[9][10] In 2012, the United States Department of Justice seized its website and pressed charges against Dotcom, including criminal copyright infringement, money laundering, racketeering and wire fraud.

[26] He leased a mansion in Coatesville, a rural community near Auckland, owned by entrepreneurs Richard and Ruth Bradley, and considered one of the most expensive homes in the country.

[21] However, Trendax was never registered with Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission and the company was not legally allowed to accept investments or to conduct trades.

Immigration New Zealand made its decision on his application, despite his foreign convictions and despite his persona non grata status in Thailand, after officials used a special direction to waive "good character" requirements.

[55] Despite granting him residency, Immigration New Zealand expressed concern that their decision might attract criticism that they had allowed Dotcom to buy his way into the country and attempted to keep it secret.

Banks later attended a New Year's Eve party thrown by Dotcom at the city centre apartment of now bankrupt property developer David Henderson.

[72] On 28 June 2012, High Court of New Zealand Justice Helen Winkelmann found that the warrants used to seize Dotcom's property were illegal because they were too broad.

The settlement came after a damages claim was filed with the High Court over the "unreasonable" use of force when the anti-terrorism Special Tactics Group raided his mansion in January 2012.

Commenting on the settlement, Dotcom said: "We were shocked at the uncharacteristic handling of my arrest for a non-violent Internet copyright infringement charge brought by the United States, which is not even a crime in New Zealand".

[84] A month before the Supreme Court decision, Dotcom's legal team quit after he had spent $10 million on his defence, financed the Internet Party, then run out of money.

[85] In December 2014, events took another turn when the High Court in Hong Kong ruled that the United States "did not have a clear path to serve a legal summons on Dotcom's filesharing company" and he could take a case to get back $60 million seized by authorities there.

[95] The story made headlines overseas, including in the Wall Street Journal,[96] New York Times,[97] The Guardian,[98] and the Hollywood Reporter[99] which specialises in legal and entertainment issues.

[100] Dotcom claimed to be a legitimate businessman who has been persecuted by the United States government and industry trade groups such as the RIAA and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

[103] Speculation about Hollywood's role in Dotcom's arrest grew when, in September 2012, Key made a four-day visit to meet top studio executives.

[104] Key said the trip was intended to promote New Zealand as a good country to produce films,[citation needed] but he was planning to meet with the MPAA, which had described Dotcom as "a career criminal".

[104] In November 2013, The New Zealand Herald journalist David Fisher published The Secret Life of Kim Dotcom: Spies, Lies and the War for the Internet.

The deal was brokered to serve the Mana Party financially, with the combined structure's political campaign in the 2014 general election being primarily funded by Dotcom.

Due to his citizenship status, Dotcom was ineligible to become a member of parliament,[110] and Laila Harré, a veteran of left-wing politics and trade unions, was chosen as leader of the Internet Party.

[111] On 16 September 2014, Dotcom held an event in the Auckland Town Hall five days before the election in which he promised to provide "absolute proof" that Prime Minister John Key knew about him long before he was arrested.

[115] "I take full responsibility for this loss tonight", Dotcom told reporters as election results became clear, "because the brand—the brand Kim Dotcom—was poison for what we were trying to achieve".

[117] The media criticised Dotcom for "failing to deliver" at the Moment of Truth after saying for three years that he could prove John Key had lied in relation to his copyright case.

[125] The wrangling continued at the hearing with Dotcom and his colleagues saying that they were unable to present a proper defence because the US had threatened to seize any funds they try to spend on international experts in Internet copyright issues.

He said there were no legal grounds to extradite Dotcom and the allegations and evidence made public by the US Department of Justice "do not meet the requirements necessary to support a prima facie case that would be recognised by United States federal law".

"[131] On 23 December 2015, North Shore District Court Judge Nevin Dawson announced that Dotcom and the three other Megaupload co-founders were eligible for extradition.

In particular, the Court, disagreeing with Justice Gilbert, found that, even during the time of Megaupload's operations, it was a criminal offence in New Zealand to possess digital copyrighted works with an intention to disseminate them.

[150] Seth Rich's Gmail account received an emailed invitation from Mega, a file sharing service started by Dotcom following the seizure of Megaupload, but for which he had not worked for years.

[157] In an August 2024 Twitter post, Dotcom quoted passages from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a discredited antisemitic text purporting to prove the existence of a Jewish conspiracy for world domination.

[163] Dotcom was already in the process of recording the album with friend and producer, Printz Board (who wrote "Yes We Can" for Barack Obama's 2008 election campaign), when he was arrested.

[164] As a result of this encryption, Dotcom and mega.co.nz will be unable to determine the content of the uploaded data, allowing for a claim of plausible deniability to be made should new charges arise.

In 2017, the biographical documentary Kim Dotcom: Caught in the Web, directed by Annie Goldson, premiered at the New Zealand International Film Festival.