A final setback for the founder of illegal streaming site Megaupload against his extradition from New Zealand

New Zealand’s highest court on Tuesday rejected Kim.com’s last resort against extradition to the United States, where the Megaupload.com founder is accused of industrial-scale piracy.

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The Wellington High Court rejected the appeal of the German citizen and two of his co-defendants, ignoring their argument that they faced a miscarriage of justice.

“We do not believe that the Court should do anything more with respect to the proposed appeals, given our conclusion that there was no miscarriage of justice.”A panel of three judges concluded.

The German giant suspected of embezzling millions of dollars through its popular online download platform is accused in the United States of fraud, extortion and money laundering, and its founder faces up to 20 years in prison.

It was the last resort of the internet man, real name Kim Schmitz, nearly ten years after the startling New Zealand police raid on the orders of the FBI at his dotcom mansion, his luxury Auckland property, in January 2012.

During the long battle that followed, New Zealand justice rendered unfavorable verdicts against the German and the three other defendants, Matthias Ortmann, Bram van der Kolk, and Finn Patatou for whom the charges were dropped.

The 47-year-old has been a careless reaction on social media to his latest legal setback. “Not impressive”, he tweeted. Kim Dotcom and his associates are suspected of making $175 million in illicit profits from their activities and causing losses of more than half a billion dollars to rights holders of pirated music, movies and other products.

Megaupload website has been closed down by US justice. The accused defends himself from any crime. Kim Dotcom says the lawsuits were orchestrated by the administration of former President Barack Obama to appease the powerful in Hollywood.

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Megaupload was one of the first examples of cloud computing, where users could upload files stored on servers making them easily available for download. At the height of its activity, in 2011, Megaupload accounted for 50 million daily users, 4% of global Internet traffic.

see also – The green light to extradite the Megaupload founder to the US (February 20, 2017)