Moroccan Expat Arrested in France for Running Massive Music Piracy Site, Causing €5.5M Loss

The gendarmes began investigating the existence of a pirate site, nohazik.us, which had accumulated more than 200,000 visits in a few months, following a report from the Society of Music Authors, Composers and Publishers (SACEM), reports La Voix du gendarme. The site pirated more than 65 million downloads. The damage caused by these illegal downloads is estimated at 5.5 million euros, according to information provided to the gendarmes. The latter also called on the Association for the Fight against Audiovisual Piracy (ALPA), which identified many legal entities as victims, producers, artists or distributors of the records made available on nohazik.us.

The investigators from the Center for the Fight against Digital Crime (C3N) of the Lille research section managed to identify an administrator of the site based in France. He is a Franco-Moroccan. This computer scientist by profession was arrested in Amiens on September 21. During his custody, he admitted to having an accomplice based in Morocco. The latter would be the beneficiary of the income generated by the site. Pending his appearance before the criminal court on February 2, 2022, the main suspect is under judicial supervision with a ban on leaving the territory.