Teaming up, the DOJ and FBI arrested Dotcom at his $18 million estate in the emerald hills of Coatesville, New Zealand on 20 January, in what has to be one of the most elaborate arrest scenes in presumed-piracy history. Two helicopters landed in Dotcom’s extensive garden labyrinth, besides an arrangement of life-sized giraffe sculptures, shortly before local police scuttled out bearing Bushmaster M4 rifles, Glock pistols, sledgehammers, and saws. This was all at the request of US officials who had extended their laws to New Zealand. While three FBI agents advised from a nearby police station, the cops arrested Dotcom and took away his luxury cars (of which the license plates read GUILTY, HACKER, MAFIA, and GOD) along with artwork and investments.
Born in Germany in 1974 as Kim Schmitz, you could say Dotcom is quite the eccentric character. With ginger hair, the dress sense of a seedy magician from the ‘80s and what Bloomberg describe as a chubby cheeked “pear-shaped man the size of a refrigerator,” Dotcom has had his fair share of sticky situations. Most recently he has been referred to as Megaracer, the Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 gaming connoisseur who made it to the top stop of the leader boards for both Kills and Free-For-All (see video below for the sensational celebratory moment). In a 2001 interview with The Telegraph newspaper, Dotcom said he had his first PC by the age of nine of which he used to sell copies of computer games to friends. “I have a huge ego, I know that. Do I worry about it? No, I think it’s cool. I have a lot of fun.”
It wasn’t long before Dotcom was claiming he’d hacked into computers at the Pentagon and Citibank. And if it was true, he’d never been caught. However, German authorities did nab him profiting from a run-of-the-mill stolen-phone-card scam and in 1998 he was convicted of fraud, receiving a suspended two-year jail sentence.
Spoof videos were also one of Dotcom’s trademarks. Clips of Dotcom and pals drinkin’ and carryin’ on emerged, one of which included shots at a party on a yacht and a chat in a disco with Richard Branson. The other depicted the Dotcom zipping down country lanes in a black Mercedes singing along to R&B classics such as “Rescue Me” alongside an exaggerated chuckle.
By 2001, Dotcom had won the Gumball 3000 international road rally, and had invested several hundred thousand dollars in struggling e-tail site LetsBuyIt.com. After publically declaring he was about to invest even more, the site’s stocks sky rocketed and Dotcom sold his stake at a profit. As a result, he received another suspended jail sentence in 2002 convicted of insider trading.
It’s pretty strange that Dotcom’s arrest comes at a time when his unlaunched MegaBox; a spotify-esque site which planned to monetize on free downloads while at the same time paying artists 90% of revenues – all without any major label involvement. As Digital Music News reports, Busta Rhymes was in support of such a scheme and publicly announced via Twitter: “MegaUpload was actually a better deal for artists than Spotify”.
When reading about the oddball that is Dotcom, it’s hard not to be reminded of Richard O’Dwyer – the guy responsible for TVshack.net. The DOJ had been seeking to extradite from the UK since May 2011 in relation to alleged copyright infringement. His site was merely a resource, a third party linking site for alleged copyrighted material. Nevertheless it was a website which US law enforcement didn’t agree with and on 12 January a UK Magistrate ruled that O’Dwyer can be extradited back to America to face the allegations. Dotcom’s saga further supports the theory that US law enforcement is reaching beyond its borders, in an attempt to police the world. Will Dotcom’s be story end differently to O’Dwyer’s? If he doesn’t have a secret strategy up his sleeve which would ensure a safe escape back to Germany during his time on bail then that looks very unlikely.