Prosecutor release

# Owner of Most-Visited Illegal File-Sharing Website Charged with Criminal Copyright Infringement

U.S. Attorney's Office, Northern District of Illinois (U.S. Department of Justice), July 20, 2016. That the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois brought and announced the KickassTorrents charges against Artem Vaulin, alongside DOJ's Criminal Division and ICE Homeland Security Investigations..

**Source type:** Prosecutor release

**Published:** July 20, 2016

**Research grade:** P1

**Used in entries:** 1

## Bibliographic record

**Publisher:** U.S. Attorney's Office, Northern District of Illinois (U.S. Department of Justice)

**Published:** July 20, 2016

**Source type:** Prosecutor release

**Research grade:** Source grade P1

**Language:** English

**Official record:** Official publication

**Address:** [https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndil/pr/owner-most-visited-illegal-file-sharing-website-charged-criminal-copyright-infringement](https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndil/pr/owner-most-visited-illegal-file-sharing-website-charged-criminal-copyright-infringement)

**What it supports:** That the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois brought and announced the KickassTorrents charges against Artem Vaulin, alongside DOJ's Criminal Division and ICE Homeland Security Investigations.

**Dataset id:** src\_usao\_ndil\_vaulin\_kat\_charged

## Research notes

- Read via a Wayback capture of 2026-06-01; justice.gov blocks plain HTML fetching.
- Announcing officials named: U.S. Attorney Zachary T. Fardon (N.D. Ill.), Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell (Criminal Division), Executive Associate Director Peter T. Edge (ICE HSI).

How this source is used

Cited 1 time across 1 record type.

The role on each citation records what the source was relied on for. A primary source establishes the fact, a supporting source corroborates it, technical evidence describes the infrastructure, and a later outcome records what happened afterwards.

Sources were reviewed to a research cutoff of August 23, 2026. Addresses recorded after that date are not reflected here.

## Cited by

### Infrastructure

1 citation

Cited for infrastructure recorded as acted on.

-
[kickasstorrents.com, kat.ph, kickass.to, kastatic.com, kickass.so, thekat.tv, kat[.]cr](https://takedownindex.org/takedowns/kickass-torrents-takedown)

Domains seized, Kickass Torrents takedown

Primary source

[All sources](https://takedownindex.org/sources)