Posts Tagged ‘Extortion’

Court awards attorney fees against AF Holdings in the amount of $9,425

Posted: May 24, 2013 by SJD in Coopergate, Prenda
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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There has been a hearing today in a precedent-setting copyright trolling lawsuit where motion to post an undertaking was granted (AF Holdings, LLC v. Trinh, 12-cv-02393). After Prenda unsuccessfully tried to reverse judge’s decision, on 3/8/2012 Judge Breyer issued a judgement with prejudice against the Plaintiff. The concern of today’s hearing was the motion for attorney fees. Paul Duffy appeared by phone. EFF’s Kurt Opsahl was at the hearing, and minutes ago he tweeted:

 

Minor congratulations to Nick Ranallo! (I’ll extend my major one when he is able to collect.)

ArsTechnica’s coverage (link below) contains a brief interview with Kurt:

In a brief interview, Opsahl told Ars the judge was “businesslike” during the short hearing, only asking whether the Wright sanctions order had been appealed (it has). Duffy then spent some time arguing the amount of sanctions was too high, as Ranallo could use similar arguments in his other cases.

“For what its worth, $9,400 for the amount of work Ranallo put in was a bargain,” opined Opsahl. “Any major law firm would have charged three or four times that amount, and the court probably wouldn’t have batted an eye.”

Media Coverage

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

Posted: May 12, 2013 by SJD in Guava/Lightspeed, Prenda
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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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

New unbelievably brazen fraud: Internet Copyright Law Enforcement Agency

Posted: February 21, 2013 by SJD in Internet Copyright Law Enforcement Agency
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
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2/22/2013 Update: this fraud is seemingly grounded shortly after it took off (scroll to the bottom of the post).

Over the last couple of days, I started receiving disturbing reports about a new copyright extortion outfit, “Internet Copyright Law Enforcement Agency.” The con artists behind this “company” have been mass-sending demand letters threatening that those who won’t pay $495 by a certain date, “will be fingerprinted, photographed, and held in jail until you are arraigned in court.”

Internet Copyright Law Enforcement Agency

 

According to confidential reports, the IP addresses and file titles (this scam deals with music, not films) are not made-up (to the extent of the reliability of collection methods, of course). Therefore, either the crooks indeed work with an IP monitoring company or use home-brewed methods (can be as simple as running an out-of-box Bittorent client and analyzing logs). Collusion between former owners of the file sharing sites and this scam outfit is also a possibility. At this moment, it is an open question how this outfit managed to translate IP addresses into the subscribers’ personal information. This is very disturbing.

What is unusual and what places this scam far beyond even Prenda Law on the brazenness scale, is the nature of the threats. Unlike the majority of US copyright trolls, who abuse copyright law but manage to balance on the edge of legality, ICLEA undeniably crosses the line by threatening its targets with criminal prosecution.

The most despicable existing troll operations (Prenda, Lipscomb, CEG-TEK, etc.) never endangered their lucrative shakedown scheme by wandering into a clearly criminal domain. There is a very scarce and scattered evidence of some callers making threats of criminal prosecution (those are mostly collection agents to whom Lipscomb outsourced harassment), but I believe those threats are not indicative and most likely were not approved by troll masterminds.

Back to ICLEA. The majority of those who dealt with copyright trolls, including lawyers, immediately recognized the fraud. The address listed on the website is a rented “virtual office,” calls go to voicemail, etc. I believe that these crooks will be busted very soon, but since I am concerned about uneducated, easily scared victims, I have decided to write about it in order to utilize the high visibility of this site to search engines, so potential victims would find this warning:

Internet Copyright Law Enforcement Agency is a scam; this “company” is engaged in criminal extortion — these letters are sent through the mail so they constitute mail fraud and wire fraud. This crosses the line of criminality because this outfit impersonates law enforcement and falsely threatens its victims with criminal prosecution.

Don’t even think about cutting a check to the criminals: they will be history very soon.

Below is the text of the letter, found on The Internet Patrol Site. I will replace it with a scan of an actual letter when/if I get one.

Re: Illegal Internet activity resulting in potential criminal and/or civil charges Internet Copyright Law Enforcement Agency v. John Doe
Case ID 12345 Confirmation 67890

If this matter is not settled by Friday, March 1, 2013, you may lace potential felony criminal and/or civil charges filed against you. If you are arrested for felony criminal copyright infringement you will be fingerprinted, photographed, and held in jail until you are arraigned in court.

Dear Mr. Doe,

My name is David Walsh and I am a Senior Copyright Law Enforcement Officer with the Internet Copyright Law Enforcement Agency, an international organization that has been charged with enforcing copyright laws on the Internet worldwide. We work with law enforcement agencies and strategic partners around the world to enforce copyright laws, and to help prosecute individuals and companies who violate these laws.

We have identified illegal Internet activity involving copyright crime occurring by either you, or someone in your household such as a spouse, child, or roommate. Under the United States No Electronic Theft (NET) Act, penalties for willfully infringing copyright law can include a felony criminal conviction that can result in imprisonment, and/or fines of up to several million dollars:

17 U.S.C.§506(a). Penalties for criminal infringement, set forth in Title 18 of the U.S. Code, are a felony conviction entailing up to five years imprisonment and/or a fine of up to $250,000. In addition to a criminal conviction and fine, copyright holders can also file a civil court case against the copyright infringer. 17 U.S.C. § 504(c)(2). In a civil case where the court finds that infringement was committed willfully, the court can award statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringement.

The copyrighted materials outlined below in the Evidence section of this notice are a small sample of the materials that have been illegally downloaded and shared through your Internet account. As the Internet Service Provider (ISP) account holder, you are legally liable for what occurs over your Internet connection. Evidence collected against you includes the correlation of your IP (Internet Provider) address listed in this notice at the time that the copyright crime we identified was committed.

Evidence: Internet Copyright Law Enforcement Agency v. John Doe

File Name: Equinox (Skrillex).mp3
Copyright Holder: Psychopathic Records
File Size: 2.1 MB
Date Downloaded: Monday, April 23, 2012 – 5:58 PM Software/Network: FrostWire (BitTorrent)
IP Address: 66.85.235.51

File Name: Cee Lo Green – Fuck You.mp3
Copyright Holder: Elektra Records
File Size: 3.5 MB
Date Downloaded: Saturday, November 19, 2011 – 11:59 PM Software/Network: FrostWire (Gnutella)
IP Address: 66.85.235.51

As you can see by the Evidence we have against you, the copyright crime you committed was done through P2P (Peer-To-Peer) file- sharing software. P2P file-sharing software allows Internet users to share music, movies, software, and other types of files. Some examples of P2P software include LimeWire, FrostWire, Cabos, uTorrent, BitTorrent, Vuze, and Ares. Even if you purchased the file – sharing software or subscription to a website, the rights you purchased were for the file-sharing software or subscription itself and not the rights to download, upload, or otherwise share copyrighted materials.

Claiming that you were not aware that you were committing a copyright crime by sharing the files listed in this notice does not absolve you of criminal and/or civil liability, and you are still liable for copyright infringement. In fact, if you read the fine print and/or user agreement associated with the file-sharing program you used or subscription you purchased, you will likely find a clause that places the liability on you as the end user and references the fact that downloading, uploading, or otherwise sharing copyrighted materials is illegal.

If you cannot locate the files listed in this notice, someone with access to your computer may have deleted the files. Either way, you can still be held criminally and/or civilly liable, as a crime has already been committed. Electronic evidence collected against you can still be used to prosecute you, even if the files have been deleted from your computer.

At this point, no criminal and/or civil charges have been filed against you, however if this matter is not settled by Friday, March 1, 2013 then you may face serious potential criminal and/or civil charges filed against you. If you are arrested for felony criminal copyright infringement you will be fingerprinted, photographed, and held in jail until you are arraigned in court.

We are providing you with an opportunity to settle this matter and will accept the sum of $495 to avoid any potential further action from being taken against you. If you act promptly you will help avoid being named as a Defendant in a potential criminal and/or civil lawsuit that can result in a felony criminal conviction causing imprisonment, and/or fines of up to several million dollars. You can pay the settlement amount of $495 and avoid further action from being taken against you by following these steps:

(1) Read and sign the Settlement Agreement included with this notice.

(2) Prepare a check or money order in the amount of $495 made payable to “Net Tech Division/Internet Copyright Agency”. Be sure to reference Case 12345 on your method of payment.

(3) Mail the signed Settlement Agreement along with your settlement payment to:

Internet Copyright Law Enforcement Agency Net Technology Division
1455 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Suite 400 Washington, DC 20004

We will contact you once we receive your Settlement Agreement and payment to confirm that no criminal and/or civil action will be taken against you, along with providing you with steps you can take to help avoid any future legal entanglements.

Enclosed please find a sheet containing answers to questions you may have and a Settlement Agreement. We look forward to your settling this matter before criminal and/or civil action is taken against you.

Sincerely,

David Walsh
Senior Copyright Law Enforcement Officer
Internet Copyright Law Enforcement Agency
E-mail: dwalsh@copyrightlawenforcement.com

Now the good news: frauds like this inevitably draw attention of the law enforcement. Public also becomes more aware of these scams’ existence. Thus, the “classic” copyright trolls increasingly find themselves in an uncomfortably open area under the bright spotlights. LiveWire Holdings, for instance, is not registered anywhere in the US, and it uses a virtual address in Washington, DC; this fact alone can trigger law enforcement’s sensors previously not tuned to respond to such signals.

We help to accelerate trolls’ downfall, but what will ultimately bury copyright extortionists is their own greed. Over the course of the human history, greed has been killing criminal organizations much more sophisticated than copyright trolling operations.

Update

2/22/2013

Busted!

Thanks to Mike Masnick and others for alerting me about the apparent shutdown of the fraudulent operation. Currently the website of the “Internet Copyright Law Enforcement Agency” looks like this:

It was quick. To the best of my knowledge, many people, including lawyers, reported or called/emailed “David Walsh” threatening to report this fraud to the FBI and other authorities. While I’m glad it turned out this way, many disturbing questions remain. It is still not clear how the scam artists managed to link IP addresses to identities. There are suspicions linking this operation to the “Limewire Settlement” scam, so it is possible that both IP addresses and identifying information were fished at that time.

Impersonating a government agency

While searching Google cache, I found out that yesterday’s version of the website was pretty mild in comparison to what the crooks had earlier. There is a pretty damning evidence that the impersonation of a government agency was an essential part of the fraud (see the cached version of “Home” and a picture of a police arrest on the next page). Also note an attempt to solicit snitching: the “Report copyright crime” page was not included into the yesterday’s version.

ICLEA archive:

Media coverage

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

Posted: February 20, 2013 by SJD in Coopergate, Guava/Lightspeed, Prenda
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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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

Hard Drive Productions is hit by another lawsuit: this time in Minnesota

Posted: February 16, 2013 by SJD in Counteractions, Prenda
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Pornographer Paul Pilcher

Poor sleazeball Paul Pilcher! How many times the owner of an illegal¹ porn studio Hard Drive Productions cursed the day when he met a copyright troll John Steele (Prenda Law) and fell for his sweet promises? While this lopsided collaboration brought some dirty money to Pilcher’s coffers, this extortion campaign had a sizeable downside for the pornographer. Besides bad publicity and the fact that most of the loot ended up in Prenda’s pockets, this endeavor resulted in two countersuits from the victims: Liuxia Wong v. HDP (CAND 12-cv-00469) is now settled, and Seth Abrahams v. HDP (CAND 12-cv-01006) is dismissed by the judge but is currently on appeal.

Today a Minneapolis attorney Scott Flaherty filed yet another lawsuit (MND 13-cv-00380) on behalf of a Minnesota resident Nathan Abshire, who was initially a part of the infamous Hard Drive Productions v. Does 1-1,495 (DCD 11-cv-01741) lawsuit in the District of Columbia. After political games in this corrupt district resulted in unmasking all the Does in September 2012, Prenda started sending ransom letters, and its paralegal Mark Lutz (who sometimes lies identifying himself as “Jeff Schultz”) has been extensively harassing Nathan over the phone:

Hard Drive continued to propose various unacceptable settlement proposals, usually through its counsel Jeff Schultz. Hard Drive’s most recent proposal is a letter dated February 6, 2013. Attached as Exhibit 3 is a true and correct copy of the 2/6/13 Letter.

The complaint asks that the Court issue an order

  • …declaring that Plaintiff is not liable to Hard Drive for copyright infringement;
  • …declaring that Hard Drive’s purported copyright on its Work is unenforceable or invalid;
  • …awarding Plaintiff costs, disbursements, and expenses including reasonable attorney fees as authorized by law including 17 U.S.C. § 505, as appropriate together with interest; and that this Court issue such other and further relief as may be just and equitable.

Litigating with the scumbags is not a pleasurable occupation and the outcome is far from certain (in part because ineligibility of pornography for copyright protection is asserted: expect Marc Randazza on a white horse). Nonetheless, I am happy to see that a former troll victim did not succumb to shallow threats and did not pay up. Neither did he choose to enter an unethical and possibly criminal agreement to defraud the court, but instead he decided to fight back defending his dignity. I hope that he will prevail and will be compensated for his troubles at the end.

 

I had a dream that thousands of lawsuits are filed against those porn purveyors who have been assaulting the society with frivolous lawsuits, which would force them out of business. As for the worst troll lawyers (Steele/Hansmeier and their gang in particular), they went too far and do not deserve such an easy way out; they should be pursued criminally.

Related
Updates

 

¹Technically, pornography production is illegal in the state of Arizona. Nonetheless, since, to the best of my knowledge, this law was never enforced, adult production is flourishing in the open. Besides Hard Drive Productions, the best known pornographers are CP Productions and Lightspeed Media: all of them have been involved in copyright trolling, and because of the bad publicity and other troubles, I tend to believe that today their owners regret about their bad decision.

Attorney, who has been bastardizing the litigation process for years, gets offended by the word “bastardize”

Posted: February 5, 2013 by SJD in Lipscomb, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
19

While I was concentrating on John Steele’s criminal organization, I’m afraid other trolls have been feeling neglected, especially a mega villain Keith Lipscomb. To rehabilitate myself, I looked into my backlog and found this gem.

Back in November, in a slow-moving class action lawsuit (Jennifer Barker and Sabree Hutchinson v. Copyright Trolls, KYWD 12-cv-00372), plaintiffs’ attorney Kenneth Henry used a pretty mild description of what Keith Lipscomb and his gang have been doing for about two years:

To bastardize the litigation process and abuse the court system as the Defendants have done, and now to object to the taking of early discovery vis-à-vis their claim that this Court lacks personal jurisdiction over them is yet another display of the Defendants’ total disregard for the courts and the rights of those with whom they deal.

In my (and not only my) opinion, Mr. Lipscomb’s “business” is better described as an extortion racket rather than a mere “bastardization of the litigation process.” Yet Lipscomb took an offense and demanded to strike that reasonable assessment from Henry’s motion:

Plaintiffs repeated accusations that Defendants are “bastardiz[ing] the litigation process” and have purposefully abused the court system in order to harass innocent individuals nationwide are baseless and unwarranted.

[...]

Accordingly, the language “bastardization of the litigation process” should be struck.

And this is not ironic enough: this man shakes down many thousands (a significant part of whom are innocent) over obscene material; his evidence is flimsy at best; and his fee-splitting agreements with porn purveyors and unlicensed foreign IP address harvesters are undeniably unethical. This man, in addition to having become furious over a dictionary word, was also offended when Henry called him “obviously not a Bible scholar”:

[...] the first page of Plaintiffs’ reply exclaims, “[o]bviously, counsel for the Defendants are not Biblical scholars.” This is deeply offensive. Undersigned was raised a Christian, was active in Campus Life and Campus Crusade (now known as “Cru”) in high school and college respectively, and used undersigned’s only preemptory waiver to ensure enrollment in an always oversubscribed biblical law class while attending The Cornell Law School. Undersigned is currently a member in good standing of the First Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and is a regular attendee at services.

 

Here we are: an indefinitely greedy person who indiscriminately assaulted many elderly, poor and sick, a person who lies each time he opens his mouth, a coward who loves to spill his saliva threatening fellow attorneys, demonstrates that he has a thin skin in unexpected places.

It evades me how this man can reconcile his purported Christianity with the fact that the public in general reasonably thinks that copyright trolling is a labor of Satan. Maybe people of faith chime in and explain. Until then I cannot get rid of the vision of Lipscomb’s famous relative turning in his grave.

Question for the community

Given the passionate and articulate pleading embedded above, it seems that M. Keith Lipscomb manages to conflate two incompatible things: a Christian worldview and “theft via extortion” (a.k.a. porn copyright trolling). I meditated on this paradox and cannot think about but two explanations, unless I am totally wrong. What do you think?

Booth Sweet LLP tells court a story of Prenda’s deception and abuse, asks for a bond to be posted by AF Holdings

Posted: February 2, 2013 by SJD in Coopergate, Prenda
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
22

Sounds familiar? Yes! Nick Ranallo in California successfully tried this strategy. Well, one may challenge my definition of “success”: at the end of the day, while the judge granted Nick’s motion, no bond was posted, and I doubt it will ever be. Nonetheless, the persistence of Prenda and its Californian shakedown ambassador counsel Brett Gibbs, with which they have been trying to weasel out, indicates a success on its own, as it clearly shows that the king is naked, and the clowns cannot even put the money where their proverbial mouth is. Much less are they capable of inflicting any real harm (beyond harassment and unsubstantiated threats) to anyone who cares to lift his or her finger in opposition.

So, the Eastern Front has been opened by Booth Sweet LLP (AF Holdings, LLC v. Chowdhury — MAD 12-cv-12105):

Nobody has forced AFH to file this suit when it did, based on the objectively weak evidence that it has chosen to proceed with. There is no reason to allow AFH to escape all responsibility for its actions and decisions in this case. As such, Chowdhury respectfully requests the court to order Plaintiff, AF Holdings, to post an undertaking in the amount of $60,000.

I hope that the motion will be granted. Regardless, as usually, a memo accompanying this motion is an excellent, refined iteration of a guide to Prenda’s shameful history of deception and abuse.

Taken together: (i) the facts averred by Mr. Cooper; (ii) Prenda’s attempts to stonewall on the question of whether there was another Alan Cooper who was the true principal of AF Holdings and Ingenuity 13, or answer any other questions on these matters; (iii) allegations of a previous straw plaintiff in the MCGIP cases and the affidavit of Mr. Merkel; and (v) the facts revealed in the Florida hearing transcript in Prenda’s Sunlust case wherein Prenda attempted to pass off its paralegal as the corporate representative of the plaintiff, suggest a pattern of deception with respect to who is really behind these lawsuits. To paraphrase a popular meme: “Plaintiff Prenda Law retained Prenda Law as its counsel, who in turn retained Prenda Law to use Prenda Law’s forensic software to identify infringers.”

 

The collection of exhibits is good and ready to use in any pleading that involves frivolous lawsuits filed by Prenda’s scam artists:

 

Interestingly, yet another troll’s lie has been called out (footnote 17):

On Prenda’s website and in correspondence to subscribers and counsel, Paul Duffy holds himself out being licensed to practice in Massachusetts. A call to the BBO confirmed that Atty. Duffy, as he already knows, has not been licensed in the Commonwealth since 1995.

Related

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

Prenda’s fraudulent activity continues unabated: new harassing calls, ransom letters etc.

Posted: January 23, 2013 by SJD in Prenda
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Mark Lutz

Recently I heard too many reports that Steele Hansmeier / Prenda Law / Anti-Piracy Law Group has intensified its harassing calls. And the crook on the other end of the phone line is no one else but previously “retired” (or rather fired — after he foolishly disobeyed his master’s order to move to Las Vegas) Mark Lutz.

These calls are beyond fraud.

  • The caller does not identify himself, which is a serious violation of the FDCPA (yes, some lawyers think that Prenda’s phone campaign can be categorized as a debt collection — albeit there is no debt). I’m sure it is afoul of other regulations.
  • Mark Lutz claims that he calls “from Prenda Law,” a nearly defunct law firm that is not in good standing with the state of Illinois: the beast is changing its skin these days, becoming “Anti-Piracy Law Group¹.”
  • Mark Lutz refers to dismissed lawsuits as if they are still alive, mentioning such “plaintiffs” as Hard Drive Productions, Boy Racer, etc. Especially egregious lie is Hard Drive Productions involvement. Its owner Paul Pilcher is probably soiling his pants every morning, as memories start to kick in after the wet slumbers recede. Memories of the countersuits, citizen activity informing his neighbors and schools about the illegal porn production in his home, and, on top of it, the current FBI investigation of the underage pornography allegations. Will anyone in his shoes even think of initiating a new lawsuit as Mark Lutz promises? Add the fact that Prenda dismissed all the “real” plaintiff cases, leaving only ones that involve questionable, most likely fake (and in any case fraudulent) entities AF Holdings, Ingenuity 13, and Quad International.

     

    When I hear about these threats, I imagine a gang of gas station robbers who just had a successful heist and took all the cash from the cash register, but the ultimate greed made them crawl on the unwashed floor to collect stray coins from under-the-shelf filth.

 

Here is a call that was recorded last week:

Ohai Mark, I hear your voice has changed a little bit (compared to fatter days). Was it a result of a special treatment you received in the Mexican jail? Regardless, if you say “copyright infringement lawsuit” tens of thousands times, it becomes a sound signature that is nearly impossible to forge.

Also, I thought you stated under oath “I do not work for Prenda Law.” I’m sure that Judge Scriven will love to learn that you have committed a perjury. I know, I know: you will say that you worked for Prenda before, then retired, and now you are back to work for the ticket John Steele bough to get you out of hell, that you did not work for Prenda at the end of November, when the hearings took place. Whatever, we will see if your hogwash is capable of convincing anyone.

In the meantime, while Mark is still with dying “Prenda Law,” ransom letters that use a new letterhead have started to arrive:

 

Although this letter is slightly less brazen than its previous reincarnations, it does not pass the anti-bullshit test. As Raul has observed after the first glance,

  • Who are the “engineers”?
  • What are “activities violating computer intercept statutes”?, Note the plural: I thought Prenda was only using the CFAA.
  • The letter incorrectly implies that the recipient is a defendant in a filed lawsuit “arising from these activities.”

 

Again, on the surface:

  • “Client’s secured website” is unreasonably vague.
  • Claims are “very serious,” my ass.
  • “Severe monetary damages” is also unreasonably vague.
  • How does Prenda/Anti-Piracy Law Group know a lawsuit like this will cost over 100K to litigate through a jury verdict?
  • The letter poses two questions but does not really answer them.
Update 1

1/25/2013

  • According to comments and personal emails, people receive a lot of such calls, majority (if not all) refers to dismissed cases.
  • There is a couple of reports that while the voice undoubtedly belongs to Mark Lutz, the caller identifies himself (when he identifies himself at all) as Jeff Schultz. I’m investigating this claim and will followup.
  • Some calls reportedly come from 703-272-2013, there is a set of interesting reports about this number, suggesting that the Prenda spoofs the caller ID.
Update 2

02/01/2013

Here is another recorded message. This time the caller introduces himself as “Jeff Schultz,” yet people who have been harassed for a long time by Lutz confirmed that the voice belongs to this putz. Compare yourself:

02/15/2013

…and if you still think that Jeff Schultz is not Mark Lutz (of the other way around), here is another recording, this time the caller introduces himself as Mark Lutz:


I also heard a story when Prenda’s Harassment officer called himself “Mark” and “Jeff” during the same conversation. Are all the crooks that stupid?

 

¹ While “Prenda” was a rather neutral term (please don’t start the “Pretenda” joke), ironically the criminal enterprise has managed to embed the deceit as a modus operandi in its very name: one simply cannot be anti- its own turf. It’s like if a plumber would declare that he is anti-sewage. Or a lion would declare that he is anti-meat. John Steele does not even hide the fact that he loves the status quo regarding the online infringement: his (now temporarily defunct) Twitter account had a tagline “Just a small town boy who thanks Bram Cohen every $ingle day.”

How do you call a lovemaking act without a partner?

Posted: January 23, 2013 by SJD in Guava/Lightspeed, Not so serious, Prenda
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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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