KickassTorrents is in trouble

US authorities have arrested the founder of KickassTorrents, the world’s largest torrent site, according to a report by Ars Technica.

Artem Vaulin of Ukraine has been charged with copyright infringement and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Vaulin was arrested on Wednesday in Poland, according to the report, with the US seeking his extradition.

“Vaulin is charged with running today’s most visited illegal file-sharing website, responsible for unlawfully distributing well over $1 billion of copyrighted materials,” said Assistant Attorney General Caldwell.

Vaulin relied on servers in several countries for his site to run and moved his domains due to repeated seizures and civil lawsuits.

The report stated that KAT’s annual advertising revenue was more than $16 million per year as of 2016.

Domains seized

According to a report by TorrentFreak, a federal court in Chicago has ordered the seizure of several KAT domain names.

At the time of writing, the primary .cr domain was unresponsive when visited.

“KAT’s .com and .tv domains are expected to be seized soon by Verisign. For the main .cr domain and several others, seizure warrants will be sent to the respective authorities under the MLAT treaty,” stated the report.

The site’s status page was also not responding at the time of writing.

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