Artem Vaulin, the
alleged owner of the torrent directory service KickassTorrents, was arrested
in Poland earlier this week, charged with copyright infringement and money
laundering. As we dig deeper as to what exactly happened, it turns out Apple
and Facebook were among the companies that handed
over data to the U.S. in its investigation. Department of Homeland Security
investigators traced IP addresses associated with KickassTorrents domains to a
Canadian ISP, which turned over server data, including emails. At some point,
investigators noticed that Vaulin had an Apple email account that was used to
make iTunes purchases from two IP addresses -- both of which also accessed a
Facebook account promoting KickassTorrents.if you're wondering where
exactly iTunes came into play, here's a further explanation. It all started in
November 2015, when an undercover IRS Special Agent reached out to a
KickassTorrents representative about hosting an advertisement on the site. An
agreement was made and the ad, which purportedly advertised a program to study
in the United States, was to be placed on individual torrent listings for $300
per day. When it finally went live on March 14th 2016, a link appeared
underneath the torrent download buttons for five days. Sure it was a short
campaign, but it was enough to link KAT to a Latvian bank account, one that
received $31 million in deposits -- mainly from advertising payments -- between
August 2015 and March 2016. Upon further investigation of the email accounts,
and corresponding reverse lookups, it was found that the account holder had
made a purchase on iTunes.
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