Press Releases 2004

With help from the Embassy's Legal Attaché office, Polish National Police have broken up a ring of more than 100 hackers who had been hacking into computer systems worldwide and pirating music, games and films.

The organized crime group had been working out of Gorzow Wielkopolski and is believed to be responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in losses and theft of intellectual property globally.

Recognizing that Internet piracy groups are transnational, the Legal Attaché office -- which represents the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) -- is working closely on this problem with the Poles. "We are thankful for the strong partnership with the Polish National Police and their efforts to combat Internet piracy domestically and internationally," said Legal Attaché Joel Irvin.

More than 100 people in more than a dozen Polish cities have been arrested, including some university computer specialists. Among those arrested are high school computer science students, an employee of a computer store, and an administrator of the Polish social security office (ZUS). If convicted, the suspects face up to eight years in prison.

Amb. Victor Ashe said, "Cybercrime crosses borders, and international cooperation is needed to stop it. Poland and the United States have set a fine example for this type of cooperation with these arrests."

The investigation took about a year.

Reports indicate that the group of hackers worked under the name “Warez City,” creating a virtual state, where members were assigned specific tasks. Police investigators picked up the group’s trail in October 2003. That’s when police in Gorzow Wielkopolski detected someone breaking into computer systems at universities in Poland, the U.S., Australia, Great Britain, Slovakia, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Greece and Switzerland.

According to published reports, the hackers would most often select technical universities equipped with computers that had the largest memory and fastest modems. The discs they had access to served as storage room for illegal software. If they needed more space they would delete the university’s archives.

The FBI is also checking whether this specific group broke into computer systems at American companies. More arrests are expected.