Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Demonoid: The Mexico Connection

As I reported here yesterday, the understanding was that while the servers were in Ukraine, Demonoid's administrator was still "at large" in Mexico.

TorrenFreak has been the single best source of news throughout this nightmare. Today, they offer this update:
ColoCall [Ukraine's biggest data center] Commercial Director Peter Vlasenko has now confirmed that his company had repeatedly warned Demonoid of complaints being made against it. He added that the company had also cautioned Demonoid’s operators that problems could lead to the ISP severing its relationship with the site. Last week, that’s exactly what happened.

“The Division of Economic Crimes [DEC] received an international request from Interpol to send a request to the company ColoCall. DEC sent the request to the provider, after which the ISP decided to stop working with Demonoid,” said Sergei Burlakov of Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs.

But the bad news for Demonoid doesn’t end there. The Interpol request that finally forced the closure of the site was the result of call from thousands of miles away in North America.

“In Mexico a criminal case against the owners of Demonoid has been initiated and the tracker is charged with intellectual property rights violations,” Burlakov confirmed.

Demonoid’s links to Mexico have been rumored for some time, but it was action taken last year that finally gave them credibility.

TorrentFreak learned that in October 2011, Mexican authorities carried out a raid in Monterrey, the capital city of the northeastern Mexican state of Nuevo León. The prime target was one of Demonoid’s staff. Following the action the authorities completely blocked access to the site in Mexico. [It was widely understood for about the past year that Demonoid was blocking Mexican IP addresses.]

Movie industry sources confirmed to TorrentFreak that the raids had indeed resulted in the arrest of one of Demonoid’s administrators. It remains unclear whether the current investigation centers around the same individual.

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