Kim Dotcom is still wanted in the United States but seems more comfortable fighting extradition than cutting a deal that requires him to admit guilt. Ortmann and van der Kolk had held out for many years, but the prospect of not being imprisoned in the United States was too good to refuse.<\/p>\n
Whether former Megaupload programmer Andrus Nomm negotiated his fate is still unknown. After being indicted along with the others in 2012, the Estonian was reported as living in the Netherlands. In February 2015, Nomm\u00a0suddenly surfaced<\/a>\u00a0in Alexandria, Virginia, the district where the Megaupload indictment had been filed three years earlier. Within days he was serving a\u00a0one-year prison sentence<\/a>\u00a0but was a\u00a0free man within months<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the United States government\u2019s superseding indictment dated February 16, 2012, Julius Bencko is described as a citizen and resident of Slovakia. A talented graphic designer, Bencko was responsible for Megaupload\u2019s logo and ensuring that other sites in the group looked good and accommodated advertising properly.<\/p>\n According to the United States government, this work earned Bencko more than $1 million in 2010 alone. Even for the guy responsible for integrating Megaupload\u2019s Flash player, that was still pretty good money.<\/p>\n The important context here is that Bencko was the director and sole shareholder of Basemax International Limited and through that entity, he effectively held 2.5% of Megaupload\u2019s shares. For someone who supposedly played a key role in the most significant piracy conspiracy of all time, the allegations against Bencko were underwhelming and, at times, borderline comical.<\/p>\n Around October 4, 2007, Bencko sent an email to van der Kolk asking for a favor. \u201cCan u pls get me some links to the series called \u2018Seinfeld\u2019 from MU?\u201d Less than two weeks later an apologetic Bencko emailed again. \u201cSorry to bother but if you would have a second to find me some links for the \u2018Grand Archives\u2019 band i\u2019d be very happy.\u201d<\/p>\n If being polite was a crime, Bencko had been caught in the act at least twice but the indictment offered even more. In at least two emails sent by Dotcom to Bencko and his colleagues, all were roundly criticized for deleting too much content in response to copyright holder complaints.<\/p>\n \u201cI told you many times not to delete links that are reported in batches of thousands from insignificant sources,\u201d Dotcom wrote, according to the indictment. \u201cI would say that those infringement reports from MEXICO of \u201814,000\u2019 links would fall into that category. And the fact that we lost significant revenue because of it justifies my reaction.\u201d<\/p>\n Unlike his colleagues, Bencko didn\u2019t fly to New Zealand to celebrate Dotcom\u2019s birthday in January 2012. That meant he also missed out on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be targeted by\u00a0dozens of armed officers<\/a>\u00a0from the Special Tactics Group, New Zealand\u2019s elite anti-terror force.<\/p>\n With his former colleagues\u2019 names rarely out of the media for long, Bencko spent much of 2012 and early 2013 retweeting news about the Megaupload case. \u201cI miss my MEGA friends \/ colleagues,\u201d he declared in a rare personal tweet in July 2013. A year later, Bencko was posting videos of car restorations under his Pixelhood brand, but showing no obvious concerns about his fate in the Megaupload case.<\/p>\n At this point, various explanations seemed potentially reasonable. Had designing logos and making websites look pretty begun to look less attractive to prosecuting authorities than they had done a couple of years earlier? Maybe Bencko had agreed to sing like a canary in exchange for the \u2018freedom\u2019 depicted in this January 2016 tweet?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n While that seemed unlikely, almost anything seemed more likely than the Slovakian freely walking around Europe being polite to people, because nobody cared about the indictment anymore.<\/p>\n It was more than 11 years in the making but earlier this month, authorities in Europe organized a smaller armed raid just for Bencko.<\/p>\n The announcement on the Czech police website does not name Julius Bencko as the person of interest but supporting information makes it extremely unlikely it could be anyone else.<\/p>\n The statement reveals that after obtaining information relating to the movements of a wanted man, officers from the Department of Foreign Police (which handles illegal migration, crimes involving foreigners, and cross-border crime) arrested a 46-year-old man in Prague.<\/p>\n Police report that the man was the subject of an international arrest warrant issued in Virginia, United States, after being \u201cconvicted of several crimes such as extortion, copyright infringement, or money laundering.\u201d<\/p>\n The authorities say that police received information that their target was staying at a hotel in the Prague 1 district. Bodycam footage shows armed police approaching a hotel room marked \u201943\u2019 at 01:19 on June 7, 2023. A man responds to a quiet knock on the door before the officers immediately push inside to restrain him.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cA sleepy man opened the door for [officers] in the middle of the night, and the police immediately arrested him,\u201d the official report reads. Police say the man \u201cwas armed with several knives\u201d but thanks to the \u201cvery quick intervention of the police, he was unable to put up any resistance.\u201d<\/p>\n Nothing in the video indicates that Bencko was armed with a knife or that he even considered any kind of struggle. At one point the officers ask Bencko for documents, but at least 13 minutes pass before the graphic designer is handcuffed and led outside to a waiting police car.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cAfter the arrest, the forty-six-year-old foreigner was taken to the police station, from where he was escorted to the issuing custody after all police actions had been performed,\u201d\u00a0Czech police<\/a>\u00a0continue.<\/p>\n \u201cUpon request, he will travel back to the United States, where he will serve out his many-year sentence.\u201d<\/p>\n The full video can be downloaded\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0(.mp4)<\/em><\/p>\n Source: \u00a0Julius Bencko, Graphic Designer<\/h2>\n
Fugitive on the Run?<\/h2>\n
![\"julius](\"https:\/\/torrentfreak.com\/images\/julius-freedom.png\")
<\/a><\/center> <\/p>\nCzech Police Executed International Arrest Warrant<\/h2>\n
Police Arrest Bencko at Prague Hotel<\/h2>\n
![\"bencko-arrest1\"](\"https:\/\/torrentfreak.com\/images\/bencko-arrest1.png\")
<\/a><\/center> <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/torrentfreak.com\/images\/bencko-arrest3-c.png\")
<\/a><\/center> <\/p>\n![\"TorrentFreak\"](\"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/torrentfreak.png\")
<\/a> TorrentFreak.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"