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by mirimir 2375 days ago
Well, TFA says:

> "Specifically, Polo used sophisticated computer programming to [get pirated stuff] and then make the shows and movies available on servers in Canada," officials said.

So the fact that they were in the US is irrelevant.

But I'm sure that they got caught because they didn't know how to stay anonymous. Or were too lazy. Or got too greedy.

I mean, there are far better hosting alternatives than Canada. I guess that they wanted low latency for US customers. But still, they should have isolated themselves from the damn servers.

I'm guessing that it was their payment setup that got them pwned.
1 comments
latchkey 2375 days ago
I disagree on irrelevant. The fact that they stayed in the US definitely makes it harder to be anonymous (friends, relatives, language, police presence, etc)... it also makes it easier to be caught.
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mirimir 2375 days ago
There's no way to know what happened in their case.

But I suspect that it was a "loose lips" thing. Exacerbated, probably, by developing the project gradually. Being sloppy at first, because it was just playing around. Also bragging, and living large. That's a common set of fails. It played a major role in DPR's takedown. Also Sabu, who had been indiscreet on IRC, years before. And Artem Vaulin of KickassTorrents, who registered a key domain in his own name.

There's also the difficulty of accepting and accessing money anonymously. The Sheep Marketplace founder pwned himself when he cashed out. It's very hard to route around KYC law. The safest bet is collecting payments as Bitcon, Monero, etc And leaving everything except operating expenses in cryptocurrency, until it's time to expatriate to a safe jurisdiction, and cash out some of that good wealth.

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x86_64Ubuntu 2375 days ago
It also seems like when you start working with money, you cross into a whole different level of having a bad day by the Feds. If they had run something that had been ad based, they might have been able to stay off the FBI's shitlist. But when you have subscribers, and bank accounts and money transfers you are raising the governments ire.
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