Kim Dotcom, roguish face of 2010s online piracy, will finally be extradited to the US

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Kim Dotcom, roguish face of 2010s online piracy, will finally be extradited to the US

Kim Dotcom, the Megaupload founder and hard-partying face of early 2010s online piracy, is finally headed to the US. Reuters

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that New Zealand’s justice minister signed an extradition order on Thursday to end the entrepreneur’s nearly 13-year legal battle, paving the way for the *******-born Dotcom to face

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from the US government.

“I considered all of the information carefully, and have decided that Mr Dotcom should be surrendered to the U.S. to face trial,” Goldsmith said in a statement. The decision came more than six years after a New Zealand court ruled Dotcom could be extradited to the US, paving the way for appeals that culminated in today’s decision.

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/ Kim Dotcom

Once the 13th most visited site online, the file-hosting hub Megaupload was a hotbed for pirated content. In early 2012, ********* authorities charged Dotcom and six others with racketeering, copyright infringement, money laundering and copyright distribution. The US indictment claimed Megaupload cost copyright holders $500 million in damages while making $175 million from ads and premium subscriptions.

The raid on Dotcom’s Auckland mansion was dramatic fare among 2012’s relatively tame headlines. The New York Times

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at the time that when he saw the police, Dotcom barricaded himself inside, activated several electronic locks and waited in a safe room. When officers cut their way inside, they saw Dotcom standing near “a firearm that they said looked like a sawed-off shotgun.”

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/ Kim Dotcom

Dotcom (born Kim Schmitz) had several brushes with the law before that. He at least claimed to have spent three months in a Munich jail in 1994 for “breaking into Pentagon computers and observing real-time satellite photos of Saddam Hussein’s palaces.” Soon after, he received a suspended two-year sentence for a scam involving stolen phone card numbers.

In 2001, he was accused in the largest insider-trading case in ******* history. He reportedly fled Germany to escape those charges, was captured in Thailand, extradited (this week isn’t his first go-round) and convicted in 2002. At some point after that, he moved to New Zealand, holing up in a luxurious mansion.

You can see that mansion — and a taste of his larger-than-life persona — in his music video “Good Life.”

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith signed the extradition order on Thursday and followed standard practice in giving Dotcom “a short ******* of time to consider and take advice” on his decision.

Dotcom, never one to ****** words,

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a message on X that “the obedient US colony in the South Pacific just decided to extradite me for what users uploaded to Megaupload.”

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#Kim #Dotcom #roguish #face #2010s #online #piracy #finally #extradited

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