BREAKING: KickAssTorrents down, site administrator arrested by Polish police

The Polish police has arrested the presumed man behind the popular illegal torrent download site KickAssTorrents also known as KAT. The Polish police arrested the man at the request of the United States and also seized funds from a Latvian bank account. The complaint also states that the US will attempt to seize the domains kickasstorrents.com, kastatic.com, thekat.tv, kat.cr, kickass.to, kat.ph and and kickass.cr.

The Americans accuse 30 year old Ukrainian Artem Vaulin of operating the site and violating copyrights and being involved in money laundering. The United States will ask the Polish authorities for extradition.

ADVERTISEMENT

myce-kickass-torrents-logo

"Vaulin is accused of being behind the most popular illegal torrent site, which distributes more than one billion copyrighted files", according to a spokesman of the US Department of Justice. "His arrest in Poland demonstrates that can cybercriminals can flee, but they can't escape prosecution."

It's estimated that KickAssTorrents generates an annual revenue of between 12 and 22 million dollar. The torrent site is available 28 languages and there is also a copy of the site on the Tor network. At the moment many KickAssTorrents operated sites are down or suffer from technical difficulties, some others appear to be operating as normal.

ADVERTISEMENT

Vaulin is the alleged designer and mastermind behind KickassTorrents according to the US Department of Justice. He worked on the site since 2008 under the auspices of a Ukrainian-based front company called Cryptoneat.

The actual complaint shows that KickAssTorrents showed an advertisement purchased by US undercover agents that directed users to an undercover website. The advertisement was purchased at a rate of $300 a day. KickAssTorrents also had servers located in Chicago and Canada of which US authorities made a forensic copy. The servers ran on Gentoo Linux and contained "unique user information, access logs, and other information."

It wasn't hard for US authorities to conclude that Vaulin was the administrator of KickAssTorrents, there were many indicators. Vaulin was found to have created and paid for the first domain names on which KickAssTorrents operated. He also created the first mockup of the site which he shared with others in his team. Later he told a team member that he changed his email address from avaulin@gmail.com to admin@kickasstorrents.com.

ADVERTISEMENT

Also an Apple account that was found to be registered to Vaulin made an iTunes purchase and modifications to the official KickAssTorrents Facebook page at the same day, using the same IP address. Another piece of proof was that the Bitcoin address that KickAssTorrents listed for donations was maintained by a Coinbase (Bitcoin exchange e.g to convert Bitcoin to USD) account that again was registered by the Apple account used by Vaulin.

Vaulin faces a prison sentence of up to five years for copyright infringement. For his involvement in money laundering he can be sentenced to twenty years in prison.

In a statement the US Department of Justice announced it will continue its battle against piracy,  "Vaulin allegedly used the Internet to cause enormous harm to artists.  Our Cyber crimes unit at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago will continue to work with our law enforcement partners around the globe to identify, investigate and prosecute those who attempt to illegally profit from the innovation of others."

KickAssTorrents  is estimated to be the 69th most frequently visited website on the entire Internet, receiving over 50 million unique visitors per month.

No posts to display