Kim dotcom Net Worth in 2023 Career & Relationship
| Estimated value: | €1 million |
|---|---|
| Age: | 48 |
| Born: | 01/21/1974 |
| Country of origin: | Germany |
| Source of Wealth: | entrepreneur |
| Last updated: | 2021 |
Short introduction
Kim Schmitz aka Kim Dotcom is an entrepreneur who caused a stir with his projects like “Megaupload” and “Mega”.
Kim has been living in New Zealand for several years, he not only has German but also Finnish citizenship.
Ongoing lawsuits over the years made his life in public as an entrepreneur more difficult. The FBI has been investigating him since 2012 on suspicion of violations of the so-called “Copyright Law”.
Kim Dotcom has been fighting back since the beginning of these allegations, he is not aware of any guilt and argues that he only made the service available to users of the platform on his platform like “Megaupload”.
early life
Kim went to Heinrich-Harms-Hauptschule and claims to have had a difficult childhood, which was shaped by his father’s alcohol addiction.
At the age of 16 he first became known to the public as a hacker under the pseudonym “Kimble”. He made a name for himself in this scene quite early on, expanded his computer skills and initially dealt with weak points in the telephone system. With this method, he was able to obtain insider information from messages recorded by his users. This was his first line of business, so to speak, through which he earned money.
He then began manufacturing magnetic cards with counterfeit payment information. House searches followed for fraud, etc., and he was sentenced to a youth sentence of two years on probation.
That may have been the reason why he was already thinking about emigrating at this point.
Career
From 2001 some insider trading followed, among other things he wanted to help the company letsbuyit.com with a cash injection of around 50 million euros. This investment was never carried out because the company had several scandals and also lacked legal capacity. During this time, he set up a number of media-effective campaigns, which caused a great deal of attention. He put a bounty on Osama bin Laden’s head, spread claims that he was collaborating with the FBI, and his own hacking group said they were able to hack terrorist organizations’ networks and computers. None of this could be proven, only one thing was certain, namely that the group around Schmitz itself had been manipulated several times by hackers.
A year later he went to Bangkok and set up another website there. This website was used as a sort of suicide announcement, however, he presented himself as “King Kimble”. The Thai authorities didn’t look too long and he was arrested in January 2002 and extradited to Germany.
As a result, he was also convicted of insider trading in the letsbuyit case at the hearing. The conviction read: Eight months probation and a fine of 100,000 euros.
After the conviction he left Germany again and moved to Hong Kong. He founded various businesses, the Trendax Inc. should use artificial intelligence to generate secure stock market profits. These companies ran until 2007 when finally his web projects such as Trendax and Kimpire were removed from the web.
He was first associated with Megaupload at the end of 2007, whereupon Schmitz offered the portal gulli.com money so that this information would not be disseminated further.
Career highlights
Kim really got off to a flying start in New Zealand, in February 2010 he rented the “Chrisco Mansion”, leaving himself the option of later purchasing the most expensive property in all of New Zealand, with a value of 15 million euros.
Since then, the world has known Kim Schmitz as Kim Dotcom, a little later it became known through an article in a magazine that he allegedly acted as the managing director of Megaupload.
In 2011, as a co-founder, he was sued for copyright infringement for $5 million in damages.
He wanted to acquire permanent residency in New Zealand and several properties. Investments and the acquisition of several properties, however, were forbidden to him by the New Zealand government.
In the years that followed, he was even pursued by the FBI and illegally monitored by the NSA.
There was a raid on his property and he also had to answer to a New Zealand court, as a result of which all mega services on the network were deactivated.
Amazing Facts
Kim Schmitz has had a very eventful life so far, privately he is married for the third time and has five children. He likes to appear again and again in the media with eye-catching campaigns. Among other things, he is also a musician and has his own home studio on his estate in New Zealand. He released two albums, the second one entitled “Good Times” reached number 8 in the charts in New Zealand. His extravagant lifestyle shows him with chartered yachts or at the Gumball 3000 rally with a Mercedes Brabus E V12. He is also a passionate video gamer and in 2014 he even founded his own party, the “Internet Party”.
With his wealth he buys insane things, he sleeps on custom-made mattresses that cost 80,000 euros each.
| Estimated value: | €1 million |
|---|