When ICE freezes your bank account and website

Late last month, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) announced the launch of Operation In Our Sites – an initiative aimed at Internet counterfeiting and piracy. Operating largely at the behest of the  Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the first action carried out as part of the initiative led to the seizure of nine websites, including tvshack.net, movie-links.tv, filepump.com, now-movies.com, planetmoviez.com, thepiratecity.org, zml.com, and ninjavideo.com. According to CNET, more than a dozen bank, investment and advertising accounts were wrangled — in addition to the URLs themselves: