Operation Red Card: 15 Arrests & Over 1,800 Domains Seized

Colombia’s Fiscalía General wrapped Operation Red Card two days before the World Cup final, and this one came with handcuffs instead of just seizure banners.

Nine countries took part: Colombia, the United States, Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, and Chile. Prosecutors suspended 1,840 domains and URLs across the group, with 1,140 coming out of Colombia alone.

Visitors hitting a blocked domain landed on the banner below, stacked with the logos of every agency and rights holder involved.

Operation Red Card Arrests and Counterfeit Seizures 

Fifteen people were arrested. Four suspects in Soacha, just outside Bogotá, allegedly hacked a telecom provider’s platforms and sold cheap cable TV while posing as company employees. Two of them accepted the charges.

Photos released by the Fiscalía show what that operation actually looked like on the ground, from the fake fiber plan flyers used to sign up customers to a wall of receivers piping a match onto a TV.

Raúl González Flechas of the Fiscalía stated the following on this situation:

‘While the planet focused on the FIFA World Cup 2026, a group of nations went after the structures that profit from counterfeiting and theft of digital content.’

Another 11 people were charged over shops selling fake World Cup merchandise. Police hauled in 4,223 counterfeit sports items, 11,353 fake logos waiting to be pressed onto shirts, and 2,150 phony Colombian Football Federation crests during raids in Bogotá, Itagüí, Cali, Acacías, and Bucaramanga.

Argentina joined earlier in the tournament, where federal judges ordered ENACOM and NIC Argentina to block 14 platforms tied to FútbolLibre, Stella TV, and Tele Latino.

Starving the Ad Money

The Trustworthy Accountability Group took a quieter route. Rather than chasing servers, TAG added 1,376 sports piracy sites to its Pirate Domain Exclusion List, cutting off the advertising revenue that funds those operations.

We think that angle has more teeth than any seizure banner. Domains cost a few dollars to replace, but a site with no payday eventually stops getting rebuilt.

The US ran its own track as Operation Offsides, which we covered when the feds grabbed hundreds of World Cup streaming domains and again when operators fled to Iranian fallback addresses.

List of Suspended Pirate Streaming Domains

Listed below are just some of the names caught up in the wider crackdown, and we’re certain there are thousands more:

• rojadirecta.fan
• tarjetarojatv.click
• futbollibre-hd.com
• pelotalibrehd.org
• streameast.mov
• buffstreams.app
• daddylive.org
• viperplay.net
• hesgoals.lol
• sportsurge.ws
• totalsportekz.com
• crichd.tech
• yalla-shoot360.com
• kooora365.com
• pirlotvhd.run

And a quick Google search for any of these names will still return several working clones.

Final Thoughts from Troy

Fifteen arrests and a wall of seized receivers is a real result, but suspending 1,840 domains against a brand like FútbolLibre that has been under investigation since 2022 tells you how this ends. Copycats were already live before the final whistle blew.

If you would rather watch sports without dodging seizures and risking your privacy with unverified sites, look at verified sports streaming apps and  live TV services.

For more details on this story, refer to the reports from El Colombiano and TorrentFreak.

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