The lawsuit was filed Thursday in Tampa, Fla., by the U.S. Department of Justice against the domains ComicBooksFree.com, HTMLcomics.com and PlayboyMonthly.com, among others.
The lawsuit says Gregory Steven Hart of Tampa-based Database Engineers Inc. ran the sites. A phone message was left Friday with the company. No attorney for Hart was named in the lawsuit, nor was a phone number listed for Hart.
The FBI began investigating Hart in 2009. Batman, X-Men, The Simpsons and other comic books were available for free on the sites. HTMLcomics.com alone claimed to host over 100,000 issues.
