilling.com to two other piracy portals, Sit2Play.com and movietv.com.

Organized Crime Syndicate

MPAA also realized that the additional websites were a part of an organized crime syndicate led by one Talon White. Investigators also discovered that all of Noobroom’s revenue generated via subscription was moved from the streaming service’s Stripe account to the bank account owned and controlled by Talon White.

Documents from the court revealed that Noobroom and its associated websites were able to receive almost $80,000 payments of $9.99 sparsely between October 2015 and December 2016, which totals $789,060.

Further investigation into the case also dug up another 7,611 payments of $25.49 ($194,004.39) and 5,348 payments of $44.99 ($240,606.52) also linked to Noobroom. Looking further into White’s Stripe transactions, investigations showed that Noobroom’s owner received a total of $6,373,816.57 in another 396,843 payments which were obtained between October 2017 and September 2018.

After the necessary paperwork, authorities seized well over $4 million in cash and cryptocurrencies from White, while a court order has directed IRS to hold on to the funds until further notice.

In related news, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission is taking the fight to the perpetrators of cryptocurrency fraud and all related offenses. Bitcoin Exchange Guide.com summed up the regulatory agency’s battle against crypto fraud earlier this year.

The regulatory agency shut down established and start-up blockchain firms who failed to comply with its rules charged and convicted many business executives who are involved in ICO scams and tried its best to rid the crypto community off this menace once and for all.