Estonian citizen Andrus Nõmm is among seven individuals sought by U.S. authorities in connection with Megaupload.com, a content hosting website that was shut down by the FBI on Thursday as part of one of the largest anti-piracy actions in U.S. history.
A grand jury in Virginia indicted those running Megaupload.com and affiliated sites on January 5, charging them with engaging in a conspiracy to commit racketeering, copyright infringement and money laundering, according to an FBI and U.S. Justice Department statement.
Nõmm, 32, a resident of both Turkey and Estonia, was named as the head of the group's software development division.
Four of the seven, including the enterprise's leader, Kim Dotcom, were arrested in New Zealand on January 19 based on provisional arrest warrants requested by the United States. Nõmm and two others remain at large.
The FBI said that the group constituted an international organized criminal enterprise responsible for committing “massive worldwide online piracy of numerous types of copyrighted works,” over the course of five years. Those works included movies, often before their theatrical release, as well as music, television programs, electronic books, and business and entertainment software.
Megaupload.com was advertised as having more than 150 million registered users and accounting for 4 percent of the total traffic on the internet, the statement said.
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