Kim Dotcom, roguish face of 2010s online piracy, will finally be extradited to the US

Kim Dotcom, the Megaupload founder and hard-partying face of early 2010s online piracy, is finally headed to the US. Reuters reports that New Zealand’s justice minister signed an extradition order on Thursday to end the entrepreneur’s nearly 13-year legal battle, paving the way for the German-born Dotcom to face charges from the US government.

“I considered all of the information carefully, and have decided that Mr Dotcom should be surrendered to the U.S. to face trial,” Goldsmith said in a statement. The decision came more than six years after a New Zealand court ruled Dotcom could be extradited to the US, paving the way for appeals that culminated in today’s decision.

Once the 13th most visited site online, the file-hosting site Megaupload was a hotbed for pirated content. In early 2012, American authorities charged Dotcom and six others with racketeering, copyright infringement, money laundering and copyright distribution. The US indictment claimed Megaupload cost copyright holders $500 million in damages while making $175 million from ads and premium subscriptions.

The raid on Dotcom’s Auckland mansion was dramatic fare among 2012’s relatively tame headlines. The New York Times reported at the time that when he saw the police, Dotcom barricaded himself inside, activating several electronic locks and waited in a safe room. When officers cut their way inside, they saw Dotcom standing near “a firearm that they said looked like a sawed-off shotgun.”

Dotcom (born Kim Schmitz) had several brushes with the law before that. He at least claimed to have spent three months in a Munich jail in 1994 for “breaking into Pentagon computers and observing real-time satellite photos of Saddam Hussein’s palaces.” Soon after, he received a suspended two-year sentence for a scam involving stolen phone card numbers.

In 2001, he was accused in the largest insider-trading case in German history. He reportedly fled Germany to escape those charges, was captured in Thailand, extradited (this week isn’t his first go-round) and convicted in 2002. At some point after that, he moved to New Zealand, holing up in a luxurious mansion.

You can see that mansion — and a taste of his larger-than-life persona — in his music video “Good Life.”

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith signed the extradition order on Thursday and followed standard practice in giving Dotcom “a short period of time to consider and take advice” on his decision.

Dotcom, never one to mince words, posted a message on X that “the obedient US colony in the South Pacific just decided to extradite me for what users uploaded to Megaupload.”