The district court in Chicago also ordered the seizure of seven Internet domain names.
AB Wire
The US government is seeking to extradite Ukrainian national Artem Vaulin who was arrested in Poland on Wednesday and is believed to be the owner of Kickass Torrents, the world’s largest torrent site.
Vaulin, 30, was charged with conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and two counts of criminal copyright infringement.
Kickass torrent, which beat even the Pirate Bay and has become the most used torrent site on the internet with millions of unique visitors per day.
The district court in Chicago also ordered the seizure of seven Internet domain names and a bank account belonging to Vaulin.
More than 50 million users a month share movies, TV shows, music, video games and computer software on Kickass Torrents, and the site is “responsible for unlawfully distributing well over $1 billion of copyrighted materials,” Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwel said in the DoJ statement.
“In an effort to evade law enforcement, Vaulin allegedly relied on servers located in countries around the world and moved domains due to repeated seizures and civil lawsuits. His arrest in Poland, however, demonstrates again that cyber criminals can run, but they cannot hide from Justice.” He added.
Apple handed over personal details of Vaulin after the investigators cross-referenced an IP address used for an iTunes transaction with an IP address that was used to login to Kickass Torrent’s Facebook account.
“Records provided by Apple showed that tirm@me.com conducted an iTune transaction using IP Address 109.86.226.203 on or about July 31, 2015. The same IP Address was used on the same day to login into the Kickass Torrent Facebook” says the complaint document.
The move comes with US officials in a long battle to extradite the head of another major piracy site, Megaupload shuttered by the FBI in 2012. The head of the site known as Kim Dotcom is now free on bail in New Zealand pending the extradition effort. He recently vowed to revive his operations.
The extradition appeal of Kim is set to begin in the High Court in Auckland on August 29 and is expected to last four to eight weeks.