Law enforcement in India has arrested four men for leaking an episode of Game of Thrones online.
The four men arrested are associated with Prime Focus Technologies, a third-party vendor that works on Game of Thrones, according to Akbar Pathan, Mumbai Police’s deputy commissioner for cybercrime. Three of the men were current employees of the company while the fourth was a former employee.
“This is the first time in the history of Star India that an incident of this nature has occurred,” Star India and Novi Digital told the Hollywood Reporter. “We are deeply grateful to the police for their swift and prompt action. We believe that valuable intellectual property is a critical part of the development of the creative industry and strict enforcement of the law is essential to protecting it.”
An electronic trail led to Prime Focus Technologies, where police questioned employees and collected data to analyze. The four men arrested remain in jail while police continue to investigate.
“The Spoils of War,” Game of Thrones’ fourth episode this season, started appearing on torrent sites three days before the episode was scheduled to air. Although some quickly associated the episode leaking with the HBO hack from earlier in the week (which included the script outline for the same episode), the leak was quickly traced to Star India, an international Game of Thrones distributor.
Since the breach of HBO’s data, the hackers have continued to release more information and episodes since—including upcoming episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm—but so far, they have yet to leak an episode of Game of Thrones.
Despite the episode ending up online early, it did not appear to affect HBO’s ratings. After the episode aired, HBO reported a record 10.17 million people watched the episode the day it aired.
