The United States government arrested the alleged owner and operator of KickassTorrents, the world's largest BitTorrent distribution site, in Poland on Wednesday and charged him with criminal copyright infringement and money laundering. The US has asked for the extradition of 30-year-old Artem Vaulin, who is a native of Ukraine. A Chicago federal court ordered seizure of all the site domains and access to the site has been suspended, reported The Verge.

Leslie R Caldwell, the Assistant Attorney General of the US Justice Department's criminal division issued a statement, saying, "Vaulin is charged with running today’s most visited illegal file-sharing website, responsible for unlawfully distributing well over $1 billion of copyrighted materials."

Officials were able to track and identify Vaulin with records provided by Apple from his iCloud account, reported AP. Apart from copyright infringement charges, the federal affidavit said KickassTorrents, the $54 million (Rs 360 crore) website, earned around $22.3 million (Rs 148 crore) from advertising as of this year, reported TorrentFreak.

KickassTorrents started in 2008 and soon became the biggest source for pirated media. It ran a directory for downloading pirated movies, TV shows, music and more using the BitTorrent protocol. According to the US Justice Department, 50 million unique users visit the site every month. Associated Press reported that Vaulin, who used the screen name 'tirm', was involved in designing the original website and ran the site through a Ukraine-based front company called Cryptoneat.

Vaulin's extradition appeal will begin in Auckland on August 29.