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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 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]