Largest Torrent Site Kick Ass Torrents Shutdown By US Agents

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Fri, Jul 22, 2016 at 08:01:03PM +1000, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 22, 2016 at 05:16:44AM -0400, grarpamp wrote:
> > https://torrentfreak.com/kickasstorrents-enters-the-dark-web-adds-official-tor-address-160607/
> 
> Is there dark web site down too, or have they already 'distributed'?

Yep, all down.

USA, as we know, assumes "global jurisdiction" and further, not only
assumes global jurisdiction, but exercises global jurisdiction.

This bully must be stopped.

Note well the following: "U.S. Government has arrested the alleged owner
of KAT ... The 30-year-old Ukrainian was arrested in Poland today, and
is charged with criminal copyright infringement and money laundering ...
[by] a federal court in Chicago"

Also note well that Apple dobbed him in (sure, poor op-sec, made
a purchase on iTunes, single email address, and assumed all
advertisers would be trusted, evidently).



https://torrentfreak.com/feds-seize-kickasstorrents-domains-charge-owner-160720/
Feds Seize KickassTorrents Domains, Arrest Alleged Owner (Updated)
By Ernesto on July 20, 2016
Breaking

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
alleged owner is charged with conspiracy to commit criminal copyright
infringement, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and two counts of
criminal copyright infringement.

 https://torrentfreak.com/images/katcomplaint.png

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.