By Chris Castle

“If you get down on your knees and beg to be arrested, don’t be surprised if you are.”

That was what I told a TV news anchor in an interview I did in 2012 right after Kim Dot Com was arrested on his vast estate in New Zealand.  Dot Com’s arrest started a long running extradition proceeding between the United States and New Zealand that Dot Com and his team of lawyers somehow managed to drag out until this year.  That’s right—twelve years.  That puts him right up there with Roman Polanski and Meng Wanzhou.  So now Dot Com is subject to extradition back the US to face criminal charges, and yet nobody in New Zealand seems to be in a big hurry to arrest him and send him Stateside.

The first time I connected the dots on Dot Com’s piracy site Megaupload was when film maker Ellen Seidler launched a site called Pop Up Pirates.   Megaupload figured large in her site for a simple reason:  When you tried to access a film stored on Megaupload, it launched a popup with an ad.  At that time, many of those ads included a credit saying “Ads by Google.”  Ellen gave me a short clip of her launching the Mega popup in real time with a close up of that ad.  I played the clip on a panel with one of the Google charm offensive folks who I thought was going to vomit when he realized what I had just shown the audience.  I thought I conclusively demonstrated that Google profited from piracy and paid pirates—being Kim Dot Com aka “Defendant.”

Shortly after, I started posting about this obvious connection, which is how Dot Com and his confederates were getting rich from their the-Hong Kong-based pirate site.  And of course, I would find it hard to believe that anyone was operating a lucrative pirate site from Hong Kong without taking care of people if you know what I mean.  So there’s that.

Fast forward a year and I was in front of the National Association of Attorneys General demonstrating Google’s many, many connections to crime, terrorists, and general issue bad guys.  

Right about this time I got a call from a distinguished music industry executive who asked me whether I was seriously suggesting that a public company was involved in funding crime.  I said that’s exactly what I was saying.  If that were to happen today, nobody, and I mean nobody, would question that Google is the paymaster of the dark web.

Which leads me to the Dot Com indictment.  It turns out that we are not the only ones who made the connection between Google and massive piracy. The Department of Justice did, too, and describes the connection quite clearly in the indictment.

Adbright and Google were Sequoia investments and PartyGaming was one of the big donors to Creative Commons (and the whole Lessig/Nesson poker lobbying extravaganza).

So who had an interest in keeping Kim Dot Com out of an American jail in case he might negotiate a plea deal as did his confederate Andrus Nomm back in 2018? According to the New Zealand Herald:

While [Dot Com] and his co-accused have denied all charges, Nomm testified in support of the US case. As an insider, his testimony will be key to supporting prosecution arguments the so-called “Megaconspiracy” knew what it was doing, attacking any claim the accused were acting in the belief the website was lawful.

Nomm’s testimony was included in the case for extradition in New Zealand but documents showing how will not be made public until after the judge’s decision has been made. The Herald is unable to report the details of the US case that Nomm pleaded guilty to in the United States until then.

The press release from the U.S. Department of Justice tells us:

In court papers, Nomm agreed that the harm caused to copyright holders by the Mega Conspiracy’s criminal conduct exceeded $400 million.  He further acknowledged that the group obtained at least $175 million in proceeds through their conduct.  Megaupload.com had claimed that, at one time, it accounted for four percent of total Internet traffic, having more than one billion total visits, 150 million registered users and 50 million daily visitors.

In a statement of facts filed with his plea agreement, Nomm admitted that he was a computer programmer who worked for the Mega Conspiracy from 2007 until his arrest in January 2012.  Nomm further admitted that, through his work as a computer programmer, he was aware that copyright-infringing content was stored on the websites, including copyright protected motion pictures and television programs, some of which contained the “FBI Anti-Piracy” warning.  Nomm also admitted that he personally downloaded copyright-infringing files from the Mega websites.  Despite his knowledge in this regard, Nomm continued to participate in the Mega Conspiracy. 

An extradition hearing for co-defendants Kim Dotcom, Mathias Ortmann, Bram Van der Kolk and Finn Batato is currently scheduled for June 2015 in Auckland, New Zealand.  Co-defendants Julius Bencko and Sven Echternach remain at large.

This case is being investigated by the FBI’s Headquarters and Washington Field Office.  The case is being prosecuted by Senior Counsel Ryan K. Dickey and Brian L. Levine of the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay V. Prabhu of the Eastern District of Virginia.  The Criminal Division’s Office of International Affairs also provided significant assistance.

So if there was a “conspiracy”, it takes more than two to tango. That racketeering and money laundering conspiracy might have included the advertising companies that played an essential role in providing illicit revenue to the “Megaconspiracy”. Recall that Google got caught in a federal sting operation, paid a $500,000,000 fine and entered a nonprosecution agreement with the same DOJ for promoting the sale of illegal drugs online, all at roughly the same time as they appear to have been the paymaster for Mr. Dot Com. Why else were Adbright, Google and Partygaming mentioned in the indictment?

Stay tuned, boys and girls.  The plot sickens.