The real pirate will go to court

“I have carefully considered all the information and have decided that Mr Dotcom should be extradited to the US to stand trial,” the minister said in a statement. The decision comes more than six years after a New Zealand court ruled that Dotcom could be extradited to the US, but the matter has been dragged out to this day because of the numerous applications that followed.

Megaupload, the file-sharing site that was once the 13th most visited site on the Internet, was a breeding ground for pirated content. In early 2012, American authorities indicted Dotcom and six others. blackmail, copyright infringement, money laundering and distribution of counterfeit goodsThe US indictment alleges that Megaupload caused $500 million in damages to rights holders and earned $175 million in revenue from advertising and premium subscriptions.

Kim Dotcom in one of his old videos on YouTube / 24 Channel Screenshot

The raid on Dotcom’s Oakland mansion became the talk of the town all over the internet in 2012. The New York Times reported that when Dotcom saw the police, he barricaded himself inside, activated several electronic locks, and waited in a secure room. When police entered, they found Dotcom next to “a firearm that they said looked like the tip of a rifle.”

Before that Dotcom (name at birth) Kim Schmitz) has already had trouble with the law several times:

• He claimed he spent three months in a Munich prison in 1994 for “infiltrating Pentagon computers and viewing real-time satellite photos of Saddam Hussein’s palaces.”
• Shortly after that, the man was sentenced to two years’ suspension for fraud using stolen phone card numbers.
• In 2001, he was charged with the largest insider trading case in German history.

To avoid these latest charges, he reportedly fled Germany, was captured in Thailand, extradited, and convicted in 2002. After this, Dotcom moved to New Zealand, where he hid out in a luxurious mansion. This mansion can be seen in the music video for “Good Life”.

Kim Dotcom’s 2016 clip reveals the luxury of his life: video

New Zealand Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith signed the extradition order. Never one to keep his mouth shut, Dotcom reported on the X Network that “a docile American colony in the South Pacific has decided to extradite me because of something users uploaded to Megaupload.”