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By Lincoln Feast and Sarah Marsh

Among the roll-call of hip-hop artists and other celebrities plugging Megaupload.com’s digital storage services in an online promotional video, a cameo from the website’s founder would have gone unnoticed by many.

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As the voiceover boasts of the site’s billion users and four percent share of all Internet traffic, a colossal figure clad in black appears in a music studio.

“Bit by bit, it’s a hit, it’s a hit!” founder Kim Dotcom booms in a slight accent that hints at his German roots.

The hits may have just run out for Dotcom, also known as Kim Schmitz and Kim Tim Jim Investor, who spent his 38th birthday on Saturday in a New Zealand jail after 70 police raided his country estate and cut him out of a safe room he had barricaded himself in.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which requested the raid, says Dotcom masterminded a scheme that made more than $175 million in a few short years by copying and distributing music, movies and other copyrighted content without authorization.