Those in the business of illegal downloads have been hit—one of the biggest torrent sites-Kicka$$ Torrent (KAT) has been taken down and its owner has been arrested in Poland today, caused by US government.
KickassTorrents (KAT), the biggest pirate site in the world hosts thousands of torrents covering the biggest movies and music in the world. And the site is owned by a 30-year-old Ukrainian-Artem Vaulin.
US government has formally requested for Ukrainian-Artem Vaulin’s extradition as he has been charged with conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and criminal copyright infringement.
Also a court in Chicago has ordered the seizure of bank accounts and domain names related to the site.
In a press release given to Ars Technica, the US Department of Justice said that they’ve been chasing Artem Vaulin around the world trying to capture him.
“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.”
Per estimation, KAT receives annual advertising revenue of $16 million—and this estimation was reached when an undercover IRS agent allegedly pinned KAT’s bank account by going undercover to buy an advertisement on the site.
The said agent managed to buy a “faster download” ad for five days, at a rate of $300 per day.
As of the moment, the main KickassTorrents site appears to be down worldwide.