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from the fpmita-prison-on-the-horizon dept.
The surviving Prenda Law copyright trolls, Paul Hansmeier and John Steele, are finally in line to receive their just due. They have been arrested for running a multi-million dollar extortion scheme.
Ars reports:
The two lawyers were charged Wednesday with an 18-count indictment (PDF), describing allegations of fraud, perjury, and money laundering perpetrated between 2011 and 2014. The charges were unsealed and announced today and first reported by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Both Hansmeier, 35, and Steele, 45, were arrested earlier today before the indictment was made public.
"The defendants in this case are charged with devising a scheme that casts doubt on the integrity of our profession," said US Attorney Andrew Luger in a statement. "The conduct of these defendants was outrageous—they used deceptive lawsuits and unsuspecting judges to extort millions from vulnerable defendants. Our courts are halls of justice where fairness and the rule of law triumph, and my office will use every available resource to stop corrupt lawyers from abusing our system of justice."
The indictment explains how the defendants "used sham entities to obtain copyrights to pornographic movies—some of which they filmed themselves—and then uploaded those movies to file-sharing websites in order to lure people to download the movies."
I'm still laughing at the oxymoron "integrity of our profession" quoted in the article, but on the whole this is very good news. Two very crooked lawyers are likely headed to prison.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Saturday December 17 2016, @10:03PM
Most every lawyer serves their client and you can generally depend on your lawyer to do their job. That is professional integrity. What these two lawyers did was use their expertise to con a bunch of people, and like every profession there are such examples. Shall we laugh at the integrity of techs that built out the massive surveillance networks of the world? Or do they get a pass because they were following orders and their job was on the line?
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Saturday December 17 2016, @10:30PM
Assuming you're talking about people who knew what their work was going to be used for,
Shall we laugh at the integrity of techs that built out the massive surveillance networks of the world? Or do they get a pass because they were following orders...
I would laugh, except that it's not funny. But "following orders" doesn't get them a pass.
...their job was on the line?
Some decisions are harder than others, but they all have consequences.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Saturday December 17 2016, @10:35PM
There is a lawyer I know who received as a law school graduation present from her father a picture of sharks swimming around before the bar in a courtroom. She proudly displays it in her office, almost as if it is a badge of honor. However, she's one of the better lawyers, a public defender who is underpaid and overworked. I respect public defenders tremendously, and I can say the same for civil rights lawyers. However, the joke that states that you can tell a lawyer is lying because his lips are moving has a great deal of truth, especially given the lies that were told by a government lawyer when I had to the state in a civil matter. I enjoyed calling a spade a spade in my response. I won, BTW.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 17 2016, @11:52PM
Username doesn't check out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 18 2016, @12:03AM
https://translate.google.com/?channel=new&espv=1&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&client=tw-ob#la/en/mendax [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday December 18 2016, @04:45AM
The last (and only) lawyer who sued me frequently represented himself against others, petty $500 and $1000 cases, he worked the bottom end of the system, and he mostly did it on bluff, knowing that it costs $3000 to mount a "safe" defense - why risk that much time and effort against $600 worth of noise? May his hip replacement cause him all the pain he deserves.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Sunday December 18 2016, @05:57AM
Robert C Martin (Uncle bob) has been calling far a Proffessional Association [youtube.com] of programmers.
The reasoning is that programming is becoming to important too let just anybody code. His blog [cleancoder.com].
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Monday December 19 2016, @02:41AM
Some good replies, but no one admits to the unfair characterization of millions of professionals. I'm willing to concede that the practice of arguing a specific side of a case, even when you may disagree, tends to make lawyers morally flexible compared to the average person. Also, every profession has its share of thieves/cheats so anecdotes are a bad way to view an entire industry. We all contribute to the destruction of the earth just by existing as humans right now, so at some point we have to separate out intent from action.
~Tilting at windmills~