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company was just set up and boom, IRD is all over it, looking at all the numbers and transactions. We haven’t even filed a single report with IRD. Why are they looking at us already, we’ve just started it? There is a focus on negative. Never on ‘What is this going to do for us?’ (but) ‘What’s wrong with this guy? . . . How did he make his money? . . . It must be fishy, there must be something wrong? . . . Why would he come to New Zealand? . . . What is he running from?’ I’m still considered someone who picked New Zealand because I’m running away from the FBI. This is the furthest from the truth. I didn’t know about any investigation.”

The Coatesville community reaction was similar. One concerned neighbour was upset about horses being scared by cars roaring up and down the road. She checked out Dotcom’s background online and found references to his past as a hacker, along with the insider trading convictions, then, armed with “proof”, she sent an email to the Neighbourhood Watch committee, set up to protect home security and the guard the community’s wellbeing. One neighbour sent the email to mansion owner Richard Bradley to let him know what type of character was living it up at the mansion. He in turn, sent the email to Dotcom.

When he got the email, Dotcom was first outraged then frustrated. Calming down, he wrote his own email, using the addresses in the copy he had received. “I was having a joke. I couldn’t believe what she was saying about me.”

Dotcom’s April 2010 email started out telling locals he was a “former hacker” and he had come across the Neighbourhood Watch email while “hacking into a local mail server”.

“First of all let me assure you that having a criminal neighbor like me comes with benefits,” he wrote. “Our newly opened local money laundering facility can help you with your tax fraud optimization. Our network of international insiders can provide you with valuable stock tips. My close personal relations with other (far worse) criminals can help you whenever you have to deal with a nasty neighbor.”

Then he played down the fears, saying there was no need to start a “witch hunt . . . My wife, two kids and myself love New Zealand and ‘We come in peace’.”

His crimes were old, he said, as was his hacking. “Since then I have been a good boy, my criminal records have been cleared, and I created a successful Internet company that employs 100+ people.”

It’s time to make a choice, he said. “Call Interpol, the CIA, and the Queen of England and try to get me on the next plane out of New Zealand (or) . . . Sit back, relax and give me a chance to do good for New Zealand and possibly the neighborhood.” He signed off with an invitation for coffee. “And don’t forget to bring the cocaine (joke).”

Looking back, Dotcom says of the email: “It was just me saying, ‘Who

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