Ukraine man behind Kickass Torrents, Artem Vaulin, arrested in Poland; charged with distributing copyrighted content worth $ 1 billion

After Pirate Bay declined in recent due to similar legal woes, Kickass Torrents emerged as the world’s biggest source of pirated media.

July 21, 2016, NewsCrunch

A Ukraine national Artem Vaulin, 30, who owns and runs online piracy site, Kickass Torrents, was arrested in Poland on Wednesday.

The US justice department has sought his extradition accusing him of distributing more than $1bn worth of illegally copied films, music and other content and .

After Pirate Bay declined in recent due to similar legal woes, Kickass Torrents emerged as the world’s biggest source of pirated media.
The US officials say Artem Vaulin moved his domains across the world due to dodge legal action.

Artem Vaulin operates in 28 languages and is the 69th most frequently visited website on the internet. It is valued at 54m, with annual advertising revenue in the range of $12.5m to $22.3m.

Artem Vaulin, uses the screen name “tirm”, has been running Artem Vaulin since 2008 through a Ukrainian-based front company called Cryptoneat.

Though he took pain to conceal his identity, the US officials were able to track him on the strength of records provided by Apple on his iCloud account.