A man blackmailed the makers of the upcoming movie The Boss Baby after he obtained a leaked copy. He demanded 20th Century Fox & Dreamworks to pay a bitcoin ransom to avoid the file leaking online before its official premiere. After 20th Century Fox paid ransom, a man was arrested and now remains in custody.
It turned out that last month a man managed to obtain a pre-release copy of the animated comedy The Boss Baby. The movie was due to be distributed in Serbia by local company MEGAKOM in April, and before that it needed to be localized with a Serbian language soundtrack. For some reason, the movie ended up on a translator’s PC and her partner copied it without her knowledge. A 26-year-old son of a retired policeman decided not to leak it online but try to extort some cash from DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox.
MEGAKOM conducted an investigation to find out how the movie could leak, including tracing back the IP addresses of the blackmailer. Then 20th Century Fox paid Belgrade-resident 8 Bitcoins, which didn’t satisfy the man. However, things didn’t end well for him: after being arrested by local police. Some experts believe that he faces up to 10 years in prison.
This is not the only case that brought Serbia in piracy news headlines recently: Two suspects were arrested in the framework of the investigation by the country’s organized crime unit into popular local TV streaming site, police searched homes and other premises used by the website’s operators and seized their equipment.
