Julius Bencko, posing with a fullscreen image of the Megaupload takedown notice, is now in Czech police custody. Photo / Supplied
Julius Bencko, posing with a fullscreen image of the Megaupload takedown notice, is now in Czech police custody. Photo / Supplied
Footage has emerged from the Czech Republic showing one of the final Megaupload fugitives being arrested by armed police.
The arrest of Julius Bencko, 46, comes 11 years after the dawn raid in New Zealand on January 20 2012 kicked off an FBI global operation to shut down Megaupload and prosecute its executives for massive copyright breaches.
It leaves Sven Echternach in Germany as the only one still free of the seven Megaupload executives named in the FBI indictment.
The video from Czech police shows Bencko being roused after midnight before being handcuffed and taken away. An accompanying statement said the arrested man - confirmed by the Herald as Bencko - was being held ahead of extradition.
Bencko once posed with the FBI’s takedown notice that took Megaupload offline, resting an arm apparently tattooed with the word “Freedom”.
The statement said Czech police had received information Bencko - normally resident in Slovakia beyond United States reach - was in the country and tracked him down to a hotel in Prague.
Video shows a woman with armed police approaching a hotel room with the number 43 on the door and pausing around where a door lock would be. Bencko then appears, looking through a slightly ajar door at which point armed police force their way into the room.
The video then shows Bencko handcuffed and led away.
The statement and video confirm claims of an arrest made last week by Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom who took to Twitter in search of a lawyer in Prague who was expert in fighting extradition.
Julius Bencko, posing with a fullscreen image of the Megaupload takedown notice, is now in Czech police custody. Photo / Supplied
Dotcom has himself been resisting extradition to the United States since his arrest 11 years ago at his rented mansion in Coatesville, north of Auckland.
That raid saw Dotcom arrested alongside other Megaupload executives Finn Batato, Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk and set in train an extradition battle that has featured in New Zealand courts ever since.
Last week, Ortmann and van der Kolk pleaded guilty to a range of charges and were sentenced to prison for their role in Megaupload.
Their pleas came in a deal with prosecutors in which they would admit to the charges and serve time in New Zealand in return for helping the FBI in its investigation and testifying against Dotcom.
The guilty plea and sentencing left Dotcom alone facing extradition after the death of Batato last year.
It also followed the 2015 plea deal struck by another of the seven in the indictment, Andrus Nomm of Estonia. He pleaded guilty after an extended period resisting extradition in the Netherlands.
At this stage, it means the FBI has three former Megaupload executives who have provided testimony that the company was set up to make money from “large-scale copyright infringement”.
Bram van der Kolk, left, and Mathias Ortmann leave court.
Megaupload coders Bram van der Kolk and Mathias Ortmann pleaded guilty at Auckland High Court. Photo / Jason Oxenham
The case to which Van der Kolk and Ortmann pleaded guilty asserted: “The defendants knew that their actions caused the rights of copyright owners to be breached on a mass scale.”
The police case quoted an email from van der Kolk to Ortmann that said: “If copyright holders would really know how big our business is they would surely try to do something against it.” In another email, he said; “They have no idea that we’re making millions in profit every month.”
Dotcom has continued to maintain his innocence and on Twitter last week wrote about how he confronted Ortmann and van der Kolk when evidence emerged of their “unacceptable communications” and “rogue actions” while running the Megaupload websites.
“I trusted them with running Megaupload in accordance to the legal (advice) that we had received and they let me down.”
Dotcom said in the post that he maintained there were not grounds for criminal charges.
He said he was “shocked” and recorded the conversations that followed, later telling the pair he had done so. He added what appeared to be excerpts from that conversation, in which the three maintained there was no conspiracy.
He said: “Bram and Mathias will make terrible witnesses for the US Govt.”
The Herald contacted the FBI and US Department of Justice. A spokesman for the FBI declined to comment.
