Two-and-a-half years after Prenda Law's "porno-trolling collective" started to fall apart in a Los Angeles courtroom, one of the two principals, Paul Hansmeier, may lose his law license.

Minnesota's Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility has requested that Hansmeier be disbarred or suspended. The petition (PDF) is dated October 28 but was released to the press yesterday, and it describes Hansmeier's alleged misbehavior in four separate legal cases.

Hansmeier and his colleague John Steele are believed to be the masterminds behind Prenda Law, the name under which they acquired porn copyrights and then sued thousands for downloading them. They are believed to have made several million dollars until the project fell apart in 2013 under a barrage of sanctions. Hansmeier's response to this new document is due later this month.

"The only comment I have is that we respect the lawyers board's decision to proceed, and we’re looking forward to presenting our side of the case," Hansmeier's attorney Eric Cooperstein told Ars.

Hidden money in Monyet

First, there was Guava LLC v. Merkel. That's the case where an entity called "Guava" sued a Minnesota man, Spencer Merkel, for allegedly downloading a porn movie. Merkel later alleged that he was set up as a kind of "sham defendant" in order to get others' contact info during discovery. The scheme resulted in a hefty sanction against Guava, represented by Hansmeier's Alpha Law Firm.

Instead of paying, Alpha closed up shop. Hansmeier was later questioned about "Monyet LLC," a company Hansmeier said he set up for "estate planning services." The OLPR petition against Hansmeier details more than $590,000 worth of wire transfers from Monyet LLC to pay Hansmeier's expenses over the course of 2013 and 2014. That included payments to insurance companies for attorneys' fees he was ordered to pay; payments to Voelker Litigation Group, who represented Hansmeier, Steele, and Duffy in a 9th Circuit appeal; transfers to his wife; payments to other companies he owned; and transfers to Class Justice PLLC, Hansmeier's new law firm.

Although Hansmeier was shifting hundreds of thousands in and out of Monyet LLC, he testified in depositions that he knew next to nothing about it. The attorney even denied that he knew what state the shell company resided in (Delaware).

Hansmeier was held personally liable for the Guava v. Merkel debt earlier this year. A Minnesota state court found that he had used Alpha not as a law firm but "simply to serve as a conduit of money... and an attempt to deflect liability for sanctions." In July, one day before a contempt hearing about Hansmeier's withholding of documents, he filed for bankruptcy.

The petition asks Hansmeier to be disciplined for participating in and lying about the "sham defendant" scam, for making false statements when he dissolved Alpha Law Firm, and for transferring funds out of Alpha to avoid paying judgments against him.

False statements

The second count against Hansmeier accuses him of making false statements and dodging fee orders in the bizarre anti-hacking case, Lightspeed Media v. Smith. That's when Prenda took the brash step of adding AT&T and Comcast to its complaint because they wouldn't cough up user information fast enough.

When the ISPs filed motions seeking attorneys' fees from Hansmeier, he said he hadn't been properly noticed and that he "can't think of one" appearance he had ever made for Prenda Law.

But an appeals court held that the Prenda/Alpha distinction was "illusory at best, fraudulent at worst." In June, Hansmeier was found in contempt for making fraudulent statements about his inability to pay the sanction. The court noted that Monyet LLC "was not solely associated with estate planning," with most of its funds going toward appellate bonds, attorneys' fees, and loans to his Class Justice law firm.

Hansmeier has appealed the contempt finding, and that appeal is still pending.

The third count relates to the original Prenda takedown case, Ingenuity 13 LLC v. John Doe, in which US District Judge Otis Wright gave the lawyers a legal tongue-lashing to remember. The petition quotes Wright as he describes Steele, Hansmeier, and their former associate Paul Duffy as "attorneys with shattered law practices, seeking easy money." They "suffer from a form of moral turpitude unbecoming an officer of the court." The Ingenuity 13 case is still on appeal at the 9th Circuit, which ripped into Hansmeier's lawyer during a May hearing.

Hansmeier is accused of failing to appear at a hearing ordered by Wright in that case and bringing an action without merit. In the final case, AF Holdings v. Joe Navasca, he's accused of making more false statements, bringing a frivolous claim, and perpetrating a fraud upon the court.

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