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“We’ve got to save that. Can we talk with your landlord?”
“Dude, I’m in jail. I don’t know how to do that.”
It would take weeks to stitch together a deal to save the family home. In that time, Lentino and wife Emily visited Mona with offers of food and money. A car was found for Wayne Tempero. Help, if needed, was there.

DOTCOM WAS EVENTUALLY granted bail on February 22 in a court hearing which deepened concern about the tactics of those prosecuting him and his colleagues.

The rules on bail state that the Crown — acting for the US in this case — must state why people should be kept in prison. The Crown’s objections so far had been many. There was the question of a flight risk, although his resources had vanished and he had repeatedly said he was anchored to his Mona, their imminent twins and the babies’ three siblings. There were elements of his previous offending — although that had been wiped by Germany’s clean slate act. The FBI claimed Megaupload was mobile and could be launched again at a moment’s notice — the court was told staffing of 30 people showed it was a mobile business, when in fact the company had more than 200 working for it.

And there was the claim Dotcom still had money hidden, although no one could show where — it was just that he had so much of it there must still be some somewhere. As proof, they pointed to the $300,000 in Rabobank which had not been seized in the initial raid but had been offered up by Dotcom as money which the investigators had missed.

Incredibly, the Crown now admitted it had known about the money. What’s more, as Judge Nevin Dawson noted, the lawyers and police “knew of (Dotcom’s) Rabobank account prior to the first bail hearing and failed to advise” either Judge McNaughton, who heard the first bail hearing, or Justice Raynor Asher, the High Court judge who heard the appeal on bail refusal.

Other “facts” as asserted by the FBI, through New Zealand police and lawyers, were also changed. There were two passports, not three as previously claimed, and both were lawful and valid. Also changed was the Crown’s position on whether the US had an extradition treaty with Germany. It had previously assured the court it did not — a good cause for keeping Dotcom in jail, if added to its claims he was a flight risk. It could now be shown there was an extradition treaty with Germany and the objection no longer stood. Somehow, it seemed, the FBI had not established this in the two years it had been investigating.

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