Megaupload programmers cop a plea in New Zealand to avoid extradition The decade-long legal brawl over cloud storage locker Megaupload has moved a little closer to resolution after two of the outfit's execs pled guilty to a variety of charges. Megaupload, fronted by colorful entrepreneur Kim Dotcom, offered users the chance to upload files and store them in a cloud. Files could then be made …
When they illegally raided his property or, I can't remember if it was illegal or just massively over the top as they went in with big guns.
Also doesn't help that because China is their biggest importer they are still bending over backwards to kiss Xi's Winnie the Pooh arse.
The NZ Police got all excited about getting to use their helicopter to raid a "James Bond" level villain. So much so that they forgot to do the very basic paperwork (and for most cops here paperwork is very hard indeed, and it's easier just to go harass brown skinned youth).
It could be argued that if Kim was in fact a James Bond supervillain then they went in massively undermanned and underprepared and unready for an army of ninjas. Or that if he was in fact just an overweight nerd with an ego then all it would have taken was 3 cops showing up at the front gate with a warrant.
Either way, the Police and Crown Prosecution service were both massively inept and as a result we've had the 11 year clown show.
I can't stand anything about him, but even if he ate live kittens on video, I wouldn't want to see him sent to the US. While prison isn't a picnic anywhere, no one deserves the awful that is the US prison system. And yes, I (unfortunately) am from the US.
Kim is was and will remain a conman and a fraud. He always was. Like so many other scumbags of late, the media fawned on him while he was spreading cash around and living like a rock star on other peoples money. In the end he's just a successful if petty criminal.
That said the US and NZ law enforcement did screw the pooch pretty hard at the beginning of the case. Kim isn't particularly brilliant as a criminal mastermind. The feds were just as greedy and incompetent and Kim had better lawyers. But when the asshat first showed up he was basically the George Santos of the hacking scene for years.
But, from what I can hear the creep can drive, so if that isn't also bullshit that makes exactly two things he is good at, but neither of them is being a decent human being.
I seem to recall during one of the Gumball 3000 "rallies" he was involved in some sort of car accident (I can't remember the exact details or find them online) in the UK and then fled the scene and country as fast as he could to avoid attention from the local authorities.
"The feds were just as greedy and incompetent and Kim had better lawyers"
New Zealand's court system has a nasty habit of seizing everything when they arrest and charge people on serious charges, leaving them unable to access any money for lawyers and being dependent on state-appointed defenders
They did this to Dotcom, but he had money sequestered out of the NZ authorities' jurisdiction and was able to launch challenges to the blatently illegal behaviour which they simply weren't expecting him to be capable of affording. Rubbing salt into it, he was able to get court orders to have some of his money released and compensation for stuff which had been confiscated and sold - without even a trial and "proceeds of crime" type proceedings
In this aspect it very much slavishly apes American behaviour, but in general Gene Hunt is still seen by most New Zealand police as a role model, not a warning about past dinosaurs
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