Finally…

Today Jerome Larkin, Administrator of the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois, via Counsel Wendy J. Muchman and Marita C. Sullivan, filed a seven-count, 14,000-word complaint against Prenda’s John Steele alleging massive professional misconduct and fraud on the Court (the word “fraud” is used 17 times throughout the document).

I don’t want to go over the complaint — in part because there is nothing new and revealing to anyone who follows the Prenda saga, and also because the tech media will certainly report about this development soon.



What I want to stress is that Malibu Media/X-Art and other copyright trolls who continue abusing the law and plunder US citizens are not that much better than Prenda. Yes, they do not defraud the courts as brazenly as Steele and Hansmeier did (although some scams as Crystal Bay Corporation or Good Man Productions certainly deserve attention from both professional disciplinary bodies and the DOJ). However, the common denominator of their harmful activities is immediately obvious to anyone with IQ greater than 70.

I hope to live long enough to witness similar disciplinary actions against Keith Lipscomb, Michael Hierl, Ira Siegel, and other parasites.

@fightcopytrolls

sanctions – 24

improper – 14

frivolous – 13

misrepresentation – 9

misconduct – 9

false – 9

contempt – 8 — Theodora Michaels (@tmichaels1) August 22, 2015

Coverage

Updates

11/16/2015

On 10/30/2015 John Steele filed his Answer to the complaint:

11/2/2015

Today Dan Browning wrote a story for the Star Tribune, bringing another great news — this time about the second half of Prenda, Paul Hansmeier, who, after his and Steele’s fraudulent porn Bittorent extortion “business” failed miserably, had been terrorizing Minnesota businesses with shakedown ADA lawsuits for more than a year:

The state board that investigates ethics complaints against Minnesota lawyers filed a petition Monday seeking to suspend or disbar Minneapolis lawyer Paul Hansmeier, who built a career suing thousands of people nationwide for downloading Internet porn, then turned to filing what some call “nuisance lawsuits” against small businesses that allegedly fail to comply with disability access laws. The 43-page petition by the Minnesota Lawyers Professional Responsibility Board follows a move by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court trustee to liquidate Hansmeier’s assets forcibly, arguing that he sought court protection from creditors in “bad faith.”

3/9/2017

On 1/31/2017, ARDC filed an amended complaint against John Steele, slightly enhanced and refined. Surprisingly, the complaint does not mention the criminal indictment.

Followup