{"id":86486,"date":"2026-07-07T20:50:30","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T20:50:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/?p=86486"},"modified":"2026-07-07T20:50:30","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T20:50:30","slug":"french-police-dismantle-operation-behind-the-already-defunct-yggtorrent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/?p=86486","title":{"rendered":"French Police Dismantle Operation Behind the Already Defunct YggTorrent"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"yggYggTorrent was France\u2019s largest torrent community, with more than 10 million registered members when it shut down in March<\/a> following a major hack.<\/p>\n

The hacker, known as Gr0lum, breached the site\u2019s infrastructure, exfiltrated 19 GB of data, drained its crypto wallets, and wiped its servers.<\/p>\n

That proved to be too much to come back from and YggTorrent decided to throw in the towel instead. In many cases, that would be the end of the story. However, the French Gendarmerie nationale had other plans in the works.<\/p>\n

Twelve YggTorrent Arrests<\/h2>\n

This week, the police announced<\/a> that it dismantled \u2018the structure\u2019 behind YggTorrent. This wording is carefully chosen and avoids taking direct credit for the site\u2019s shutdown, which took place months earlier.<\/p>\n

The police operation was conducted by the UNCyber unit from the Montpellier Section de Recherches, under the direction of the JIRS and JUNALCO in Paris. Twelve people have been arrested and put under investigation.<\/p>\n

The press release suggests that not all reported arrests are recent, noting that they were carried out since late 2023. The twelve people are suspected of organized copyright infringement (contrefa\u00e7on), money laundering, and operating a platform facilitating illegal transactions.<\/p>\n

In French legal terms, the suspects have been placed under formal judicial investigation (mise en examen), which signals that prosecutors believe there is serious evidence of criminal involvement.<\/p>\n

The investigation was initiated following complaints from SACEM, ALPA, and the French Video Publishing Union. SACEM\u2019s enforcement interest in YggTorrent dates back to at least 2018, when one of its complaints forced the site to abandon its .com domain<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The scale of YggTorrent\u2019s operation may explain the severity of the charges. According to data in the Gr0lum leak, the site generated an estimated \u20ac8.5 million in revenue in 2025, allegedly routing payments through dozens of fake e-commerce storefronts to disguise transactions from payment processors including PayPal and Stripe.<\/p>\n

\u2018Dismantling The Site\u2019?<\/h2>\n

The police note that searches across France uncovered crypto-assets linked to the site\u2019s revenues and approximately \u20ac45,000 in computer equipment. <\/p>\n

These details were proudly shared on social media<\/a> too, with a notable exaggeration.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The Gendarmerie\u2019s tweet<\/em><\/center>
\"gendarmerie\"<\/center><\/p>\n

As shown above, the French police claim to have dismantled the \u201c#YGGTORRENT download site\u201d, which is not exactly true. The site itself has been offline for months, after all, and was directly linked to the hack.<\/p>\n

The police press release does not mention the hack at all. Their investigation already started years earlier, but it is possible that the leaked information may have been useful as added intelligence.<\/p>\n

When YggTorrent\u2019s hacker came forward in March, they explicitly noted that the data could be \u201cof interest to law enforcement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wider Fallout<\/h2>\n

The arrests appear to have triggered a wave of closures across France\u2019s broader warez community.<\/p>\n

According to KultureGeek<\/a>, the former leaders of release groups Forward (FW) and TFA, both specializing in WEB-DL rips of streaming content, have been arrested, along with a community member known as Fervex. Several former YggTorrent moderators were also detained.<\/p>\n

Forward, which was responsible for an estimated 35,000 torrents before being banned from YggTorrent<\/a> during the Turbo Mode controversy last December, confirmed its permanent closure. Predb FR, a release indexer, shut down. Nexum, a private tracker, was destroyed by its own operator as a precaution, while Usenet indexer UNFR also went dark.<\/p>\n

Whether the FW and TFA arrests are part of the Gendarmerie\u2019s twelve or whether they are part of a separate investigation remains unclear. Other community reports on Reddit<\/a> and elsewhere could not be immediately verified either, but it is clear that the French piracy scene is in turmoil.<\/p>\n

For now, the investigation remains ongoing, and the Gendarmerie has not ruled out further arrests.<\/p>\n

From: TF<\/a>, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.<\/p>\n

Powered by WPeMatico<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

YggTorrent was France\u2019s largest torrent community, with more than 10 million registered members when it shut down in March following a major hack. The hacker, known as Gr0lum, breached the site\u2019s infrastructure, exfiltrated 19 GB of data, drained its crypto wallets, and wiped its servers. That proved to be too much to come back from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86487,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[308],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-torrent"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=86486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/86487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=86486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=86486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=86486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}