I've hung around in IRC with some people that distribute pirate copies of anime series, do fansubs and better video encodes, etc. While obviously I never met them face to face, the things they'd discuss seemed just normal everyday things a computer savvy guy with slightly too much free time on their hands would talk about. I too am pretty confident the worst thing you'd find locked upped in their basements would be some pervy manga volumes, not people in chains. Not like I could know for sure, but still...

Another point is most of the time they'll tell you they're either doing it out of their own pocket or barely scraping by paying server rent from donations. Even if they were lying I fail to see what financial incentive would organized crime have in doing digital piracy. People aren't paying for the P2P downloads they provide.