Megaupload founder will be extradited to the U.S. to face criminal charges — now-defunct file-sharing website had cost film studios and record companies over $500 million

After a dozen years of court hearings in New Zealand, the country’s justice minister has announced Kim Dotcom will be extradited to the United States. Once brought to the U.S., Dotcom faces numerous criminal charges related to the now-defunct file-sharing website Megaupload. Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith signed the extradition order on Aug. 15, according to a statement from the New Zealand Minister of Justice. Goldsmith said he “considered all the information carefully” before agreeing to the extradition. Dotcom will be allowed a short period to prepare for his extradition.

Dotcom is German-born but lives in New Zealand. He and three executives from the Megaupload site were arrested in 2012 after a raid on Dotcom’s mansion in Auckland. These included the company’s chief marketing officer, Finn Batato, and chief technical officer and co-founder, Mathias Ortman, both from Germany. Also arrested was a third executive, Dutch national Bram van Der Kolk.

U.S. authorities say Megaupload cost film studios and record companies more than $500 million by encouraging paying users to store and share copyrighted movies, T.V. shows, and music files. These files reportedly generated over $175 million in revenue for the website.

The website was also apparently used to share files among members of the U.S. military and other government workers. Investigators found 15,634 registered users with email addresses belonging to various branches of the U.S. military services.

After Dotcom’s arrest in January 2012, he lost access to 1,103 servers with around 25PB of data. A year later, he showed off “one of many racks with many servers” about to be launched for the still-struggling website. Each rack, he said, would be able to store 720TB of data.

Dotcom can still appeal the court’s decision. In a thread on X (formerly Twitter), he lambasted that “the obedient U.S. colony in the South Pacific just decided to extradite me for what users uploaded to Megaupload” and confirmed his battle wasn’t yet over. Dotcom expressed hope that he would still avoid extradition. “By the time the appeals are done, if ever, the world will be a very different place,” he wrote.

Ortman and van Der Kolk agreed to plea deals in 2023 that allowed them to serve jail time in New Zealand while avoiding extradition to the U.S. Batato, on the other hand, died in New Zealand in 2022.