Archive for the ‘Guava/Lightspeed’ Category

Is Prenda winding down? Not until its principals are in jail

Posted: June 17, 2013 by SJD in Guava/Lightspeed, Prenda
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In a recent appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Paul Duffy wrote:

Prenda Law is currently winding down its operations and is in the process of dismissing its remaining cases pursuant to the instructions of its clients [sic]. In some instances, the requests for dismissals are being opposed, resulting in delays and ongoing law and motion proceedings that have precluded Prenda Law from completely ceasing its operations.

Fortunately, everyone, including judges (well, except some either lazy or gullible ones), takes these words with a grain pound of salt. Whom do you want to deceive, Paul/John/Paul? Bullshitting a Court of Appeals is a very good idea. Go on, we are ready for an illustrious show.

So, while a San Diego law firm Klinedist has been doing its best to avoid unavoidable — a total destruction of SS Prenda — in a joke of a court that is located in St. Clair County IL, a brand new shake-down campaign is underway. Unbelievable chutzpah. In this judicial stinking hole, where even the chief judge is seemingly in bed with Prenda (Judge Baricevic signed a carte blanche “agreed order,” the document that no self-respecting judge would even consider signing), a new lawsuit/petition was filed on April 15: Peg Leg Productions v. Charter Communications. Who are the signers? Paul Duffy and Kevin Hoerner. Of course.

 

I don’t want even try to go into this garbage petition’s details, it is too obvious what’s going on here.

So, what the hell is “Peg Leg Productions”? A painfully familiar name offends our sight once again:

 

Let’s reiterate the dates (I’ll omit many secondary events: refer to a titanic job by John Henry, who organized all the events in a nice timeline):

  • April 2: Prenda principals plead the Fifth declining to answer questions about the bogus corporations and their roles in those corporations.
  • April 15: A new lawsuit/petition Peg Leg Productions v. Charter was conceived in a scandal-rigged St. Clair County court.
  • May 6: Fleet Admiral Judge Otis Wright slammed his massive hammer on the Prenda player’s heads.
  • May 28: An entity that managed to file a lawsuit 1.5 months earlier was finally created: Lutz & [unborn] Sons as a CEO.
  • June 14: In an “emergency” motion, ostensibly Paul Duffy stated that “Prenda is winding down its operations.” And please, John Steele, don’t insult judges’ intelligence once again, bullshitting that Lutz’s funny businesses are independent from Prenda; that you, Hansmeier, Prenda, and Lutz have nothing to do with each other.

 

I must give a credit to some sense of humor our crooks have shown: referring to a stereotypical pirate attribute is funny, and at the same time is an unambiguous hint to who is the actual pirate.

 

Update

6/17/2013

Today Morgan Pietz filed his response to Prenda’s “emergency” appeal that incorporates the same findings that are the subject of this post. I’m happy to note that Morgan came to the same conclusions: he illustrated that despite Duffy’s claims (made under oath), the stubborn facts do not corroborate those claims.

Defendant in Prenda’s case was served by a charged drug dealer

Posted: May 31, 2013 by SJD in Guava/Lightspeed, Prenda
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Businessweek’s Prenda story
(c) boobs

Yesterday Bloomberg Businessweek published probably the most thorough (as of today) article about Prenda: Prenda Law, the Porn Copyright Trolls by Clair Suddath. If you never heard the Prenda story, it is a must read to understand all the nuances. If you have been following these trolls for a while, read it anyway: it is worth your time.

Clair started writing this piece back in March. I don’t know how many hours she spent, I assume a lot. I saw many examples of sloppy reporting in so-called “big media”: Clair’s work is the very definition of the opposite of “sloppiness.” The number of people she interviewed (including yours truly) to get 100% understanding of the trolling world is staggering.

Investigating Prenda is like stepping into a swamp. Obviously, the author had much more material than what finally found its way to the feature. Editors enforce limits (it’s not only about the Internet, this article will be featured in the next printed edition of Businessweek). Something should have been sacrificed, so, regrettably, our community was not mentioned. Nonetheless, it is the least of my concerns: the goal of explaining the story of fraud and abuse to readers unfamiliar with the trolling phenomenon was met with an A+.

I will get back to Bloomberg’s article in a moment.

Scandal in St. Clair County

There is an ongoing scandal in the St. Clair County, IL involving two judges and a probation officer, among others:

 

If you can’t watch the video, here is a recap from another article.

ST. LOUIS — A southwestern Illinois probation worker who an FBI agent says admitted providing cocaine to two judges [Joe Christ and Michael Cook] , including one of died of an overdose at a hunting cabin while with the other jurist, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to a federal drug charge.

James Fogarty, 45, of Belleville, entered the plea in East St. Louis to a cocaine distribution and possession count. He remains jailed without bond, pending a detention hearing postponed Tuesday by a magistrate judge after federal prosecutors cast Fogarty as a flight risk unworthy of bail.

[...]

Admitting he repeatedly sold cocaine to the two jurists, Fogarty said Christ used the drug on weekends and that Cook partook of the drug at Fogarty’s house roughly 10 times, Murphy wrote. Fogarty snorted cocaine with the two judges at times on golf trips and at least once at the Cook family’s lodge where Christ later died.

Remember the probation officer’s name — James Fogarty.

Prenda and St. Clair County

Regarded by many as a den of corruption, St Clair County court naturally attracted Prenda to carry out their shady dealings. We covered Prenda’s activity in this judiciary hell many times, from the first Prenda’s endeavor — Lightspeed Media v. Smith at al — to the ongoing mockery of justice LW Systems v. Hubbard. A former judge as Prenda’s attorney, a stubborn judge who only understands the language of the Supreme Court’s slap on the wrist, a redefinition of “Chutzpah” by Prenda (suing two telecom giants), a former Bar president lying to a court clerk… I can go on and on. It’s not a surprise that Prenda tries so hard to remand a vindictive SLAPP lawsuit Prenda v. Cooper, Godfread and the Internets back to this hole.

Service of the defendant

As I mentioned above, Lightspeed Media Corporation v. Smith et al lawsuit (initially St. Clair county, removed to ILSD — 12-cv-00889) was covered in this blog previously. There are more recent post-worthy events that I did not write about due to lack of time, maybe I’ll catch up later. One particular event is of our interest: the service of the defendant Smith. Clair Suddath’s article that I started this post with tells us the following story:

Tony Smith had a porn problem. A 27-year-old nursing student in Collinsville, Ill., Smith was listening to music and doing homework one night last August when he heard a knock on his apartment door. He opened it and an imposing-looking man with a flashlight handed him a lawsuit and his business card. A name was written in pen on the back. “Give this guy a call, he can help you get through this,” the man told Smith. “He’s looking out for people like you.” Smith turned it over and read the name: John Steele.

According to the complaint, Smith was accused of conspiring with 6,600 anonymous people to hack into computers owned by Lightspeed Media, an Arizona adult-entertainment company, and steal its porn. Before serving him with the lawsuit, Smith recalled, Chicago’s Prenda Law firm had mailed him threatening letters for three months. “They always said that if I went ahead and wrote a check for $4,000, they’d drop it,” Smith says. Because he didn’t know how to hack into anything and didn’t have any illegally downloaded porn on his computer, he’d thought it was a scam and ignored it.

Assuming Steele was a defense attorney, Smith called him. He says Steele explained the allegations and offered to help. Steele asked about Smith’s job (school made full-time work impossible), his roommates (none), and his computer (an old hand-me-down). The two talked for several minutes before Steele mentioned that he worked with Prenda, helping on a lot of its cases. Smith became suspicious and hung up. After an hour of frantic Googling, he determined that Steele “didn’t just work with Prenda, he ran Prenda,” he says. “That’s when I knew, I’m never talking to this guy again.”

Here is how Anthony Smith describes this event in a sworn affidavit. Scroll down to the photo of the business card in question:

 

 

Connecting the dots

I hope you have already connected the two dots: the probation officer James Fogarty, a charged drug dealer, was the one who served the complaint to Smith — the one who tried to trick Smith into calling John Steele. I bet that Prenda’s local attorney who handles Prenda’s dirty deeds in an even dirtier swarm of vermin was a middleman in this con.

Make your own conclusions.

Update

6/1/2013

There is another link between Prenda and Fogarty: Attorney who will be defending Fogarty, Clyde Kuehn, filed (together with Duffy and Hoerner) some pleadings on behalf of Prenda/Lighspeed Media. Both Kuehn and Hoerner served as St. Clair Bar presidents in the past; Kuehn (like O’Malley) is a former judge. The question why St. Clair Bar looks the other way when Prenda “plunders the citizenry” is rhetorical and does not require an explicit answer.

Ethically handicapped Prenda’s “boss” Paul Duffy signs a new batch of extortion letters

Posted: May 12, 2013 by SJD in Guava/Lightspeed, Prenda
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Many remember that less than 3 years ago an infamous scumbag Steve “Lightspeed” Jones, a pornographer who specializes in “barely legal” genre (i.e. he recruits and films very young girls), articulated the “troll credo” that would become a modus operandi of the sleaziest porno extortionists:

People aren’t embarrassed when their neighbors find out they downloaded a few songs, but illegally trading midget, tranny, facials, and teen porn content? There is some news worth keeping from the wife, kids, parents, and neighbors.

Please feel free to continue to compare this to the RIAA…

Steve Lightspeed

(He said this in the context of hiring John Steele.)

I heard stories about troll harassers/collectors (not only Prenda’s, but Lipscomb’s, for example) threatening to tell relatives, neighbors, and colleagues that the victim is being sued in connection to an illegal download of pornography. Along these lines, Lipscomb’s collectors inflicted more harm upon citizenry than anyone else — see Fantalis’s story.


Paul Duffy: “Pleaded Fifth? So what?!”
(Click to enlarge)

Yet I never saw these threats explicitly written in a demand letter — until yesterday. No one else but Prenda came up with a new sleaze at the time when the entire gang, including the ethically handicapped attorney who signed it (Paul Duffy), pleaded the Fifth and was referred to the authorities for criminal investigation (as a matter of fact, Duffy pleaded the Fifth twice). Last week people started receiving new letters, this time not from involuntarily dissolved Duffy Law Group (like in April), not from fake/shell corporations, but from the “Anti-Piracy Law Group,” the latest Prenda reincarnation. An explicit threat to call one’s neighbors was added to this masterpiece of douchebaggery (emphasis is mine):

[...] The purpose of this step is to gather evidence about who used your Internet account to steal from our client [sjd: never mind that this case is about hacking, not copyright infringement]. The list of possible suspects includes you, members of your household, your neighbors (if you maintain an open wi-fi connection) and anyone who might have visited your house. In the coming days we will contact these individuals to investigate whether they have any knowledge of the acts described in my client’s prior letter. [...]

Anything goes if it helps to scare an uninformed extortion target:

[...] Internet is full of stories of people being brought to court by our firm, incurring significant legal fees and suffering large judgments [...]

I don’t know what part of their bodies these guys use for thinking: to see what kind of stories people will find, try to google “Anti-Piracy Law Group,” or visit antipiracylawgroup.com (copy and paste to make sure that this is real).

 

If I was not a relatively modest kind, I would tell you what to do with such letter. But you know it without me if you spend an hour surfing the “Internet full of stories.”

By the way: the lopsided second page is not a result of faulty scanning. This is exactly how the original printed letter looks like. Also, we probably have a new definition of “Chutzpah,” since the letters are dated 5/7/2013 — the very next day after Judge Wright’s smackdown.

Good news

I want to finish on a lighter note.

I hope that everyone is familiar with Friday’s surprise interview that John Steele gave to ArsTechnica. It does not make sense to discuss the things this narcissistic megalomaniac said on the record. I keep wondering if this pretentious paltry creature understands the extent of the damage he inflicts upon himself and his buddies when he opens his mendacious mouth in public. Funny enough, Jason Sweet used Steele’s words from this interview to argue against Prenda in the evening of the exact same Friday!

While the entire interview is good news overall, there is more to it: while John struggles with mastering a delicate art of shutting-the-fuck-up, some people are doing their job in silence. And some of them visit this site in the line of their duty:

 

I like it. I like it a lot.

Media coverage

LW Systems v. Hubbard: from Adam Urbanczyk’s signed agreed order to the new breed of demand letters

Posted: April 23, 2013 by SJD in Guava/Lightspeed, Prenda
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Adam Urbanczyk and his involvement in a “Titanic of shakedown cases”

Adam Urbanczyk

As one defense attorney nicely put it, while we have been covering copyright trolling cases involving a couple of dozens John Does, those cases are like canoes compared to a huge vessel, which is LW Systems LLC v. Christopher Hubbard (St Clair County, IL: 13-L-15) — a Titanic that have been covered by mist since January, and was not really noticed by the public. Indeed, the “agreed order” (embedded below) allows subpoenaing virtually any ISP for any IP address. This type of a carte blanche discovery would be most definitely not allowed in a federal court — one of the reasons why Prenda goes to great lengths to keep its farcical lawsuits in county courts, in particular, in cronyism-plagued St. Clair county court.

Attorney Morgan Pietz has blogged about this lawsuit, DieTrollDie has blogged about it, I featured it in my “double-barrel” post (1, 2), yet the abuse of the legal system is so grave here that we must continue shedding light and attracting public attention.

Formally, the plaintiff is “LW Holdings,” a UPS-mailbox-based multi-national conglomerate, but due to recent happenings in Judge Write’s courtroom and other revelations, everyone refers to Duffy, Steele, Hansmeier, Lutz, AF Holdings, Ingenuity 13, Guava, LW Systems/Holdings collectively as “Prenda,” and so will I.

This case is strongly suspected to be a collusive one, i.e. a mockery of justice where plaintiff’s and defendant’s attorneys are not adversaries: they simply play their parts in accordance with the scenario that was predetermined from the very beginning. Match fixing in organized sports is a good analogy. The actual goal of such lawsuit has nothing to do with delivering justice: this process it is only a background for the procurement of a discovery order, which allows subpoenaing ISPs for subscriber information, and subsequently sending nasty letters (like the one embedded below), as well as making harassing calls to wrestle purported “infringers” and “hackers” into paying a couple of grands to make this nuisance (which for some people is more — a nightmare) go away.

This lawsuit is strikingly similar to a bunch of other Prenda’s cases that are suspected of fixing. All of them have a single mysterious defendant and include an “agreed order” allowing unmasking hundreds and thousands of ISP subscribers — in the very beginning of the process:

  • Guava LLC v. Skylar Case: the first one of this type. Cook County court, Illinois. Paul Duffy and Adam Urbanczyk signed the agreed order on 7/30/2012. Later there was a discovery theater in front of the judge who suspected the foul play. This performance was ended in a predictable way — with voluntarily dismissing the case in early March 2013 and hoping that time will cover the apparently unethical (and maybe illegal) shakedown campaign. I wrote a post about this case while it was alive.
  • Arte de Oaxaca v. Stacey Mullen: very similar to the previous one, also Cook County court, the agreed order was signed on 8/14/2012 — two business days after the complaint was filed. Defense attorney appearance was not even filed then, and the Answer to he complaint was filed only in 3 months! This case was also voluntarily dismissed on 3/13/2013.
  • Guava LLC v. Spenser Merkel: a case in Hennepin County court, Minnesota, but boringly similar to the first two. Since Adam Urbanczyk is not licensed in Minnesota, another defense attorney was involved. This is the only case where collusion was proven. The defendant came forward and filed a damning affidavit, confirming what everyone knew but couldn’t prove. The defense attorney involved in this case, Trina Morrison, is not really culpable, as she learned about the collusion only after she started representing Merkel. Working pro bono, the young attorney thought it would be a nice court experience, but she got much more than she bargained for. While I respect her right to forget this ordeal, I hope she will tell her story herself one day. This case was dismissed, obviously, after the revelations. The transcript of the hearing in front of Judge Tanya Bransford is worth reading: Prenda lawyers’ douchebaggery have been blossomed at full throttle during that hearing.
  • AF Holdings v. Matthew Ciccone: this is the only federal case (MIED 12-cv-14442), and as such, it attracted much more attention than its state court cousins. A number of bright attorneys verbosely explained to the judge the “merits” of this case. Read the filings of John Hermann, Eric Grimm and others. AF Holdings was represented by Prenda’s local Jonathan Tappan, although I don’t believe he wrote a single pleading; according to the metadata, a freelance legal writer Nadia Wood, who have been shadow writing for Prenda for a while, authored the complaint. The “defendant” was represented by an attorney Bernard Fuhs from a big law firm Butzel Long. I don’t know much about him, but I think it would be a good idea to send a mass email linking to this post to his numerous colleagues: maybe some internal investigation will be conducted. This case was dismissed on 3/25/2013
  • And, finally,LW Systems LLC v. Christopher Hubbard: a “Titanic of shakedown cases” I started this post with. It’s time to look at the agreed order, which is so shameful/shameless that Adam Urbanczyk was shy to list it on his site. This is quite a statement: Adam is a super-accurate guy. All the other filings from this case are listed and linked. In my opinion, if any member of the Board of Bar Overseers reads this document, he/she should immediately start an investigation.
While Prenda is dead, it is still running around as a headless chicken

Paul Duffy

After Prenda pled the Fifth in front of Judge Wright, it has committed a corporate suicide, according to Ken White:

Prenda Law may still be standing. But it’s dead.

Yet, I’m afraid that the power of greed is widely underestimated. Harassing calls have been placed by Mark Lutz throughout April, and yesterday people started receiving a new batch of threatening letters, this time on the “Paul Duffy law Group” letterhead.

 

Same old bullshit that is not worth debunking, but there is a couple of points I want to make.

1

It is funny that they added the following line:

Your friends, family members and blog sites are not reliable sources of legal advice.

Blog sites? Which blog sites? Maybe it makes sense to google for some answers? Laughable. Imagine an attorney for a deceased Nigerian prince, who, after bringing you the jolly news about millions that the prince left to you in his will, kindly warns you not to search the web for “Nigerian scam.”

2

This one is, frankly, nauseous. Remember that we are dealing with hardcore pornography here (emphasis is mine):

What if I do fight your client?

Certainly, you are entitled to hire an attorney and fight the case all the way through trial. Our firm is famous for pursuing these cases and this matter will be followed closely in the national media. Your name will be forever associated with the outcome of the matter, particularly if you prevail.

3

The letter is dated 4/18/2013, while as of 4/12/2013 Duffy Law Group was involuntarily dissolved:

 

There are rumors that a lien was put on the firm due to Duffy’s large debts. It is not a secret that Paul is/was a defendant in many lawsuits (examples here, here and here) filed by his creditors. If he is not a patsy, but really a head of the “leading law firm,” which extracted settlements from tens of thousands and made millions, how is it possible at all? But it is a topic for another investigation…

In any case, claiming to represent a law firm that was dissolved involuntarily, should (and will) draw attention of disciplinary bodies.

Here’s how a business attorney describes the consequences of conducting business under the name of a dissolved LLC:

As a general principle, if the secretary of state, state attorney general proceeded, or judicial action resulted in an involuntary dissolution this has the same legal effect as a voluntary dissolution. That means that this entity cannot do business under that entity. If it does so, the members may be liable for administrative actions by the state and for possible civil claims for fraud, among others.

Adam Urbanczyk is not listed on the EFF Subpoena Defense Resources page anymore

Adam Urbanczyk was previously listed on the EFF Subpoena Defense Resources page, and that fact made my blood boil every time I browsed that page. The page is one of the first resources troll victims find after starting their online research. And many called Adam only to be pressured to settle. Multiply the insistence that “Steele will get you earlier or later” by the alleged collusion, and you will understand why I’m so glad that Urbanczyk’s name is not on that page anymore.

 

Note that many statements in this post are my opinion only: I don’t have a ”beyond the reasonable doubt” proof that Adam Urbanczyk is “in bed with Prenda” (in Judge Tailor’s words): I gave a lot of pointers, yet do your own research, analyze the facts, and make your own conclusions. In the meantime, given that nothing bad had happened to Spenser Merkel since he found the courage to come forward, I want to conclude this post with a plea:

Skylar Case, Stacey Mullen, Matthew Ciccone, Christopher Hubbard:

Do the right thing, come forward and tell your true stories. Yes, it is true that you were instrumental in sufferings of your fellow citizens, but people tend to forgive, especially in the present situation, when your testimony will inevitably help to bring the real villains to justice. Moreover, if investigators learn the facts without your cooperation, things may turn sour for you. Think about it.

Media Coverage

Sinking ship “Prenda” is breaking with a loud sound. Rats are leaving the vessel

Posted: February 20, 2013 by SJD in Prenda, Guava/Lightspeed, Coopergate
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Saying that judges rarely use words “incarceration,” “fraud,” “automatic bench warrant” in an order to show cause would be an understatement. Nonetheless, Judge Otis Wright did just that in Ingenuity v. Jon Doe (CACD 12-cv-08333). Tired of apparent Prenda Law’s fraudulent activities, he ordered its counsel Brett Gibbs to explain his and his law firm’s behavior at a hearing set for March 11. Additionally, he allowed parties (Brett Gibbs and Morgan Pietz) to file briefs before February 19. A deposition of Prenda by Morgan Pietz was set to proceed on the same date.

Brett Gibbs tries to play a pity card, points finger at “Prenda senior people”

Copyright troll Brett Gibbs

A couple of hours before the deadline, Brett Gibbs filed his declaration through a newly hired law firm Waxler Carner Brodsky LLP, which has been “primarily defending lawyers in malpractice actions.” Although it was a relatively wise move (akin to an old lawyer’s saying that “a lawyer who represents himself in a court has a fool for a client”), the result was a pile of horse manure that does not pass a common sense scrutiny. The funny thing is that this spectacular failure does not characterize Gibbs’s defenders, it’s just too much lying to explain: no star attorney is capable of coming up with a credible story painting Gibbs an innocent kid deceived by evil grown-ups.

Regardless, the main huge news is that Brett has given up his stubborn loyalty and has started pointing his finger at Prenda’s “senior members” (Paul Hansmeier and John Steele):

I am and have never had an ownership interest in the copyrights involved in the Copyright Litigations. As discussed in greater detail below, I did not make strategic decisions like whether to file actions, who to sue, and whether to make a certain settlement demand or accept an offer of settlement in the Copyright Litigations. These types of decisions were made by the clients, after consulting with senior members of the law firms that employed me in an “of counsel” relationship.
[...]

I have never had a financial or fiduciary (i.e., ownership) interest in AF Holdings. AF Holdings was a client of S&H and then Prenda. The face-to-face and direct interactions between S&H and later Prenda with AF Holdings were handled by the senior members of the law firms and not me.
[...]

I have never met Alan Cooper, and do not know what the extent of Mr. Cooper’s role is in AF Holdings aside from seeing a signature from an “Alan Cooper” on the copyright assignments and pleadings.
[...]

I first became aware of a question regarding the identity of Alan Cooper when it was raised by Mr. Pietz.
[...]

I confirmed the existence of the client-executed verification either by seeing a copy of the signed verification, or at the very least, being informed by a representative of S&H or Prenda that a signed verification was in the possession of S & H or Prenda.

The explanation of the reason how Alan Copper’s fraudulent signature was verified by Gibbs and why he failed to present the original is simply stunning. Sure, it is a credible and sufficient reasoning that will clear Mr. Brett’s name so he will avoid sanctions:

In Case No. 84, Mr. Pietz first asked for a copy of Mr. Cooper’s verification to the petition to perpetuate testimony on or about December 2012, well after the petition had been discharged. Given the length of time since the case was discharged, I was informed and understand that S&H (and later Prenda) no longer has a copy of Mr. Cooper’s verification to the petition to perpetuate testimony.

Just a week earlier Steele and Hansmeier decided to delegate Gibbs’s responsibilities to Michael Dugas. After two and half years of collaboration, they have thrown Brett under the bus, so no surprise that his loyalty has evaporated quickly.

I’ll leave it to a reader to go through unconvincing excuses, which are not as entertaining as those that another troll’s mob mastermind, Keith Lipscomb, poured on Judge Baylson last fall.

 


Click to enlarge

[2/21/2013 update] It is not remotely funny anymore that Brett (to whom we already gave an honorable nickname “Pinocchio”) is lying without even thinking about the possibility of anyone doing some basic fact checking. Here is an example (thanks to a commenter for noticing):

From Gibbs’s declaration:

31. In addition, in order to rule out neighbors of the 1411 Paseo Jacaranda, Santa Maria, California 93458 location utilizing the internet connection, I performed a Google map search and obtained a satellite picture of the corner house located at 1411 Paseo Jacaranda, Santa Maria, California 93458. A further public search revealed that the house was approximately 1,200 sq. ft. which sat on a 6,534 sq. ft. lot. Considering the position of the house on the lot, and its position away from the neighboring houses, it seemed clear that, should the household have wireless internet, it would not have been accessible by the neighbors.

Alright. A typical wireless range is from 50 to 100 m. Look at the map: green circle’s radius is 50 m, and yellow — 100 m. So we are talking about 10-30 households capable of utilizing the wireless connection in question.

Can’t help noticing another funny argument in Gibbs’s declaration:

[...] the inconsistency did not prevent a prima facie showing of copyright ownership because the law only requires the assignment to he signed by the assignor. Given the court’s finding that the copyright assignment in Case No. 3335 was prima facie valid despite an issue regarding whether the assignee had properly executed the assignment. I had and have a good faith belief that the assignments in Case No. 6636 and 6669 are valid despite any alleged issue regarding the identity of Alan Cooper.

Or, as scruuball translated it to Twitter’s 140,

It doesn’t matter that we forged a signature, because we didn’t need it in the first place! Hah!

To our surprise, there is a certificate of AF Holdings’ incorporation, but the quality of the copy is poor, and I’m afraid that given St. Kitts’ secrecy laws, there is no way to validate that it is authentic. Even if it is real, this does not negate the fact that AF Holdings is a shell entity “owned” by Prenda. Note that nothing of this kind was presented for another fraudulent entity, Ingenuity 13.

The fact that Brett Gibbs has lawyered up has more significance: it will be easier for him to cut a deal with an Attorney General and (relatively) save his ass while allowing putting the major culprits behind the bars.

Morgan Pietz replies to Judge Wright’s OSC. One word: “Wow”

Defendant’s attorney Morgan Pietz had just an hour to review Gibbs’s weaselspeak. Admittedly, Morgan wrote the bulk of his response in advance, but still he managed to add thorough debunking of Gibbs’s whining. It’s impossible to pull pieces from this document, it is a must read from the first line to the last. It has is all: a long history of Prenda’s crookery, calling out lies and contradictions in Gibbs’s declaration, examples of more identity theft, damning revelations during the deposition of Paul Hansmeier (who, like a “boss” in an action computer game, appeared in the last episode).

I only want to quote the beautiful conclusion (links supplied):

The conduct of Prenda and its “of counsel” Mr. Gibbs in these cases undermines the integrity of the courts and the public’s confidence in the justice system. Here, Prenda has shown is that it is willing to do just about anything to obtain grist for its national “settlement” mill. Repeatedly, in hundreds of actions filed in courts across the country, Prenda has resorted to misrepresentations, halftruths, and questionable tactics, if not outright fraud, forgery, and identity theft. Until now, Prenda has gotten away with quite a lot of these kinds of tactics because it simply abandons its lawsuits, via a voluntary dismissal, after obtaining subpoena returns, and some settlements. Indeed, as noted above, Mr. Gibbs is already at it again, now sending out demand letters on behalf of Guava, LLC, which is now purportedly owned by Livewire Holdings, LLC not a mystery trust. Exactly who is responsible for the worst of Prenda’s actions here may not yet be clear, but this is the archetypical type of case, where there is a pattern of bad action that is done in such a way to avoid scrutiny, where a major sanctions is appropriate as a deterrent. This Court is urged not to go easy on Mr. Gibbs or Prenda Law.

 

Many paragraphs in this brief deserve separate posts, and sure we will continue shedding the light on Prenda and its epic downfall until the fraudsters cease their criminal activity and are severely punished.

Followup
Media coverage

LiveWire Holdings: Evolution of Prenda’s Fraud. Part II

Posted: January 31, 2013 by SJD in Guava/Lightspeed, Prenda
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Emboldened by the selective permissiveness of the US legal system, John Steele’s staggering fraudulent activities continue unabated. The latest middle finger to the justice is being shown by Prenda as we speak. Steele Hansmeier / Prenda Law / Anti-Piracy Law group are currently working on a complete vertical integration of all the components necessary to continue and widen its racketeering campaign (from porn production to made-up plaintiffs to nationwide network of lawyers and debt collectors).

Continued from Part I: A missing link.

Part II: A new bogus company

All the made-up companies have one big disadvantage: earlier or later people would start questioning their existence, and (god forbid!) judges would become suspicious. From time to time new plaintiff names must be injected, ones that are a little bit more credible, at least on the surface.

So a new imaginary company was born: LiveWire Holdings:

Website

At the first glance, LiveWire’s website looks genuine. Nevertheless, in one minute or so surfer’s eyebrows start moving up slowly. This site is an amateur and a lame attempt to minimally change a popular template (while the first lawsuit is already in full speed in a corrupt St. Clair county, IL court: keep reading).

So, don’t be deceived:

  • The textual nonsense is a common corporate lorem ipsum (from the template, although some text was replaced).
  • It is not Mark Lutz ‘s photo, it is a stock photo (from the template): it would be funny if it turned out that the picture was not properly licensed.
  • What is purported Mark Lutz managing? Limewire? I thought these guys are an anti-piracy outfit (sorry, couldn’t resist).
  • Of course, “Partners” do not exist (from the template).

 

“Company”

This “company” even has its “own” lawyer (as she has indicated in her LinkedIn profile), Sirh-Ryun Stella Wi Dugas, Michael Dugas’s wife, a fresh Minnesota Bar member with already damaged reputation and career.

A few people called the number listed on this site and either they heard a relatively new Prenda’s shakedown officer paralegal Kevin O’Kelly, or they received a callback from Prenda’s number 800-380-0840, the arrangement of digits hated by so many.

Company’s address is Livewire Holdings, LLC | 2100 M St. NW | Suite 170-417 | Washington DC 200037, and a UPS store can be easily located there, so the address is fabricated. The same address is printed on ransom letters on a new… Guava letterhead (which is, by the way, was sent after it became apparent that the lawsuit mentioned in this letter is a sham). Only on Friday, John Steele poured hogwash on a Minnesota judge that Guava’s principle business is “primarily based and in Nevada, but originated on St. Kitts, with computers in Illinois and Nevada.” It is in Washington now. Right. The truth is that all these artificial companies are most likely located only in the criminal heads of Prenda’s principals, and this fact is becoming so obvious that it is almost boring.

“Lawsuit”

This lawsuit (LW Systems v. Christopher Hubbard) was filed in the St. Clair county court on January 9 and alleges hacking in very vague terms (as usual). No copyright is mentioned whatsoever. There are many reasons for this blatant lie: one of them is the ability of these lawsuits to stay in less transparent and more fraud-permitting county courts. Another is suggested by a reader (make sure to read the replies).

Note that the plaintiff’s name does not match the company name: LW Systems, not LW Holdings. If we were not talking about one of the worst crooks with legal diplomas, questioning this discrepancy would make sense. Otherwise, is it a surprise? Yet another splash of dirt to muddy already murky water. AF Holdings–AF Films, and so on…

Have a look at an unusual Duffy’s signature in the complaint: he is not a stranger to having multiple signatures. Is it surprising for a career crook?

Given our long time suspicions and the recent events in Minnesota, it is safe to assume that the defendant is a patsy, a poor soul who decided to go against both the law and his Karma — by colluding with the crooks — simply to save his ass. In addition, it is safe to assume that the IP addresses involved in this suit make a complex cocktail: leftovers from previous lawsuits, newly acquired addresses, Lighspeed’s shameful random list… you name it.

Already mentioned Prenda’s nominal chief Paul Duffy and his scumbag friend, Kevin Hoerner (an arrogant liar who believes in his immunity) represent “Plaintiff.”

 

Due to the opaqueness of the St. Clair county court, it is extremely difficult to get the pulse of the lawsuit. St. Clair county clerk’s website shows that nothing happened since the filing, yet there are voices telling that people have already started receiving letters from their ISPs. One of the readers (ignorantly) called the predators (big “thanks” to Neustar) to be told that the ransom amount is $4,000.

I’ll post new documents on the page dedicated to Guava et al. as they are shared with me, and definitely we will keep an eye on this frivolous lawsuit: Prenda’s frauds are numerous, but we have hundred times more eyes.

Oh, I almost forgot to ask an alleged “co-conspirator” from this case: do you really think about settling with these thieves? Think again.

Update (important)

I was just tipped that the defense lawyer on the Hubbard case is… Adam Urbanczyk! Un-F-believable! He already receives calls and advises people to settle. Moreover, people who call plaintiff (a court clerk gives them the number) are directed to call Adam Urbanczyk!

Do not call this shameless man under any circumstances!

 

Relevant pages
  • All the documents from the state “hacking,” allegedly collusive cases are located on this page. A discussion is going on there as well.

LiveWire Holdings: Evolution of Prenda’s Fraud. Part I

Posted: January 31, 2013 by SJD in Guava/Lightspeed, Prenda
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Emboldened by the selective permissiveness of the US legal system, Prenda’s staggering fraudulent activities continue unabated. The latest middle finger to the justice is being shown by Prenda as we speak. Steele Hansmeier / Prenda Law / Anti-Piracy Law group are currently working on a complete vertical integration of all the components necessary to continue and widen its racketeering campaign.

Part I. A missing link

Any organized crime operation tends to move towards vertical integration. A Mafiozo business is usually very effective, in part because it exercises control over all the operating stages. There are four main players/areas in any given porn copyright trolling operation:

  • Porn producer
  • Bittorent swarm monitor
  • Copyright holder / assignee (Plaintiff)
  • Lawyer’s network

 

If different people control these areas, all of them want their cut. Keith Lipscomb was lucky to find a somewhat talented, but not-so-smart porn producer, Brigham Field, who is happy to receive his 10% cut. Usually producers want more.

So far, John Steele’s criminal organization has been somewhat successfully integrating three areas out of four:

Bittorent monitoring

In-house “expert” Peter Hansmeier monitors bittorent swarms from the very beginning of Steele/Hansmeier involvement in the lucrative abuse of the court system. His software is still super-secret, and his company is not registered anywhere. Peter himself is not a certified forensic expert. His brother Paul, not John Steele, is the real Prenda’s mastermind according to some opinions.

Steele also experimented with Steve “Lightpeed” Jones’s own, extremely amateur “company” Arcadia Security (comprised of only Steve Jones himself), when he first tested CFAA waters. To the best of my knowledge, two former “friends” do not work together anymore (and even had some bad squabbles), although a couple of Lightspeed’s lawsuits, including the infamous Lightspeed Media Corporation v. Smith et al. (ILSD 12-cv-00889), are still lingering.

Plaintiffs

Plaintiffs AF Holdings, Ingenuity 13, LW Systems, Guava, Arte de Oaxaca, and maybe Quad International ¹ are shell or entirely bogus entities, assignees of copyrights to pornographic material. These “companies” do not use copyrights as intended, i.e. there are no sales, only lawsuits. Even more, it is reportedly impossible to find the titles used in those lawsuits in any online or brick-and-mortar store.

Prenda still works with real copyright holders, but obviously has been moving away from using them over recent couple of months: we witness mass dismissals of the cases assigned to plaintiffs other than the ones listed above. Only two categories of “real plaintiff” cases are still active: 1) cases that cannot be dismissed due to the defendants’ answers to complaints, and 2) cases in which default judgment was entered.

In addition to the fact that “real” plaintiffs demand their cut, they are unreliable and prone to unexpected problems.

The first experiment with a bogus plaintiff was attempted in 2010/2011 with creation of non-producing, Righthaven-like entity MCGIP. After TorrentFreak’s investigative reporting by Nicholas Ranallo was published, this entity was quickly dismantled. Crooks learned their lessons, and the next reincarnations of “mini-Righthavens” were obscured by ostensibly outsourcing to St. Kitts and Nevis. Even that may be not the case, and probably none of these corporations has been registered at all. It is only logical not to spend money on registration of a corporation that cannot be pierced anyway due to strict secrecy laws of this Caribbean state. Simply using someone else’s name as a CEO — Anthony Saltmarsh or Alan Cooper — will do.

Lawyer network

No explanation necessary. This category includes paralegals in charge of shaking down identified victims. Local counsels do not cost an arm and a leg to Prenda: usually underemployed, starving attorneys are hired only to submit pleadings written in the “troll command and control.” In a recent rare case when a local goon was trusted to write his own motion, he shamelessly lifted the entire pleading written by someone else.

Production

Ultimate bottomless greed did not let criminal masterminds sleep. Porn producers / initial copyright holders still require their cut and they are a hassle to deal with. Therefore, not surprisingly, John Steele decided to forge the missing link and hired a director and performers to film and subsequently license his own pornography. Of course I oversimplify, and greed is definitely not the only motivation: see a brilliant comment embedded at the bottom of this post.

As an anonymous commenter precisely described the situation after John’s plans became obvious,

It shows that the crook is now clearly involved at the very root of the scam. Directly involved in the MAKING of the smut that is soon to be licensed to AF Holdings or Ingenuity 13 or (insert new sham offshore LLC name here). Soon this newly produced smut will have a registered copyright, and be immediately seeded into honeypot torrents, and immediately monitored by the seeder (6881 Forensics LLC, or whatever they will call themselves since they cannot be found to be officially a licensed business either) for “OMG! Copyright Infringement!”

The smut that Steele is producing does not have to be of a particularly high quality: remember, it will not be sold, it will not be streamed, but it will be used only for extortion purposes. Bittorent curious porn hunters will download anything based solely on the filename and/or description, simply to check it out. Throw a relatively famous (in their universe) names to the mix, and you get your swarm to milk. It does not matter that only about 70% of harvested IP addresses more or less point to people who knowingly shared the pornography in question, the other 30% will be harassed and pushed to settle anyway.

John’s hubris was the main reason why he could not keep his mission under wraps. @bittorrentbull on Twitter thought that it is impossible that others can provably link John Steele to @bittorrentbull screen name, and he tweeted a myriad of self-incriminating things: from documenting vexatious and vindictive reasons behind federal Guava lawsuits to damaging his position in the ongoing Alan Cooper v. John Steele et al. He was probably drunk when he exchanged his Twitter screen name with a porn performer/director Marcus London and a pornstar Gaia. Unknowingly, they setup him later by tweeting about the filming, and even confirmed @bittorentbull’s identity (at the very bottom of the dialog):

(Click on the image to enlarge)

 

Featured comment

Anonymous on January 31, 2013 at 3:17 am:

Although vertical integration does have its benefits, especially with Steele crossing the line and doing completely illegal stuff like stealing Alan Cooper’s identity, I think another important consideration is that this is a sign of just how marginalized John has become.

All things being equal, with the reported 90% cut of settlement dollars for John, there would not be a huge monetary incentive to go through all of this trouble, so there are likely non-monetary reasons he has given up on having clients. A big one is publicity, we know from their own words in interviews that porn producers don’t like their neighbors to know what they do for a living. Another is fear of liability, I’m sure Paul Pilcher’s example of having to pay off two countersuits didn’t exactly instill confidence in other potential clients. Third is probably just that the money dried up. I thought it was a big-time tell when Boner from Chica’s Place mentioned on DTD’s site that he has not used Prenda in a while; no explanation, but the guy is obviously not sympathetic to troll-haters so he had reasons other than ethics to stop using John’s services and it was almost certainly because of money. We also have the insider’s report from Slashdot that confirmed Steele is basically a joke to his target market.

So at this point, with Prenda/APLG not even filing lawsuits anymore, it’s pretty clear this is also just a last desperate attempt to have something (anything) to work with. The sad thing is if LiveWire can come up with halfway decent content maybe John will figure out he can actually just make something people want and monetize it and actually do some honest work for a change.

If we can keep close enough tabs on their shenanigans it’s actually very possible to seriously undermine his scam. Just keep an eye out for their content going up on torrent sites and carpetbomb the comments with warnings and links to this site. It might even be smart to ask the tracker operators to take down John’s torrents. Actually, in retrospect, that would have been a great community project all along, getting the word out by spreading awareness at the source of distribution for torrent files that trolls are suing over. Obviously that’s not going to prevent false-positives and people who are getting fingered because someone leeches their Wi-Fi, but every little bit helps.

Continue to Part II: A new bogus company.

 

¹ On the surface, Quad International looks differently than the other “family members”: it even has its own Wikipedia page. Admittedly, we did not look closely enough, although there are some troubling reports (too early to reflect). Nonetheless, even a mere fact that Quad was not touched by the recent mass dismissals and currently enjoys the company of clearly artificial entities, warrants a serious suspicion. We will get there: it is just a matter of time.

Prenda explores a loophole in Pennsylvania’s law, its local counsel Isaac Slepner plagiarizes a memo

Posted: January 28, 2013 by SJD in Guava/Lightspeed, Prenda
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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I think that John Steele has finally found a way to vindicate me: the amount of scams he conceives is so high, the brazenness is so staggering that I may get seriously ill from writing that much about this unpleasant man and his co-gangsters. No single day passes without a new record low that this gang registers on their way down.

Abusing a loophole in an exotic Pennsylvania law

It came to my attention that on 12/24/2013 Prenda tested a new turf (not exactly new — it was tried by others before, somewhat unsuccessfully: read along). Prenda filed a motion for leave to take pre-complaint discovery in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia on behalf of a non-existent plaintiff Guava LLC, trying to get identities of 40 Internet subscribers with a sole goal to harass and blackmail them into settling or doing some dirty job.

In short, this exotic law (“Writ of summons”) allows subpoenaing ISPs before filing a complaint (without any commitment to file it later). In other words, this law is a cousin of Florida’s Pure Bill Of Discovery, heavily exploited by both John Steele’s and Keith Lipscomb’s Mafias.

Readers of this blog remember that Liberty Media tried to exploit the very same loophole in the Pennsylvania civil law half a year ago. At that time, Marc Randazza was an in-house counsel for Liberty Media Holdings, and I believe that the idea of this fishing blitzkrieg was his. For a couple of reasons, it was a failure. Particularly, Mark Randazza’s local counsel on that case, Jordan Rushie, realized that this way to “protect copyright” is inherently wrong, essentially resigned (dismissed the case) and since then has been defending many Does — victims of predatory shakedown lawsuits.

It is hardly a surprise to those who follow Prenda and other trolls: cockroaches tend to explore cracks in the floor (in this case, in the floor of the US judicial system).

An incredible mix of irony, shame and loathe

Here is the Memo in support of the motion (the other documents are linked at the bottom of this post)

 

Not that the memo embedded above is bad, it is actually good, but it is definitely not written by Steele. Then by whom? Let us look at the memo in the original Liberty Media filing:

 

Got it?

The entire text was shamelessly lifted from Rushie’s memorandum! Word to word.

I asked Jordan, and the answer was predictable: his firm has nothing to do with it. The fruit of his work (albeit adversary at that time, but still a decent work) was stolen either by Steele or his PA local counsel Isaac Slepner. (I apply trolls’ misleading terminology, which they hypocritically use when whining about pirates “stealing their clients’ precious pornography.”)


Isaac F. Slepner

As for the local attorney Isaac F. Slepner… Many local counsels deceived by Prenda turned out to be ethical attorneys (George Banas, Jonathan Torres, Matthew Wasinger, Trina Morrison…) and would not even think about associating their names with Prenda scumbags if they knew how much their cores are rotten. Seeing that, I would not rush and blame an underemployed attorney: I hope he will smell the stink of decay that the criminal organization Prenda exudes and will resign from this case — the sooner the better. If he was the one who pilfered Rushie’s text, he deserves some booing, but it is a much lesser crime than to make any deal with Prenda.

Last, but not least: abusing the law is Pennsylvania is one of the stupidest things John Steele’s hubris can conceive: there are certain superior attorneys there who will have a field day with John’s ill attempt to defraud justice, and they will take the matter as close to personal as their genuine professionalism allows.

Documents
Media coverage
Update

3/19/2013

On 3/11/2013 Verizon picked up the battle and filed a very comprehensive Motion to quash. It has an impressive set of attachments, including Pietz’s crash course in history of Prenda’s shenanigans.

A “defendant” in a Guava sham lawsuit has admitted that he was blackmailed into participating in a fraud

Posted: January 25, 2013 by SJD in Guava/Lightspeed, Prenda
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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It was obvious that a rash of CFAA cases filed in state courts by Prenda con artists — Guava v. Skylar Case (Cook county, IL), Guava v. Spencer Merkel (Hennepin county, MN), and Arte de Oaxaca v. Stacey Mullen (Cook county, IL) — were sham lawsuits that employed the same scheme:

  • Find a poor guy or girl who was “caught” either breaking copyright law by sharing copyrighted material (pornography) using Bittorent protocol, or accessing a pornography paysite using stolen credentials. And by “caught” I don’t mean that his or her IP address was simply recorded by a purported forensic expert, such as Peter Hansmeier and his unregistered, illegitimate company “6881 Forensics,” or Steve “Lightspeed” Jones’ “Arcadia Security” with its few scripts that parse server logs and produce mind-bogging amount of false positives (link NSFW). I mean solid evidence, namely admission of the wrongdoing.
  • Threaten him/her with insanely huge fines and expensive lawsuit that he or she has no means to afford.
  • Offer a deal: this poor chap plays a defendant in a state court lawsuit filed on behalf of a fake company and agrees to sign his consent to subpoena multiple ISPs to unmask thousands of Internet users, whose IP addresses may or may not have been recorded by the fake “experts” mentioned above. As a payback, this “defendant “will not pay anything and will be quietly dismissed later. Judges in underfunded county courts are happy when defendant and plaintiff agree on something, and endorse such agreements, sometimes without reading them.
  • Get the personal information of those thousands, many (probably the majority) of whom are innocent of any wrongdoing, and shake them down using the widely known protocols of harassment, baseless threats and lies.

 

While these “agreed orders” raised many eyebrows (including those of Judge Tailor), up to this point we did not have a smoking gun, and judges don’t like conspiracy theories, no matter how plausible they are.

Things have changed today in a dramatic manner: Spencer Merkel, a “defendant” in the Minnesota case, filed a damning affidavit through his attorney, exposing the brazen fraud:

 

This affidavit has surfaced during today’s hearing on motions to quash. John Steele appeared in person, probably hoping to save the case by dismissing those who filed motions, as he did in Chicago. No luck. Judge Tanya Bransford initially dismissed the complaint on the wrong jurisdiction grounds, but ultimately took the issue under advisement with the caveat that she will probably dismiss the complaint (and I hope will refer the fraudsters to the Bar and AG).

The house of cards built by the crooks (Paul and Peter Hansmeier, John Steele, Paul Duffy, Brett Gibbs, Michael Dumas) suddenly collapsed, implicating both the known scam artists and “defense” attorneys — Adam Urbanzcyk, Bernard Fuhs and Jennifer Dukarski.

The two latter attorneys represent another possibly fake defendant in a federal case AF Holdings v. Ciccone (MIED 12-cv-14442). Apparently, Prenda, not being slapped on the wrist and emboldened by a relative success, decided to pull the same trick on the federal level. I did not report on this, but both DieTrollDie and Rob Cashman did. This case is a hot spot now — after two excellent motions were filed by attorneys John Hermann and Eric Grimm (documents 22 and 33).

Note that I do not imply that two Michigan defense attorneys colluded with Prenda. I don’t have enough information to make such serious allegations. As for Adam Urbanczyk, the benefit of doubt we gave him has depleted long time ago.

Individual vindictive and vexatious Guava cases filed across the nation won’t survive the Minneapolis blast either: Booth Sweet has already filed a request for judicial notice of Merlkel’s affidavit in the Guava v. John Doe case (MAD 12-cv-11880), which I covered recently.

Now the ball is in the hands of Attorney General and FBI. We’ll see if they finally realize the depth of Prenda’s criminal activities and its impact on the society.

Funny fact: sometime next week I planned a post — an appeal to all the three defendants in Prenda’s CFAA cases to go forward and report the fraud upon the court to the authorities (assuming that those three poor souls did not realize that they are on the hook for criminal charges). Prenda’s bottomless greed (mixed with sloppiness) ended up working in place of my planned appeal. It is beyond comprehension why the crooks started threatening a cooperating patsy. Well, I don’t have to write this appeal anymore, which frees up my time to report on a couple of similarly big news (and I have a t least two in the queue).

There is more than one event happened today in the same building, albeit not in a courtroom but in an elevator. But it is a different story. Stay intrigued.

Update

I have just obtained a document that sheds some light on one of the reasons behind Spencer Merkel’s decision to go forward. The fraud was first reported to the court on Tuesday 1/22/2013, when a couple of ISPs filed a joint support document embedded below. It does not add much to what is said above, except maybe a suggestion that Mr. Merkel’s attorney Trina Morrison was not an active participant in the scheme, but was rather fooled by Prenda and initially was not even aware of the fraudulent “deal.”

 

Media coverage

How do you call a lovemaking act without a partner?

Posted: January 23, 2013 by SJD in Guava/Lightspeed, Not so serious, Prenda
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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You are correct.

In the meantime, John Steele discovered a new concept of judicial masturbation: a one-party lawsuit. Seriously. We all know how Prenda crooks have been doing a hard work of depriving people a say in the court, the very people they rape (again, in a judicial sense). First, scam artists argued that since subpoena is issued to an ISP, John and Jane Does have no standing to quash it. Didn’t work. Then a new trick was pulled out of the bag: to issue a subpoena not from a jurisdiction where a lawsuit is filed — with a sole goal to confuse John and Jane Does, as well as judges, making it unclear what court they should file their motions to quash with. Admonished by a couple of judges, trolls did not give up and came up with a concept of “co-conspirators” (not defendants — no standing), masking a mass shakedown lawsuits as single-defendant ones… If only this creativity was used to serve the society, not to rob it!

As the culmination of this crookery, John Steele (using an East Coast goon Daniel Ruggiero as a mouthpiece) declared that the sole defendant he is suing had no standing. I’m not joking.

This mind-bogging event happened in a federal case Guava v. John Doe (12-cv-11880) in Massachusetts. I wrote about this bad faith case recently in the post that dealt with the first powerful defense against the series of vindictive and vexatious lawsuits filed on behalf of a non-existent company “Guava LLC.” Two of our favorite attorneys, Dan Booth and Jason Sweet, have delivered a blow to Steele’s megalomaniacal march of naked kings. Defense asked the court to award fees for the prior action (an ongoing fraud in the IL Cook County court) before proceeding any further in this instant lawsuit.

Steele replied. As a rule of thumb, the more serious is a blow, the more hysterical is the reply (the most spiteful example is a sheer hysteria resulted from Erin Russell’s damage to what Prenda hoped to be a smooth extortion campaign). Steele asserted not only that the defendant in this case was not a defendant in the previous action, but also that the defendant in this case is not a defendant in this case (emphasis is mine):

Movants’ second critical flaw is that they¹ are not even defendants in this instant action. Plaintiff brought this action against an unknown defendant — John Doe. (ECF No. 1.) Plaintiff plans on amending its complaint to name and serve an actual defendant in this action, but until that time, the only party to this litigation is Plaintiff. Again, a defendant is defined as “a person sued is a civil proceeding or accused in a criminal proceeding” Black’s Law Dictionary (9th ed. 2009). Movants’ claims that they are defendants in this action are premature, as they may never be named and served in this case. [...] At that point, and only at that point, will Plaintiff take that information provided by the ISP, perform a further investigation, and decide whom (and if) to name as the Defendant in this suit, and amend the Complaint accordingly. Until that time, there is no identified Defendant in this action.

Daniel Booth’s reply was, as usual, simple and elegant: No defendant? No lawsuit!

Plaintiff’s solitary version of litigation has no place in the federal courts. As Plaintiff conceded in the prior action, “courts only have subject matter jurisdiction over justiciable matters, which are matters in controversy between an actual plaintiff and an actual defendant.” […] The Court should order Plaintiff to show cause why its one-party suit should not be dismissed.

It is unrealistic to expect anything but lies from Prenda. If, hypothetically, Steele decided to tell the truth just once, he must declare that this lawsuit not only lacks a defendant, but also a plaintiff (Guava LLC is a fake business that is not registered anywhere in the world: I challenge anyone to find such registration). Judicial celibacy would ensue.

Update
Media coverage

 

¹ You are probably confused: first it was a single defendant, now he or she is referred to as “they.” The reason is that the complaint asserts a single defendant who allegedly used three IP addresses. As the defense noticed, it is simply impossible that those IP addresses could belong to a single individual: those IP addresses resolve to different cities and even different ISPs. Double vision, triple vision… It’s not a secret that John Steele has a drinking problem, but I did not know that John is already reached the delirium tremens phase.

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