During the 2012 operation to shut down Megaupload, 135 electronic devices were seized, mostly from founder Kim Dotcom. After the FBI cloned some of the devices and took them back to the U.S., a legal battle over the validity of the original search warrants and the devices ensued. More than a decade later, the matter appears to be over.

For more than a decade, Kim Dotcom has challenged every detail of New Zealand and United States authorities’ attempts to hold him accountable for alleged crimes related to his hosting platform, Megaupload.

Just one strand of this complex legal web involved the seizure of 135 devices (made up of around 300 components, including external storage) under a MACMA (Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters) warrant. Most of the devices belonged to Dotcom and some of them had been encrypted.

In March 2012, FBI investigators went to New Zealand and made clones of 19 devices identified by Dotcom as being most likely to contain relevant evidence. The FBI took one set of clones back to the U.S. and left the other set in New Zealand.

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