"Since 2014, it had systematically provided free and unauthorized access to a massive volume of works protected by intellectual property rights," the Spanish police said today, describing what they called the largest Spanish-language manga piracy platform.
Spanish police investigation and arrests
Spanish authorities said they launched an investigation in June 2025 and executed an enforcement action this week that led to four arrests. Officers raided a suspect's home in Almeria, where they found what the police described as a "complex technological setup" supporting the site's operation. The authorities made three additional arrests as part of the same action but released few details about the specific roles those individuals held.
Scope and impact: millions of visits and $4.7 million in ad revenue
The police statement framed the portal as a dominant Spanish-language reference for pirated manga, operating since 2014 and drawing millions of monthly users worldwide. According to the authorities, the site generated more than $4,700,000 in advertising revenue. The announcement said the platform caused "serious harm to rights holders, publishers, translators, and the cultural industry as a whole," and emphasized the site's significant international reach.
Advertising tactics and content risks for users
Authorities said the platform monetized traffic through aggressive pop-up advertising. Those pop-ups were shown to users on every action taken on the site — selecting content, reading descriptions, or browsing catalogs — actions that the police say maximized advertising impressions. The police also noted that much of the advertising was pornographic, a point that raised specific concerns because many of the site's visitors were minors.
Technical evidence seized: cold wallets and a thwarted backup site
During the Almeria raid, police recovered two USB devices hidden inside a wall thermometer. The devices contained "cold" cryptocurrency wallets that held in excess of $470,000 in digital assets, the announcement said. Investigators also found that the primary operator was developing a second website — described by the authorities as a possible redundancy or a means to port the pirate platform — but the raid prevented that new site from launching.
TorrentFreak reporting and legal pressure from Korean rights holders
Independent reporting by TorrentFreak documented that the Spanish-language manga platform Tu Manga Online (TMO) was taken offline following legal pressure, including actions by Korean intellectual property rights holders. The police announcement published today did not explicitly name TMO, but the platform description and timelines provided by Spanish authorities match the particular site described by TorrentFreak.
How publishers, minors, and law enforcement are affected
- Publishers and translators — The police described major financial and reputational damage to publishers and translators, a direct impact tied to millions of monthly visits and the unauthorized distribution of protected works.
- Minors and parents — The widespread placement of pornographic advertising on a site frequented by minors underscores immediate content-safety risks for young users and highlights why the police emphasized the nature of the ads when describing harm.
- Law enforcement and rights holders — The operation demonstrates coordinated investigative pressure that combined criminal enforcement (the raid and arrests) with civil and international legal steps (actions by Korean rights holders) to take down or disable an online piracy platform.
The Spanish police operation interrupted a piracy service the authorities say had been in continuous operation for more than a decade, seized sizable cryptocurrency holdings, and prevented the launch of a backup site. The announcement frames the result as a significant blow to a platform that relied on high-volume traffic and intrusive advertising to monetize stolen content. Whether prosecutions follow, how publishers will pursue financial recovery, and how operators might attempt to recreate services elsewhere remain open in the record released by the police.
