Ah, the irony: owner of KickassTorrents is arrested with the help of Apple, when buying a song on the iTunes Store

THE KickassTorrents (KAT) it has already surpassed the number of users and downloads of the famous Pirate Bay, becoming the most popular place to download music, movies and series (mostly) for free. The big problem is that most of the files made available should not be free, which makes the practice illegal speaking in clear Portuguese: crime.

Last Wednesday (7/20), Ukrainian Artem Vaulin (30 years old), owner of KAT, was stuck by American authorities in Poland. The American government requested his deportation, accusing him of infringing copyrights and also for money laundering. The arrest was the result of a careful operation in which an investigator pretended to be an advertiser on the site, obtaining the bank account number associated with the KAT. In addition, what really allowed the capture of the Ukrainian was a joint action by Apple.

According to the TorrentFreaks, the following text appears on Vaulin's criminal record: “The records provided by Apple show that tirm@me conducted a transaction on iTunes using the IP address 109.86.226.203 on or about July 31, 2015. The IP address was used the same day to log into KAT's Facebook account. ”

The figures released by the United States Department of Justice are exorbitant. The value of the KAT has been estimated at more than $ 54 million, with an annual ad income between $ 12.5 and $ 22.3 million. Deputy Attorney General Leslie Caldwell spoke about the damage caused by KAT: there were more than $ 1 billion of pirated files.

In an effort to evade law enforcement, Vaulin relied on servers located in countries around the world and modified their domains due to repeated confiscations and civil suits. His imprisonment in Poland, however, demonstrates yet again that cybercriminals can run, but they cannot hide from Justice.

Although several KAT domains have been removed from the air, the TorrentFreaks claims that many proxies they're still working. They tried to contact the team behind the KAT, but there was no pronouncement.

(via MacRumors)