Artem Vaulin, the alleged founder of KickassTorrents, has been arrested following purchasing music legally on iTunes.
Some day, this will go down in history simply for its irony. Artem Vaulin, the alleged founder of Kickass Torrents – one of the largest torrenting sites on the web – has been arrested and detained following a legal purchase on iTunes.
Kickass Torrents, otherwise known as KAT, surpassed The Pirate Bay earlier this year as one of the most visited distributors of unofficial copies of movies, TV shows, and music, among other digital media.
Read: Pirate Bay co-founder sentenced to 3 and a half years in prison
Vaulin, 30, has been charged with ‘conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, conspiracy to commit money laundering and two counts of criminal copyright infringement.’
The US attorney general, in a statement, suggested that Kickass Torrents – and by extension, Artem Vaulin – “œstole more than $1 billion in profits from the U.S. entertainment industry.“
TorrentFreak reports that US authorities obtained Vaulin’s bank details through posing as an interested advertiser. According to court documents, Apple provided Artem Vaulin’s personal details to officials following his iTunes purchase.
Vaulin has located and nabbed in Poland after using the same IP address to make a legal purchase on iTunes subsequently log on to Kickass Torrents. The US government has applied for his extradition.
As of the time of writing, Kickass Torrents appears to be inaccessible.
US Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell offered a statement, opining that “œIn 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.“
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Follow Bryan Smith on Twitter: @bryansmithSA
Source: TechCrunch
