Megaupload (shuttered by indictment, Jan 2012) · Mega (launched Jan 2013) · serial reinvention since
HABITAT
Munich court dockets, a Coatesville mansion outside Auckland, and X, where the legend is maintained daily
RECORD
German convictions: computer fraud and trading stolen phone cards (Munich, 1998) and insider trading (guilty plea, Munich, 2002) ADJUDICATED
US CASE
Indicted Jan 2012: racketeering, criminal copyright infringement, money-laundering conspiracy. He denies all of it; no court has heard the merits. CHARGED — NOT ADJUDICATED
STATUS
EXTRADITION ORDER SIGNED — Aug 2024; Court of Appeal dismissed his challenge 1 Jul 2026; still in New Zealand, still untried FACT
I love New Zealand. I’m not leaving. … I would do it all over again.
Kim Dotcom, posting in defiance in August 2024 after New Zealand approved his extradition to the U.S. on the Megaupload charges — charges he has fought for over a decade and never faced trial on. AFP, August 2024.
The specimen, first catalogued in Munich as Kim Schmitz, later self-reclassified as Kim Dotcom — the rare organism that legally changed its taxonomy to match the display. Observed for three decades constructing legends faster than courts can process them.
What follows is a longitudinal study, and an unusual one. Most specimens in this archive built a persona and had it dismantled. This one built a persona, had it dismantled — in print, by his own country's hackers — and then built a second act so large that the first became a footnote. The second act ended with helicopters.
Two records run through this file and they must never be confused. One is adjudicated: German courtrooms, guilty pleas, suspended sentences. The other is an accusation fourteen years old that no court has ever tried. The archive keeps them separate. Every event below carries its receipt. Both sides get the microphone.
the drama timeline
ACT I — THE LEGEND, SELF-AUTHORED (1990s–2002)
Every dossier in this archive opens with a display. This one is distinguished by its efficiency: the subject wrote his own legend, and a press corps that could not check it printed it.
1998
The first conviction
A Munich court convicts Schmitz and an accomplice of computer fraud and buying and selling stolen phone cards. Fine and probation — "youthful foolishness," in the judge's phrase. He arrives at court in a black suit and sunglasses, saying he loved "feeling like a spy."
Reborn as a venture capitalist, he announces a multimillion-euro rescue of the failing online startup LetsBuyIt.com. Reporters publish the story; the stock leaps; he sells. AP's verdict on the announcement, in its own reporting: a "bogus story." A Munich court will make its own finding shortly.
The Register covers a point-by-point rebuttal of the Schmitz legend from members of his own post-9/11 "hackers against terror" venture. The Kimvestor prospectus claim of breaking into NASA and the Pentagon: "Nothing like this in on the records," with a Chaos Computer Club spokesman dismissing the claims as "made up." The Citibank-to-Greenpeace $20 million story: no link to Citibank or Greenpeace in the court records at all.
Note who conducted the peer review. Not prosecutors, not journalists — the German hacker community itself, the one population that could read the records and had no use for the plumage.
Detained in Thailand and returned to Germany in January — after what The Register called "a botched attempt to flee justice" — he pleads guilty to insider trading in May. Sentence: 20 months, suspended, plus a €100,000 fine. No prison. The largest insider-trading case in German history, per prosecutors, closes with probation.
ACT II — MEGAUPLOAD, AND THE HELICOPTERS (2005–2012)
The second act is the largest structure this archive has ever had to catalogue: a file-locker empire, a mansion with its own postcode's worth of grounds, and a raid staged like the finale it was never legally allowed to become.
JAN 20 2012
The raid and the indictment
At 7.50am, as part of global raids, New Zealand police and Special Tactics Group officers descend on the Dotcom mansion in Coatesville. The same week the US unseals its indictment: racketeering conspiracy, criminal copyright infringement, money-laundering conspiracy — alleging more than $175 million in criminal proceeds and more than $500 million in harm to copyright holders. Allegations, then and now.
Six months after the raid, he answers not with a legal brief but a music video. He writes, produces, and stars in "Mr. President," a protest single aimed at Barack Obama over the Megaupload shutdown — released free to share on his newly launched site. It is the whole persona in one artifact: the grievance, the theater, the certainty that the raid was politics set to music. His framing, performed as his.
Kim Dotcom performing his self-produced protest single "Mr. President" (July 2012) — his post-raid message to Barack Obama, set to music and released free to share.
An inquiry finds the GCSB — New Zealand's signals-intelligence agency — spied on Dotcom illegally, because he held residency and was off-limits. Prime Minister John Key, on the record: "Of course I apologise to Mr Dotcom." The state that raided him opens the file by apologizing to him.
A rare event in any habitat: the apex predator pauses mid-hunt to concede the hunt began unlawfully. Mark it well — the defense will be entitled to replay this footage forever, and does.
ACT III — THE REINVENTION AND THE LONG FIGHT (2013–2026)
Denied its habitat, the organism does what it has always done: it molts. A new company on the raid's anniversary, a new persona — privacy entrepreneur, political commentator — and beneath it all, the slowest extradition fight in the species' recorded history.
JAN 2013
Mega, on the anniversary
One year to the day after the raid, he launches Mega — encrypted cloud storage engineered so the operator cannot read the files, which Forbes read as both a product and a legal architecture. His framing of the Megaupload shutdown, then as now: politically motivated retaliation. His framing, presented as his.
Megaupload programmer Andrus Nõmm waives extradition, pleads guilty in the Eastern District of Virginia to conspiracy to commit felony copyright infringement, and is sentenced to a year and a day. Fourteen years into the case, he remains the only person convicted in it.
Lessig for the defense; the first eligibility ruling
Harvard's Lawrence Lessig files an expert opinion for the defense: the DOJ's allegations "do not meet the requirements necessary to support a prima facie case that would be recognised by United States federal law." In December, the District Court rules Dotcom and his co-accused eligible for extradition anyway. Eligibility — a threshold, not a verdict.
High Court (2017), Court of Appeal (2018), Supreme Court (2020): each upholds extradition eligibility. The same 2017 High Court year also produces a ruling that the GCSB's entire surveillance operation against Dotcom and his associates was illegal, per RNZ — both records accumulating in parallel, one against him, one for him.
Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk cut a deal: guilty pleas and prison sentences in New Zealand instead of extradition. Dotcom declines the same road and fights on alone.
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith signs the extradition order: "I considered all of the information carefully, and have decided that Mr Dotcom should be surrendered to the U.S. to face trial." Dotcom, on X, as carried by Reuters: "the obedient US colony in the South Pacific just decided to extradite me for what users uploaded to Megaupload."
After the High Court declines judicial review in September 2025, the Court of Appeal dismisses his challenge to the surrender order on 1 July 2026 — with costs against him. His counsel Ron Mansfield KC's argument for the record: the co-accused were prosecuted at home, so "either all three should have been prosecuted in New Zealand or none of them." And on the US sentencing exposure: "One hundred and fifty years is an effective life sentence, but so is 30 years."
He is still in New Zealand. The indictment is still an indictment. The mansion raid has outlived three prime ministers, one apology, five courts, and every co-defendant's patience. The archive keeps the tape running.
both sides, on the record
The adjudicated record: a 1998 Munich conviction for computer fraud and trading stolen phone cards, and a 2002 guilty plea to insider trading — 20 months suspended, €100,000 fine, over a share scheme The Register reported was designed to net him €1.2m [5][6].
The legend, audited (theirs, not ours): the NASA/Pentagon/Citibank hack claims came from his own prospectus and interviews; a Chaos Computer Club spokesman called them "made up," and The Register found no support in the court records [4]. Attrition.org filed him under charlatan two decades ago [3].
The US government's allegations (theirs, stated as such): $175 million-plus in criminal proceeds, $500 million-plus in harm [1]. And the procedural record: every New Zealand court to consider it — District, High, Appeal, Supreme, and again in 2025–26 — has found him eligible for surrender [9][11]. Two co-accused pleaded guilty in New Zealand rather than keep fighting [9]; one co-defendant pleaded guilty in Virginia and served time [2].
Dotcom denies the US charges entirely and has from day one: Megaupload was a cloud-storage business, the case holds him liable "for what users uploaded," and the prosecution is politically driven — his characterization, stated publicly and repeatedly [10][13].
He has real ammunition. New Zealand's own spy agency surveilled him unlawfully and the Prime Minister apologized to him on the record [8]. Lawrence Lessig — nobody's copyright maximalist — opined the DOJ's allegations would not support a prima facie case under US federal law [12]. His counsel's disparity point stands in the 2026 record: his co-accused were prosecuted at home; he was not offered the same in any form he accepted [11].
Scope of the record: the US case has never been tried on the merits — not in New Zealand, whose courts decided only surrender eligibility, and not in the United States, where he has never appeared. An indictment is an accusation. The German convictions are decades old; the sentences were suspended and served out as probation. The teenage boasts, whatever their truth, were the boasts of a teenager.
YOU DECIDE
Scoped to the claims, never the man. The claim "I hacked NASA, the Pentagon, and Citibank" is his own, contradicted by his own country's hacker community and unsupported by the court records that documented everything else — weigh it accordingly. The German convictions are adjudicated and done. The claim "Kim Dotcom ran a criminal enterprise" belongs to the US government, and after fourteen years it remains exactly what it was on the morning of the raid: an accusation no court has tested.
Weigh the costly signals: two co-accused paid with guilty pleas to end it; he has paid fourteen years, a fortune in counsel, and by his own announcement his health, to refuse. Whatever that proves, it is not cheap talk.
The archive does not judge. The archive merely keeps the tape running.
Attrition.org — Kim Schmitz (aka Kimble) charlatan dossierATTRIBUTED — the ancestor archive's file: dated items, 2001–2013, on the legend and the record.
attrition.org/errata/charlatan/kimble/
AP via NBC News — "Kim Dotcom's rise is legend fit for Silicon Age" (2012)FACT — the 1998 Munich conviction, "youthful foolishness," and the LetsBuyIt pump, reported.
nbcnews.com/id/wbna46531527
Reuters via NBC News — "Megaupload a story of Dotcom boom and bust" (Jan 2012)FACT — "the largest insider-trading case in German history," per prosecutors.
nbcnews.com/id/wbna46101303
THE NEW ZEALAND RECORD
RNZ — "PM apologises over illegal, 'incompetent' surveillance" (Sep 2012)FACT — the GCSB spied on him unlawfully; the Prime Minister's apology, on the record.
rnz.co.nz/news/political/116803/…
RNZ — "Kim Dotcom's legal battle to stay in NZ: a timeline" (2 Jul 2026)FACT — the master chronology: raid, rulings, co-accused deal, order, stroke, appeals.
rnz.co.nz/news/crime-and-justice/652867/…
RNZ — "Court of Appeal dismisses Kim Dotcom challenge to US extradition" (1 Jul 2026)ADJUDICATED — the surrender-order challenge dismissed; Mansfield's arguments in the record. Eligibility only — not the merits.
rnz.co.nz/news/science-and-technology/651123/…
Forbes — "Kim Dotcom's New MEGA Encrypted Cloud Storage" (Jan 2013)FACT — the anniversary launch, and his politically-motivated-shutdown framing, reported as his.
forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2013/01/19/…
X — @KimDotcomSELF-PUBLISHED — the subject's account, in his own words, daily. Account-level link only; no fabricated permalinks.
x.com/KimDotcom
The standard. Everything above is sourced to court-adjacent government releases, New Zealand public-broadcast court reporting, contemporaneous named press, and the subject's own published claims. Facts are stated as facts; accusations are stated as accusations and wear their accuser. The German convictions are the only adjudicated criminal record on this page; the US case is an indictment plus surrender-eligibility rulings, and its merits have never been tried by any court anywhere — a distinction this page maintains in every line. The defense is presented at full strength, including the unlawful surveillance the Prime Minister apologized for. No motive is asserted, no private character diagnosed. The burden of proof is on us, not the subject. If it couldn't survive a defamation challenge, it wouldn't be on this page.