Alan Cooper Sues John Steele, Prenda Law And The Shell Companies He Supposedly 'Runs'
from the other-shoe-drops dept
Well, well. It was really only a matter of time, but the Alan Cooper saga has moved into its next phase. If you don't recall, this story all starts with John Steele, who had been a divorce lawyer until he discovered copyright trolling, and suddenly went absolutely crazy filing copyright trolling lawsuits with the sole purpose of trying to scare people into paying up (of which he got a huge cut) rather than actually taking people through the judicial process. As a bunch of his lawsuits start flopping (even as enough uninformed people coughed up lots of money to Steele), he began shifting strategies. He claimed to have shut down his law firm, only to pop up again in Florida with Prenda Law doing the same thing (and ran into some troubles for not being licensed to practice law there). Late last year, it appeared that Steele hit on a new strategy of using shell companies to try a whole bunch of tricks and loopholes for getting around the reason his cases kept getting thrown out. There were suspicions that the shell companies, going by names like AF Holdings, Ingenuity 13 and Guava, were nothing more than Steele and/or his partners, but there was little evidence at the time. That's quickly changing.Back in December, a guy named Alan Cooper, who had been hired by Steele to be the caretaker of some of Steele's property in Minnesota, intervened in a few AF Holdings and Ingenuity 13 cases to point out that it had come to his attention that both companies were claiming that a guy named Alan Cooper was managing those companies, and he had reasons to believe that Steele had simply used his name. While a few courts ignored the letters, some judges have started asking questions, and no one associated with Prenda seems to want to answer the simple question: which Alan Cooper runs those companies?
Apparently Prenda's silence on the matter has been enough for caretaker Cooper (and his lawyer) and they've now sued Prenda, John Steele, AF Holdings and Ingenuity 13, directly claiming that Steele is in charge of all of those and forged Cooper's signature. In fact, in the exhibits, Cooper presents the caretaking agreement he did sign with Steele, and then suggests that documents showing a signature for Alan Cooper regarding AF Holdings or Ingenuity 13 are really attempts to forge the same signature in that caretaking document. Cooper is charging Steele and Prenda with invasion of privacy (via appropriation), deceptive trade practices and civil conspiracy, as well as arguing that the corporate veil should be pierced for all three companies, as they're nothing more than shells for Steele to hide behind.
Of course, if this keeps up, Steele may be facing a lot worse than civil charges. Forging someone's name and lying to the court aren't things that tend to go over well in criminal cases.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: alan cooper, john steele
Companies: af holdings, ingenuity 13, prenda, prenda law
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Aww yeah
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Aww yeah
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
My favorite recent tweets:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Go go highest paid caretaker in the world!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Where do I go to buy a ticket?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Any ideas how the courts might get the money out of St. Kitz/Nevis(sp)?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
A nice ultimatum of 'pay the fines and/or have your properties seized to pay off the fines or go to jail' might get them to cough up the cash.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
While they try to sort out who is doing what, they can take off. On the outside we all know Steele is writing a majority of Pretenda's papers... but the courts still believe he isn't working with them and is just a fan of copyright troll cases in obscure courtrooms in Florida.
I've seen so much Pretenda paperwork and I've yet to see AF Films listed in any of Coopers paperwork. Another shell or more shoddy work by Pretenda. Entering into the court record the transfer of rights to a nonexistant shell would be naughty. Having screwed up the name of your shell company is naughty...
Lets hope the veil goes buhbye and everything is seized before a shredding party.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
1. A few :)
2. Probably it's next to impossible.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Lucrative for the governments involved, bad for the organisation owners, humorous for the rest of us.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
If Cooper is wrong...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: If Cooper is wrong...
Maybe possible counterclaims, but probably motion to collect costs of defending this nonsense (if it were actually nonsense, which I highly doubt).
The court would expect that. The quickest way to knock this out is to simply produce the real Alan Cooper and show the caretaker is mistaken.
This is like if SCO had any evidence of copyright infringement by IBM, it would have produced it's evidence right away so it could collect damages.
It will be amusing to see what distractions, diversions and contortions that Steele et all will go through to try to deflect this lawsuit. Yes, we have an Alan Cooper, we really, really do. His signature just happens to be really similar to the caretaker. But out Alan Cooper is not available right now. He's, um, out of the country on business.
This is going to be interesting because the quickest defense would be to simply produce the Alan Cooper that is not the caretaker.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: If Cooper is wrong...
I actually have to wonder if that's the real reason behind the lawsuit(s), to either flush out the mysterious 'Alan Cooper', or cause Steele and co. to panic, run around and try and make even more excuses to try and get out of doing so.
When you think about it, either say Prenda is pretty screwed here. If they don't cough up an Alan Cooper, they are all personally going to be sued.
If they do cough up an Alan Cooper, and prove without a shadow of a doubt he is, and always has been the CEO of these companies, then he's also going to be personally responsible for the crap that's been pulled in his name, and there will almost certainly be some hard questions as to why he's only now stepping forward, given all the song and dance that's been going on to avoid him having to do so.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: If Cooper is wrong...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: If Cooper is wrong...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: If Cooper is wrong...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: If Cooper is wrong...
Since the question has been dodged, rather than answered, that alone should be grounds to sue to straighten it out. Pretenda had their chance to avoid a trial, by producing the other Alan when a JUDGE asked, but they chose to keep playing their shell games instead.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
DB Coopers Son
Except at one point, young Alan, having gotten his start in law as a result of investments from his father's cash, and spent so many years under the false identity of John Steele, began to crack under pressure. But rather than let the world know his real birth name, decided to pay a tribute to it, and his infamous dad, by listing Alan Cooper on paper.
At this point, it's at least a possibility in this already movie-worthy case...
:-)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: DB Coopers Son
Oops sorry, movies never make a net profit. Write a book instead.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: DB Coopers Son
To be sure we're successful, I'll hire Carmen Ortiz as a prosecutorial consultant.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: DB Coopers Son
[ link to this | view in chronology ]