Inside the Kim Dotcom v Roger ‘Bitcoin Jesus’ Ver fight: $27m changed hands, Ver says Dotcom admitted bankruptcy, Dotcom anger at not getting more money

Their relationship has now collapsed into High Court litigation over the Glenorchy property and competing claims about what Ver had promised to invest in Dotcom’s businesses.

A Herald investigation of the court file and Dotcom’s post-Megaupload ventures has traced how Ver came to have so much money tied up with Dotcom – and what became of the technology businesses into which investors put millions of dollars after the 2012 shutdown of Megaupload.

Dotcom, now living in Matakana, was arrested in 2012 with Megaupload colleagues Bram van der Kolk, Mathias Ortmann and Finn Batato. The US case against them accused them of criminal copyright infringement, racketeering and wire fraud arising from Megaupload.

Dotcom has always denied criminality.

Ortmann and van der Kolk later pleaded guilty in New Zealand, served prison terms and agreed to assist US investigators. Batato died of cancer in 2022.

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith authorised Dotcom’s surrender to the US in August 2024. The High Court rejected Dotcom’s judicial review challenge and the Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal in July. The Supreme Court is considering his application for leave to appeal.

Through much of that legal fight, Dotcom was also trying to build another major internet business.

Ver was among the investors he pursued. Their relationship stretched back almost a decade and court records show Dotcom entering Ver’s direct messages in October 2016 with a blunt proposition: “Invest in Bitcache.”

The following day, Ver replied: “I’ll look into it today. Thanks!”

Over the years that followed, the relationship became both personal and commercial. Ver later told the High Court: “Lending money and making investments is, after all, what I do and at that time I trusted Kim.”

Dotcom and Ver got rich in internet-age economies where code, bandwidth and belief could create enormous wealth.

Along the way, both men came to see a common enemy – the United States Government.

Dotcom’s story is well known in New Zealand: the FBI-led shutdown of Megaupload in 2012, the arrests and the still-unresolved extradition case.

Ver’s story is less familiar here.

An early internet entrepreneur, he became one of Bitcoin’s most aggressive evangelists after beginning to buy the cryptocurrency in 2011. By the time he renounced his US citizenship in 2014, after obtaining citizenship in St Kitts and Nevis, his personal and company Bitcoin holdings had made him extraordinarily wealthy.

A decade later, US authorities accused Ver of tax fraud connected to his expatriation. He was arrested in Spain in 2024 and faced extradition before reaching a deal under which he admitted wilfully under-reporting his Bitcoin holdings and paid US$50m ($86.4m) in back taxes, penalties and interest.

Ver later told the High Court he and Dotcom shared a “kinship through our involvement in cryptocurrencies and a feeling that we were both wronged in the legal arena in different ways many years ago”.

The tech bromance took off after the bitter 2017 split of Bitcoin helped bring their interests together.

The argument was essentially about how Bitcoin should cope with growing transaction volumes. One side wanted to keep tight limits on the underlying network and develop other ways of processing transactions. The other wanted greater capacity built into Bitcoin itself so payments could remain fast and cheap.

Bitcoin Cash emerged from that split, promoted by supporters as closer to Bitcoin’s original promise of electronic cash.

That made it a natural fit with a recurring Dotcom ambition – cutting out traditional middlemen so large numbers of small online payments could flow directly to creators.

In 2012, he spoke to the Herald about “Megakey”, which would fund content by replacing advertising in people’s browsers and directing the revenue back into the system.

Variations followed. At the launch of Mega in 2013, Dotcom again forecast free content funded by replacing online advertising. By 2014, the idea had evolved into Baboom, a direct-to-fan music service where artists could sell directly to listeners and keep 90% of the sale price.

Cryptocurrency offered another way to pursue the same ambition.

By 2016, Dotcom was promoting Bitcache, intended to attach tiny Bitcoin payments to files moving across the internet so creators could be paid directly when somebody accessed their work. He spoke of it sitting alongside a revived Megaupload 2.0 and that year messaged Ver, encouraging him to invest.

The breakaway cryptocurrency Bitcoin Cash launched in August 2017. A month later, Dotcom messaged Ver with a sunglasses-face emoji and a rising-chart emoji as the new cryptocurrency climbed in value.

Bitcoin ultimately won the much larger market, but Ver had substantial wealth tied up in Bitcoin Cash. Its promise of fast, cheap transactions closely fitted the micropayment model Dotcom had been trying to build.

By January 2020, the two men had met privately and Dotcom was publicly praising Ver.

“Roger has some really good ideas. He’s working on cool stuff in terms of security, privacy ... and I also agree with this argument that in order to be a very successful cryptocurrency, you need to provide fast and cheap transactions ... if you really want to succeed in this game, you need to be the electronic cash.”

Across 2020 and 2021, the two increasingly appeared together in crypto forums and online discussions, talking each other up and defending one another in the Bitcoin wars.

Dotcom publicly defended Ver against criticism. “They call him Bitcoin Jesus for a reason. He really drove the early adoption of this whole thing.”

By 2021, the admiration was mutual. Ver described Dotcom as “an incredible internet entrepreneur” and “an incredible mind”, while Dotcom said Ver was “a step ahead ... in terms of his thinking and where he is with his innovation”.

In a Clubhouse discussion that June, Dotcom traced their connection back to about 2010, when he said he had asked online how internet businesses could bypass credit-card companies.

“One of the first replies that I got was from Roger saying Bitcoin is the tool that you are looking for, that is what’s going to change the world,” Dotcom said.

“Just remember, this is back in 2010. This guy was already promoting it when people like me were literally at the forefront of the internet [and] didn’t know what Bitcoin was. That’s how early he was in this game.”

Dotcom called the pair “common souls” and “kindred spirits” who “really want to improve things for all”.

The affinity was ideological as well as commercial. Dotcom had spent years portraying his extradition fight as a battle against powerful governments and corporations, while Ver promoted cryptocurrency as a way of reducing the power of governments and conventional financial institutions.

“That’s what I love about Roger because he fights for the right cause and he is all the way there to fight for your freedom,” Dotcom said.

Ver said the pair had reached much the same conclusion about Bitcoin Cash.

“And so we’ve been working on some Bitcoin Cash things together more recently and we’ve been getting along absolutely, fantastically well.”

Ver called it “a true honour” to work with Dotcom, describing him as one of the “true pioneers of the internet” and among its “great minds and just amazing communicators”.

He also credited Dotcom with being the “main driving force” behind the website promoting the cryptocurrency.

By then, the relationship was becoming commercial as well.

At a Bitcoin Cash commerce meeting in 2021, Dotcom talked about projects the pair were working on to increase adoption of the cryptocurrency, including gaming and online streaming.

“There are a number of different projects that Roger and I are working on to make sure that we get more adoption and more users into BCH [Bitcoin Cash].”

The High Court file shows that 2021 – as their mutual admiration spilled into public view - was also the year Ver began putting serious money into the Dotcom orbit.

Kim Dotcom always had a talent for the sell. In the High Court, Ver would say: “Mr Dotcom is an excellent communicator and used those skills to convince me [and others] to help him or invest in him financially.”

Growing up in Germany as Kim Schmitz, Dotcom was running pay-per-minute telephone party lines by 1990. He later estimated they earned about $200,000 before collapsing after his arrest on computer-fraud charges linked to the business.

DataProtect was a more substantial success. The computer-security business Dotcom and Ortmann created in the early 1990s grew to about 30 staff, served blue-chip clients and generated millions in revenue. In 2000, Dotcom sold 80% of its spun-out consulting business, earning millions of Deutsche Marks.

Other ventures from the period produced nothing comparable.

Still, Dotcom increasingly presented himself as a globe-trotting entrepreneur and technology visionary – an image that appeared vindicated by Megaupload. Launched in 2005 to transfer files too large for email, it grew into a global service used by tens of millions of people and at its peak accounted for about 4% of internet traffic.

It was the business that seemed to make reality catch up with the sell.

Then, in January 2012, US authorities shut Megaupload down, alleging it was a vast criminal copyright enterprise. Dotcom has always denied the allegations. Three other defendants have since pleaded guilty to offences arising from the business, with Ortmann and van der Kolk agreeing to assist US investigators.

What followed was a long search for another Megaupload.

Since the raid on the Coatesville mansion he was renting at the time – costing around $1m a year – Dotcom has promoted a succession of technology ventures. Of those examined by the Herald, only Mega became a substantial, sustained commercial service.

Mega was built after the raid with former Megaupload programmers Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk. Dotcom resigned as a director in 2013, with much of its subsequent international growth occurring under the leadership of Ortmann and van der Kolk.

Baboom, a direct-to-fan music service, followed in 2014. Dotcom’s family trust sold its 45% stake before Baboom launched without him in 2015. The service was put on hold the following year.

Then came something much bigger.

MegaNet was pitched as an alternative internet beyond the control of governments and corporations, using spare capacity on users’ devices to create a decentralised network. Dotcom spoke of raising US$100m ($172.9m) through crowdfunding. The planned beta was delayed and never emerged as a public service.

By July 2016 came Bitcache, intended to turn Dotcom’s long-running idea of tiny payments for digital content into a business. Crowdfunding platform BnkToTheFuture said more than US$1m ($1.72m) was raised from 354 investors.

A public launch was set for January 2017 but didn’t happen. Dotcom first reported a “hiccup”, then a “roadblock”. A proposed merger with a listed Canadian company also fell through – a deal he said would have valued Bitcache at US$100m ($172.9m) and brought in another US$12m ($20.9m).

By 2019, the idea had evolved into , a marketplace for publishing and selling digital files, with Bitcache handling cryptocurrency payments.

A white paper said a beta was being used by a small group of shareholders and strategic partners. Contemporary reporting put funding at about US$2.5m ($4.3m). A public demonstration followed, although cautioned it was only a simulation and did not use the project’s back-end technology.

then planned to raise US$8m ($13.8m) through a cryptocurrency called Kimcoin, but exchange Bitfinex cancelled the offering in November 2019, citing regulatory uncertainty.

A full launch was promised for the third quarter of 2020, then pushed into 2021. It did not launch.

The world Dotcom inhabits in 2026 bears little resemblance to the one he entered when he became a New Zealand resident 16 years earlier.

In 2010, he was extraordinarily wealthy. Megaupload was nearing its peak and Dotcom was building a new life at Coatesville with his first wife Mona Dotcom and their young family.

Around him were Ortmann, the world-class programmer he had known since they were teenagers; Bram van der Kolk, the younger coder who helped turn Megaupload into a global business; and Finn Batato, the handsome, socially effortless friend Dotcom had met in a Munich nightclub when he was 18.

Almost all of that world has gone. Megaupload was shut down in 2012. His marriage to Mona Dotcom ended. Ortmann and van der Kolk stopped speaking to him in 2014 and eventually broke from the extradition fight. Batato died of cancer in 2022.

Dotcom is now recovering from a serious stroke and living with Liz Dotcom in a rented home north of Auckland. The extradition fight he began alongside three other Megaupload defendants is now his alone.

His public world changed too. After the raid, his warnings largely centred on online freedom, privacy, state surveillance and his own prosecution – concerns given extraordinary force when New Zealand’s Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) was exposed as having illegally spied on him.

But as the years passed, those concerns became part of a much broader and more conspiratorial worldview. By 2026, his posts ranged across Covid-19, Ukraine, the CIA and Israel and included increasingly extreme claims about Jewish and Zionist control of political, financial and media institutions.

The shift from then to now saw Dotcom’s old world come apart. The first major break was with Ortmann and van der Kolk.

While they concentrated on Mega, Dotcom was making music and entering national politics. Van der Kolk described his involvement in the 2014 election as “too much of a circus”.

Dotcom wanted them to leave Mega and follow him into new projects. “We’re technologists, not politicians,” Ortmann later told the Herald. That year, they stopped speaking to him.

Also in 2014, Kim and Mona Dotcom separated. They had married in 2009 and moved their growing family to New Zealand as his wealth and profile reached their peak. Mona Dotcom was heavily pregnant with twins when police raided the Coatesville mansion in January 2012.

Late in 2015, Kim Dotcom met Liz Donnelly, a 20-year-old AUT business and law student, after contacting her through Instagram. “We just clicked. Things got pretty serious straight away,” she told the Herald in 2018.

They married two years later. Dotcom was by then dealing with diabetes, hypertension and serious back problems, complicating plans to move to Queenstown.

“My health isn’t the best after six years of stress,” he told the Herald. “My doctor recommended that I stay close to Auckland.”

His suspicions were broadening too. By 2017, Dotcom was claiming murdered Democratic national committee staffer Seth Rich had supplied material to WikiLeaks. The following year, he was writing about a US “deep state” which he said profited from wars and crises while politicians, media organisations and technology companies served hidden interests.

When Covid-19 arrived, Dotcom was already treating governments, intelligence agencies, technology companies and mainstream media as parts of a system suppressing information and protecting powerful interests.

By 2022 – the year his close friend Batato died of cancer – the scope of his claims widened dramatically.

Dotcom increasingly presented Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as American manipulation, arguing the US had provoked a proxy war to weaken Russia. He claimed more than 14,000 ethnic Russian civilians had been killed in the Donbas region by US-trained Ukrainian forces before the invasion. United Nations estimates put total deaths in the conflict at about 14,000, mainly Ukrainian soldiers and members of Russian-backed armed groups and comparatively few civilians.

Covid became another major strand. In November, Dotcom heavily promoted the film Died Suddenly, which claimed vaccination was causing mass unexplained deaths. He called Covid vaccines “untested” and that the documentary’s contents highlighted the “biggest crime against humanity, ever”.

In May 2023, he went further, promoting the idea Covid-19 had been deliberately released by the United States in Wuhan, China as an act of biological warfare to trigger a pandemic, increase acceptance of American pharmaceutical vaccines and generate profits.

By 2024, his posts were moving into older and darker conspiracy theories about who controlled the systems he believed operated behind world events.

In August, Dotcom quoted from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the notorious anti-Semitic forgery purporting to expose a secret Jewish plan for global control. He questioned its debunking and asked how Zionists had supposedly come to dominate media, politics, banking and other centres of power.

His posts also promoted theories alleging Israeli foreknowledge of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US, blamed the CIA for John F. Kennedy’s assassination and suggested former Prime Minister Sir John Key had been identified by the CIA to run New Zealand.

Challenged by the Herald, Dotcom said: “The world seems to be running out of ‘conspiracy theories’. So many have become true”.

Then, on November 6, 2024, Dotcom suffered a serious stroke. A December report from his physician, Dr Stephen Child – a report contained in the court records examined by the Herald – described its effects as “severe”.

Dotcom initially needed 24-hour hospital care and rehabilitation. Child described the prognosis as “a waiting game”. Later medical evidence said the stroke affected deeper parts of Dotcom’s brain, impairing his movement, balance, strength, speech and memory.

Recovery was uneven. A February 2025 rehabilitation report recorded cognitive testing which put him in the average range for healthy people his age on most measures.

Liz Dotcom told clinicians there had been a marked change. She said he now thought like “an average person cognitively” whereas, before the stroke, he had been “more able than that”.

By July, Kim Dotcom said he could walk a little and again use the toilet and shower himself, although he remained concerned about his speech and memory.

Around the first anniversary of the stroke, Dotcom said he had lost 50kg, needed the wheelchair less often and was regaining mobility, although his balance remained poor.

“Feel like a drunk,” he wrote. “I have never been drunk in my life.”

In January 2026, Queenstown GP Dr Milne Simpson wrote that Dotcom remained easily fatigued, particularly by anything requiring concentration. His speech was still impaired and reading, writing and meetings were tiring. He could manage only a few paragraphs at a time before needing a break.

Simpson said further improvement was possible but likely to be “slow and limited”.

Dotcom returned to the internet during his recovery and his anti-Semitic rhetoric continued.

His claims moved beyond supposed Zionist influence into attacks on Jews as a group. He returned to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, calling the notorious forgery “a Jewish instruction manual”. In another post, he shared an image purporting to show common control of major technology, media and Hollywood companies and captioned it “Jews”.

Dotcom also returned to New Zealand politics, backing the NZ Outdoors & Freedom Party led by Sue Grey; a lawyer and prominent anti-Covid-19 vaccine campaigner.

On Friday, Liz Dotcom was announced as the party’s candidate for the Kaipara ki Mahurangi electorate on a platform of reforming “government accountability” having witnessed “firsthand ... systemic injustice and institutional overreach in the high-profile treatment” of her husband.

In an August interview with US commentator Tucker Carlson, Dotcom praised Switzerland’s system of citizen decision-making and linked it to the party.

“I bring that into New Zealand this election,” he said. “So, with the Freedom Party, we will have direct democracy available here.”

In the same interview, Dotcom said: “I’m not the same person anymore after my stroke.”

That month, his rhetoric also circled back to the case that had dominated his life since 2012.

He claimed the Megaupload prosecution was the product of “a Jewish meeting to take me down” and said examining what he alleged was Jewish involvement had led him to Martin Luther’s anti-Semitic 1543 tract On the Jews and Their Lies.

By then, Dotcom was blaming Jews as a group for his prosecution and portraying them as a hidden force behind political, financial and media institutions.

“Everyone working against me was a tool for the Jews,” Dotcom wrote.

To understand how Roger Ver came to have so much money tied up with Dotcom, the chronology has to return to 2021.

On March 23, Ver loaned Liz Dotcom $5.1m, secured by shares representing 15% of Bitcache. The company’s liquidator later estimated Bitcache ceased trading around March 2021.

Dotcom later told the High Court the transaction, although recorded as a loan, was actually part of Ver’s FileShop investment and was never intended to be repaid. Ver strongly denies that, saying it was a genuine loan, separate from his investments.

Companies Office records show Ver became a Bitcache shareholder that June, receiving 2,693,475 shares, or 12.5% of the company.

Ver says he invested another $6.8m between June 2021 and June 2024 in Dotcom-promoted businesses including Bitcache and FileShop, hoping successful Bitcoin Cash ventures would increase the cryptocurrency’s value.

By December 2022, Dotcom was saying Bitcache’s New Zealand developers had “never got the software right” and that he had restarted the project from scratch as FileShop.

Bitcache went into liquidation in July 2023. Reports identified few assets of value, a trademark considered worthless and about $1.2m in creditor claims.

Dotcom said FileShop used completely new code and none of Bitcache’s intellectual property, while promising previous investors and partners had not been forgotten.

In the High Court, Dotcom said FileShop already had about $25.5m from other investors and that Ver contributed another $7.1m worth of Bitcoin Cash.

Also in 2023, Dotcom’s family trust tried to recover value lost when its Mega stake was diluted from 7.63% to 0.16%. The High Court described its trustee company as “clearly impecunious” and struck out the case because bringing it breached freezing orders.

In November 2023, Ver posted to his X (formerly Twitter) account a photograph of what appeared to be himself driving Dotcom on one of the routes along Lake Wakatipu.

With the post, he wrote: “Thanks for the #BitcoinCash hospitality Kim Dotcom.” Dotcom replied: “Roger Roger.”

It was during this visit to Glenorchy that Dotcom later claimed Ver promised a further $13m. Ver denies making the promise.

It was also this meeting to which Ver later referred as the final straw – the point he decided to extend no further funds to Dotcom.

Liz Dotcom posted a photo on Instagram on November 6, 2024, tagged at the exclusive Kokomo Private Island resort in Fiji.

The photograph showed Liz Dotcom holding Kash Dotcom, her son with Kim Dotcom. Earlier images from the holiday showed Kash’s sisters – Kim and Mona Dotcom’s daughters – at the same pool.

“The best holiday,” Liz Dotcom posted.

Private residences at the resort cost about $13,000 a night and helicopter charters from Nadi about $8500 each way.

It was posted the same day Dotcom – kept in New Zealand by bail conditions – suffered the major stroke, according to medical evidence before the courts.

November 2024 was also the last month Ver received the agreed 6% interest on the $15m loan used to buy the Glenorchy home.

That interest amounted to $900,000 a year. By June 2026, when the High Court ruled in Ver’s favour, unpaid interest was increasing by $75,000 a month.

The dispute traced back to the $15.1m purchase of the property in late 2021. American Dream Ltd, set up days earlier with Liz Dotcom as sole shareholder and director, bought the home with $15m advanced by Ver in two tranches.

“For the first three years, interest was paid as due under the loan agreement. However, in December 2024, interest payments stopped and none have been made since,” Ver said.

On March 10, 2025, Ver’s lawyer demanded the default be remedied within 20 working days and warned of a forced sale. Further demands followed in April, culminating in a formal requirement that American Dream sell the property.

Dotcom later told the court he had not responded through lawyers because he was speaking directly with Ver by phone and message. He claimed Ver told him he was unaware of the New Zealand legal action and believed they were working things out privately.

By June, Liz Dotcom had signed an agency agreement with Sotheby’s International and Dotcom accepted they initially co-operated with the sale process.

The property was advertised in October before Dotcom emailed the agent, “purportedly acting on behalf of [Liz Dotcom and American Dream Ltd]”, withdrawing authority to sell.

The court file does not identify what authority Dotcom had to do that. He was not a director of American Dream and was not named on the title.

Ver had already filed High Court proceedings in August 2025. His original case sought to force a sale, alongside claims over unpaid rates and alleged damage. By the time he sought summary judgment, the issue had narrowed to requiring American Dream to register a mortgage securing his $15m loan.

Ver said the dispute had cost him $204,000 in legal fees.

Ver’s case was relatively simple. The Dotcom response was not.

Kim Dotcom’s affidavit ranged across their wider relationship – Bitcache, FileShop, cryptocurrency losses and the property deal – while challenging Ver’s motives and version of events. It also laid out the extent of Ver’s financial involvement: the $15m house loan, the separate $5.1m loan to Liz Dotcom and millions more invested in Dotcom-promoted ventures.

Dotcom accused Ver of breaking promises and causing FileShop to fail.

That prompted a sharply worded reply from Ver, who said Dotcom had made “so many incorrect allegations ... which Liz Dotcom apparently endorses” that he felt compelled to answer them.

What began as a relatively straightforward summary judgment application became an argument over what the relationship between the two men had actually been.

Although Liz Dotcom’s name was on the legal documents, Kim Dotcom took the lead, saying he had a business relationship with Ver, who was eager to see FileShop succeed and increase the value of his Bitcoin Cash holdings.

Dotcom said FileShop already had about $25.5m from other investors and that Ver contributed another $7.1m worth of Bitcoin Cash.

Their accounts collided over Ver’s visit to Glenorchy. Dotcom claimed Ver renewed a promise to invest about $13m in FileShop. Ver said there was no promise of further investment in FileShop “or any money in Dotcom’[s] schemes”.

“By that stage, it was becoming apparent that they were not going anywhere. Very soon after this visit, I stopped throwing further money at Mr Dotcom’s projects.”

Then there was the separate $5.1m advanced to Liz Dotcom. Dotcom accepted the money changed hands under a loan agreement, but said it “was not in fact intended as a repayable loan”.

“This is because Mr Ver did not want the investment in FileShop to become subject to scrutiny from the authorities.”

“It is telling that Mr Ver has, to date, never requested repayment of the ‘loan’ ... as indeed it was not in fact intended to be a true loan agreement.”

Ver insisted it was a genuine loan. “The reason I haven’t yet chased Liz for repayment of the loan to her is because Mr Dotcom told me they were bankrupt,” he said.

There is no reference to either of the Dotcoms on the Insolvency Register.

In the end, the High Court ordered American Dream to execute the documents needed to register a mortgage over the Glenorchy house in Ver’s favour.

Dotcom’s wider arguments about FileShop did not provide a defence to that claim. But they produced plenty of argument.

Dotcom said the interest payments stopped because Ver failed to provide a further promised $13m that was crucial for FileShop. The judgment identified the claimed promise as predating December 2021; Dotcom said it was renewed during the later Glenorchy visit.

He blamed Ver’s failure to invest on enormous cryptocurrency losses, saying Ver had lost about 860,000 BCH – around $854m – through “reckless trading in cryptocurrency, which drove its value down”.

“This meant that the value of Bitcoin Cash was no longer important to him, so he lost interest in FileShop.”

Dotcom said the consequence was that “FileShop never took off, because Mr Ver failed to invest in it as he promised”.

He said the failure caused “a significant amount in financial damages to me, American Dream and Mrs Dotcom”.

“These damages far exceed any sum Mr Ver alleges American Dream owes to him in the current proceeding.”

Dotcom said that was why he and his wife stopped paying interest. He accused Ver of trying to “claw back” some of his own losses through the $15m house loan.

By Dotcom’s account, the house and FileShop were inseparable. He said Ver’s promised investment was what led him and Liz Dotcom to buy the Glenorchy property in November 2021.

Kim Dotcom said they paid $15.1m – more than he believed the house was then worth – because he expected its value to rise and FileShop to generate the money needed to repay Ver “once FileShop was successfully launched”.

American Dream had no assets, Dotcom said, and Ver knew that. He said this explained why no mortgage had initially been registered: Ver expected FileShop to succeed and provide “an easy return on his investment”.

Dotcom questioned how the house could have been intended as security when, by his account, it was worth less than the money advanced to buy it. Without the “expected success of FileShop”, which was “heavily dependent on Mr Ver’s investment”, he said he would “never have even contemplated” buying it.

Ver rejected that account. He said Dotcom had “lobbied me extensively” in 2021 to finance the purchase. “I remember him saying at the time what an amazing deal it was.”

Ver said Dotcom was still talking up the property years later, valuing it at between $20m and $25m in 2025 while trying to persuade him to finance “another multi-million-dollar house near Dunedin”.

Around that time, Dotcom was staying at a grand home near Mosgiel marketed as “The Manor”. It was initially reported that he had bought it, but the property was subsequently listed again with no change in owner.

“The loan to American Dream is purely and simply a loan secured over the [Glenorchy] property. It was never meant to be anything else. It was completely separate from my other business dealings with the Dotcoms,” Ver said.

Ver said that when he “backed away” from Bitcache and FileShop, Dotcom raised no complaint or threat of legal action.

According to Ver, it was only after his lawyers demanded the unpaid interest that Dotcom “came up with the suggestion that this loan was in some way connected to my earlier investments”.

He also rejected Dotcom’s claim that huge cryptocurrency losses explained why he stopped investing. Ver acknowledged a “crypto liquidity crunch” around June 2022 but said his losses were “nowhere near the magnitude Mr Dotcom claims”.

“What actually happened was I got tired of putting money into a bottomless pit (his schemes and promises), with nothing to show for it.”

Associate Judge Bill Gambrill noted there were few specifics about when or how the alleged FileShop agreement was reached.

Dotcom had not produced documents recording Ver’s proposed further investment, those of the other investors he referred to, or records demonstrating a viable business in the form he described.

Gambrill said the court was not required to accept affidavit evidence uncritically where it was inherently lacking in credibility.

“I have reservations about Mr Dotcom’s evidence.”

He stopped short of making a final credibility finding, saying he did not need to resolve the competing accounts because Dotcom’s FileShop allegations did not provide American Dream with a defence to Ver’s claim to register the mortgage.

Even if Dotcom had a claim against Ver for breaking an agreement to invest in FileShop, Gambrill said, “such a claim could not give American Dream a right to refuse to register the mortgage”.

The litigation may not be over.

The judgment dealt only with Ver’s first cause of action, while his proceeding also included claims over unpaid rates, other outgoings and alleged damage to the Glenorchy property. Dotcom has said he is considering suing Ver over FileShop.

The Herald asked Dotcom and Ver for interviews about their fallout and business dealings. Neither responded.

The Dotcoms have since left Queenstown and are living in a coastal rental in Matakana.

In December 2025, Dotcom floated his latest business proposition: rebuilding Megaupload using artificial intelligence to write the code, decentralised storage for encrypted files and FileShop to allow users to sell digital content for cryptocurrency.

The proposal remains an announcement rather than a demonstrated commercial product.

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