Porn bigwig extradited to Germany for tax evasion

The owner of the world's largest network of porn Web sites was arrested in Belgium and extradited to Germany for alleged tax evasion, according to the Associated Press.

Fabian Thylmann -- the man behind the Manwin porn empire -- is German but lives in Belgium. Local authorities arrested him last week on a German warrant for suspicion of tax evasion. According to the Associated Press, Thylmann did not dispute the extradition.

Manwin specializes in making its Web sites like YouPorn and PornHub optimized for the Internet, which garners the sites an obscene amount of traffic. Daily, Manwin says its Web sites get more than 60 million visitors. For comparison, Wikipedia has around 25 million daily visitors.

Playing up its techie image, Manwin filed a lawsuit in Southern California last year to halt the new .xxx domain for porn sites, alleging that the administrators of the new domain were engaging in "monopolistic conduct" and "price gouging."

It's unclear how Thylmann allegedly evaded taxes in Germany. Manwin declined to comment on the matter when contacted by CNET.

Updated December 17 at 10:32 p.m. PT to say Manwin declined to comment.