The U.S. Government has arrested the alleged owner of KickassTorrents,
the world's largest torrent site. The 30-year-old Ukrainian was arrested
in Poland today and is charged with criminal copyright infringement and
money laundering. In addition, a federal court in Chicago has ordered
the seizure of several KAT domain names.
The world’s second most popular torrent website, Kickasstorrents,
went offline after reports of alleged owner of a Kickass admin being
arrested surfaced. The man allegedly presumed to be behind the world’s
largest illegal torrent download site, KickassTorrents also known as KAT
has been arrested in Poland. The Polish police arrested the 30-year-old
Ukrainian at the request of the U.S. government and also seized funds
from a Latvian bank account. In addition, a federal court in Chicago has
ordered the seizure of several KAT domain names such as
kickasstorrents.com, kastatic.com.
The Polish police arrested the
30-year-old Ukrainian at the request of the U.S. government and also
seized funds from a Latvian bank account. Kickasstorrents was further
dealth a death blow when a federal court in Chicago ordered the seizure
of several KAT domain names such as kickasstorrents.com, kastatic.com, thekat.tv, kat.cr, kickass.to, kat.ph and kickass.cr.
kat.cr had become the most-used torrent site after The
Pirate Bay, with millions of unique visitors per day. However, the site
has run into an important roadblock after U.S. authorities announced the
arrest of the site’s alleged owner.
According to a Department of Justice press release, Artem Vaulin, of
Ukraine was arrested on Wednesday in Poland. The DOJ will shortly seek
his extradition to the United States.
The criminal complaint filed
in U.S. District Court in Chicago notes that KAT receives more than 50
million unique monthly visitors and is estimated to be the 69th most
frequently visited website on the Internet. The complaint also states
KAT operates in approximately 28 languages, has a net worth of more than
$54 million, and generates an estimated $12.5 million to $22.3 million
in annual advertising revenue.
“Vaulin is charged with running today’s most visited illegal
file-sharing website, responsible for unlawfully distributing well over
$1 billion of copyrighted materials.”
“In an effort to evade law enforcement, Vaulin allegedly relied on
servers located in countries around the world and moved his domains due
to repeated seizures and civil lawsuits. His arrest in Poland, however,
demonstrates again that cybercriminals can run, but they cannot hide
from justice.”
KAT’s .com and .tv domains are expected to be seized soon by
Verisign. For the main Kat.cr domain and several others, seizure
warrants will be sent to the respective authorities under the MLAT
treaty.
At the time of writing the main domain name Kat.cr has trouble loading, but various proxies still appear to work. KAT’s status page doesn’t list any issues, but we assume that this will be updated shortly.
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