Jan 21, 2012, 16:21 GMT
Wellington - A German multi-millionaire accused of internet piracy tried to evade authorities using sophisticated devices and a 'safe room,' New Zealand police said Saturday.
Kim Dotcom (formerly Schmitz), who founded one of the world's largest internet file-sharing sites, was arrested with three others in a police raid at his mansion north of Auckland on Friday.
The arrests came after US prosecutors indicted seven people connected with the website, Megaupload, which they said earned 175 million dollars while costing copyright holders more than 500 million dollars in lost revenue.
The four men appeared in an Auckland court Friday and were remanded in custody before extradition proceedings resume on Monday.
Detective Inspector Grant Wormald said agents arrived in two marked helicopters, but Dotcom retreated into the mansion and activated electronic locking mechanisms.
'While police neutralized these locks, he then further barricaded himself into a safe room within the house, which officers had to cut their way into,' Wormald said. 'Once they gained entry into this room they found Mr Dotcom near a firearm, which had the appearance of a shortened shotgun.'
Eighteen luxury cars were seized, including several top-end Mercedes, a Rolls Royce Phantom Drophead Coupe and a 1959 pink Cadillac.
In Hong Kong, where Dotcom is listed as the director of 10 limited companies, including Megaupload Ltd, customs officers raided offices and luxury residences across the city and seized alleged crime proceeds worth 42 million dollars.
About 100 officers took part in the raids targeting four locations, which included offices and luxury hotel rooms.
Hong Kong Customs said the hotel suites, which cost 100,000 Hong Kong dollars (12,000 US dollars) a day, were being used as offices for a 'transnational syndicate' operating a cyberlocker - an internet storage site for digital files used for file-sharing.
A number of people have been questioned and assets worth 330 million Hong Kong dollars have been frozen, Hong Kong Customs said in a statement.
It said officers from various departments had been conducting a joint investigation with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation since the end of 2010.
The alleged syndicate's main servers were located in the United States, with a network of devices and servers in different jurisdictions, while registered companies and bank transactions were in Hong Kong.
The hacker group Anonymous said it had launched its largest-ever online attack in retaliation to Megaupload.com's shutdown.
More than 5,000 of its members had collaborated to bring down the websites of the Justice Department, the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, the hacker collective said Thursday.
Megaupload users could upload music, movies, television programmes and digital books, a large part of which were illegally copied, US authorities charged.
The site claims it serves legitimate users by allowing them to upload files that are too large to be transferred via email and can be streamed or downloaded by others.
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