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4 Nov, 2014 13:51

​Last of Pirate Bay founders arrested on Laos-Thailand border

​Last of Pirate Bay founders arrested on Laos-Thailand border

After four years on the run, Hans Fredrik Lennart Neij, one of the founders of the Swedish file-sharing giant, has been arrested and is awaiting extradition to Sweden.

The 36-year-old Swede, known in hacking communities as TiAMO, was traveling to Thailand with his Laotian wife when he was detained at a border checkpoint in Nong Khai under a warrant issued by Interpol.

Neij has reportedly traveled to Thailand, where he owns a house, nearly 30 times since fleeing to southeast Asia in 2012.

READ MORE: Pirate bay founder Anakata gets 3.5 years jail term over massive hack

A US-based film association had hired a Thai lawyer to track down Neij, and his photo was distributed to border police at Nong Khai, AP reported Immigration Police Commissioner Chartchai Eimsaeng as saying.

Teij was wearing the same T-shirt at the time of the Monday arrest as he was in the photo, helping officers identify him, Chartchai told the AP.

The BitTorrent index site and tracker Pirate Bay, founded in 2003, allow users to share files through peer-to-peer technology, often violating copyright laws.

Neij is the last of the three co-founders to be taken into custody. All three fled after being given one-year sentences in 2009 and ordered to pay $4.8 million to the entertainment industry in compensation for lost profits. An appeals court later reduced the sentences to eight months while increasing the fine to $6.9 million.

READ MORE: Pirate Bay fools the system with cloud technology

Gottfrid Svartholm Warg was arrested in Cambodia in 2012 and sent back to Sweden after an international arrest warrant was issued against him.

Warg served his sentence for copyright infringement while facing a hacking charge in Denmark. Last Friday a Danish court sentenced him to an additional 3 1/2 years in prison for hacking into and downloading sensitive data from CSC, a large Denmark-based IT service provider.

Peter Sunde was arrested on a farm in Sweden over the summer.

Regardless of the arrests, The Pirate Bay remains one of the internet’s most visited sites.

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