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.


With millions of unique visitors per day KickassTorrents (KAT) has become the most-used torrent site on the Internet, beating even The Pirate Bay.

Today, however, the site has run into a significant roadblock after U.S. authorities announced the arrest of the site’s alleged owner.

The 30-year-old Artem Vaulin, from Ukraine, was arrested today in Poland from where the United States has requested his extradition.

In a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago, the owner is charged with conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and two counts of criminal copyright infringement.






The complaint further reveals that the feds posed as an advertiser, which revealed a bank account associated with the site.

It also shows that Apple handed over personal details of Vaulin after the investigator cross-referenced an IP-address used for an iTunes transaction with an IP-address that was used to login to KAT’s Facebook account.

“Records provided by Apple showed that [email protected] conducted an iTunes 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 KAT Facebook,” the complaint reads.

In addition to the arrest in Poland, the court also granted the seizure of a bank account associated with KickassTorrents, as well as several of the site’s domain names.

Commenting on the announcement, Assistant Attorney General Caldwell said that KickassTorrents helped to distribute over $1 billion in pirated files.

“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.

TorrentFreak has reached out to the KAT team for a comment on the news and what it means for the site’s future, but we have yet to hear back.

https://torrentfreak.com/feds-seize-kickasstorrents-domains-charge-owner-160720/

 

As someone said in the comments

 

Fucking cuntbags. I'm seriously gonna be jumping ship soon. Fuck apple & the federal gov't.
And if they see this: Whatcha gonna do? Bump me off? Hahahahahahahahaha!! There are millions more folks who feel the same way I do, yet they are far more dangerous to you than I will ever be. I'm just a musician who loves tacos & cats. I'm actually pretty scrawny. You want a piece of this ¾ inch dick? You can come over & eat my ¾ inch dick like a single piece of macaroni!

 

with all that's hideous going on in the world.. this is a priority...
be careful for your willie there @Impressive, don't tempt them.. they may just confiscate your joystick however miniscule
that's how they ride..

 

Someone shared this link with me dxtorrent.com leads to KAT but what I dunno is despite you can enter still the torrents will still work or there's gonna be new torrents like with the usual adress.

 

Damn, this really sucks. I'm hoping for the best for him and the outcome in his case.

 

I'm no expert cryptologist / businessman but I think that Apple protecting its own IP (and therefore the IP of millions of users) in combination with public exposure of terrorist activity indirectly pushing them to break security protocol...

VS

Apple protecting its own IP by confirming the IP used by a cyber criminal.

A company protecting itself from being vulnerable is far from weakness in my eyes.
Shit, I'm a Windows 10 PC user - what room do I have to complain about privacy?

If someone slipped up, they slipped up.

 

U.S. Troops Will Head to Poland to Deter Russia
July 8, 2016, at 12:18 p.m

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-07-08/us-troops-will-head-to-poland-to-deter-russia

hmm trading favors ?

 

Damn... that was my fav torrent site..
Is there anything to worry about sister site?

 

Sister site is in Russia?... can't see it happening...

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jul 21, 2016

And History repeats its self yet again ... if anything the Downing of one KTorrents is the spawn of more ;)

 

This was expected. After some previous "most famous" free sites go down, KA was next in the row to become most successful. Now that they reach that level, is next in the list to shut down by U.S. But hey nothing tragic, as history already shown, people will migrate to the next torrent sites waiting in the row, waiting to become biggest torrent site in the world and be shuted down

 

I may be naïve, or this may be a rhetorical question anyway, but howcum it's always Authorities of the USA who do the arresting and indicting of file-sharing and torrent site owners - in other countries? It's never, say, federal agencies of Germany, ZImbabwe, or South Korea going to New Zealand or Poland or wherever else and bagging the International Copyright Infringer. It's always the ultra-rich music and film industries of the USA in whose "interests" this is done, too - not of some concern with "GmbH" in its title, some starving noise band whose recordings are more popular on torrent than on merch tables, nor some indie developer whose quirky Kontakt libraries no one wants to pay $20 for but will "torrent" instead. At least it's not, anymore, file-sharing Prince fans who can barely pay their rent, but still . . .

 

I don't think Apple sees disclosing the IP of a foreign national as breach of US privacy laws. These laws are not world wide laws, and it is not global stand on privacy Apple was taking in the U.S. it was legal/moral conundrum, since a court order by a judge would have turning over information.

The case in the U.S. invovled more than Apple submitting information to a government agency upon request and with a warrant, the FBI was asking for a Universal key and universal access to Apple's data that they could use without warrant and for whatever reason without a court order.

I know for some small minds it is all very confusing, but there is a big difference between warrant less data mining (a pre-crime data search) vs a court ordered warrant to confirm or submit.

A little knowledge is dangerous thing.

 

How and why the fuck FBI and other 3 letter agencies work for Hollywood or Music PRIVATE COMPANIES anyway?

 

It's interesting too that all those FIFA corruption arrests were started by the American FBI too.

 

The king is dead, long live the king.

 

Busted for using iTunes. Moral of the story, don't use fuckin iTunes

 

the more disturbing thing is , to me anyway The US government went to a foreign country and arrested someone. not even a US citizen wtf?

 

because hollywood and the music industry are corporations and the US government is run by corporations and serve the corporations bidding.