Recommended Reading: Inside the Mansion—and Mind— of Kim Dotcom, the Most Wanted Man on the Net

A classic comic book baddie millionaire, an ex-con expatriate German ex-hacker lording over his own personal Pirate Bay just 30 minutes north of Auckland. Kim Dotcom was presented as a big, bad man, larger-than-life, larger than his 6′ 7″, perhaps 350-pound frame. We saw him posed with guns and yachts and fancy cars. We watched him drive his nitrox-fueled Mega Mercedes in road rallies and on golf courses, throwing fake gang signs at rap moguls and porn stars, making it rain with $175 million in illicit dotcom booty.
His alleged 50-petabyte pirate ship was Megaupload.com, a massive vessel carrying, at its peak, 50 million passengers a day, a full 4 percent of global Internet traffic. Megaupload was a free online storage locker, a cloud warehouse for files too bulky for email. It generated an estimated $25 million a year in revenue from ads and brought in another $150 million through its paid, faster, unlimited Premium service.

 Inside the Mansion—and Mind— of Kim Dotcom, the Most Wanted Man on the Net