SoylentNews

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Paul Hansmeier, one of the lead attorneys behind the controversial law firm Prenda, has pleaded guilty to mail, wire fraud, and money laundering. The Pirate Bay provided important evidence in the case, where Hansmeier and his colleague were found creating and uploading porn movies to file-sharing sites to extract settlements from alleged pirates.

Over the past several years, so-called copyright trolls have been accused of various dubious schemes and actions, with one group as the frontrunner. The now-defunct Prenda Law grabbed dozens of headlines, mostly surrounding negative court rulings over identity theft, misrepresentation and even deception.

Most controversial was the shocking revelation that Prenda uploaded their own torrents to The Pirate Bay, creating a honeypot for the people they later sued over pirated downloads. The accusation was first published here on TorrentFreak. While some disregarded it as a wild conspiracy theory, the US Department of Justice took it rather seriously. These and other allegations ultimately resulted in a criminal indictment, which was filed in 2016. The US Government accused two of the leading Prenda lawyers of various crimes, including money laundering, perjury, mail and wire fraud. This week one of the defendants, Paul Hansmeier, pleaded guilty to two of the counts.

Source: https://torrentfreak.com/prenda-lawyer-pleads-guilty-in-pirate-bay-honeypot-case-180818/

Original Submission