Kim Dotcom offers whistleblowers $5 million to help Megaupload's case

The basic facts of how Megaupload was shut down in 2012 are public knowledge. But the founder of the file-sharing service, Kim Dotcom, believes there's a subtext to what really happened -- and he's looking for your help to prove it. In essence, he claims to be the victim of a "corrupt" plot between two back-scratching parties: the US authorities, which supposedly wanted to secure the re-election of President Barack Obama, and the movie moguls of Hollywood, who allegedly offered influence over votes in return for having Megaupload terminated for copyright abuse. The only problem? Dotcom will actually have to prove all of this to a New Zealand court, otherwise he'll face extradition to the US, not to mention a string of further civil lawsuits. And so far, it isn't going well.

In a recent tweet, Dotcom claimed that he's been unfairly denied access to the other side's evidence, and that he's also been prevented from seeing his own confiscated data. His latest tactic, therefore, is to offer a cold (or at least recently defrosted) cash bounty: $5 million if you're a "whistleblower" inside the movie industry or a law enforcement agency who can convince the court that Megaupload was illegally targeted. If that sounds like you, Dotcom suggests that you start your bounty-claiming process by uploading submitting your evidence to an anonymous leak site, or to a newspaper.

(Editor note: the lead image comes from Kim Dotcom's Internet Party website and features an Obama lookalike.)