He attributes the charges and the raid on Dotcom’s $24 million New Zealand mansion to “copyright extremism” on the part of the U.S. government…

He looked like a character Hollywood might produce: a giant, swashbuckling, black-suited jet-setter, bikinied babes on his arm, yachts, planes and exotic cars at his disposal. He displayed a villainous visage and a shotgun in his publicity photos, and his fleet boasted “GOD” and “EVIL” on license tags.

But the story of Kim Dotcom, 38, a German born as Kim Schmitz who liked to call himself King Kimble, reaches far beyond a cartoonish persona, self-promotion and a criminal record of pump-and-dump stock fraud.

The former computer hacker is the principal figure behind Megaupload, which U.S. prosecutors charge was a global empire that reaped a mega-fortune from illegal digital distribution of movies, songs and other copyright works.

Source

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