Government Knocks Hansmeier's Attempt To Talk Court Out Of Federal Prosecution
from the a-fraudulent-scheme-is-made-of-small-interconnected-acts dept
Paul Hansmeier -- bankrupt both in moral and financial terms -- is facing the blackness awaiting him at the bottom of a hole he dug himself. After engaging in copyright trolling, fraud, Disability Act trolling, more fraud, and generally embodying everything anyone hates about lawyers, he's now facing a multi-charge federal indictment. Fortunately for him, his representation is far more competent than he is.
His public defender crafted a motion to dismiss masterpiece, epic in length and containing a multitude of creative assertions that culminated in a not-completely-wrong point: to convict Hansmeier for engaging in bad-faith litigation would create a chilling effect on the act of litigation. Not included in this analysis of the issues was the fact that Hansmeier's copyright trolling also involved fraudulent behavior, which is the sort of thing most vexatious litigants manage to avoid.
It was a fun read, as far as motions to dismiss go. One over-the-top argument followed another until everything, including the reader, was exhausted.
The government has responded to the motion to dismiss. [h/t Sophisticated Jane Doe] Fortunately, the government cuts to the chase. It goes after the "litigation chilling effect" argument raised by Hansmeier's lawyer. From the government's reply [PDF]:
Defendant Hansmeier moves the court to dismiss Counts 1-17 of the Indictment. Hansmeier argues the detailed allegations set forth in the Indictment do not state an offense, and asserts the charges brought by the government impermissibly infringe on his “constitutionally-protected” right to engage in frivolous civil litigation. Unfortunately for Hansmeier, no such right exists. There is no safe harbor for fraud simply because one of the tools of the fraud involved litigation.
The government goes on to point out Prenda did not just engage in speculative invoicing.
Moreover, Hansmeier and his co-defendant, John Steele, did not simply file dubious lawsuits. They constructed an elaborate ruse designed to deceive people—state and federal judges as well as numerous victims who paid settlement fees to them—and, for that reason, violated the mail and wire fraud statutes. Hansmeier’s attempt to confuse this issue, through a convoluted 64-page memorandum wherein he pretends to champion the rights of unethical litigators and thereby create a strawman to save himself, should be rejected.
It attacks the assertions of the motion to dismiss, noting that separating each and every aspect of Prenda's schemes in order to make them appear singularly non-criminal is pretty much like denying a forest exists because it's just a bunch of single trees standing in the same general area.
Defendant also attempts to isolate each part of the scheme, arguing that each facet standing alone cannot state a fraudulent offense. However, the defendant did not commit each act in isolation. He did not merely breach his ethical obligations to the court. He did not solely mislead the court about the nature of his copyright infringement claims, or conceal his surreptitious ownership of his clients and their pornographic content. The indictment charges a multi-faceted scheme designed to deceive various courts and internet subscribers, and when viewed in its totality clearly describes a scheme to defraud.
The rest of the government's opposition motion details Prenda's fraud in greater detail, linking up all of Hansmeier's (and Steele's) illegal activities, which went far beyond simply filing lawsuits they knew to be meritless. Hansmeier's attempt to use civil litigation as a shield against prosecution fails for all the reasons listed in the government's reply: mainly that engaging in fraud during civil litigation doesn't immunize you from prosecution. Nor does Hansmeier's attempt to portray this all as something no more serious than an ethical violation find any sympathy. Again, the government points to Prenda's long history of fraud, perjury, and concealment.
The government also has an issue with the motion's demand for a better explanation of the charges than what's contained in the rather voluminous indictment. GFY motion entered:
Hansmeier also seeks to have the government define and explain the boundary between fraud and legality. The government is not required to prepare a treatise for the defendant explaining why precisely his conduct constitutes fraud. The defendants used various methods—all of which are described in the Indictment—to deceive state and federal courts into allowing them to pursue early discovery, and then tricked numerous individuals into parting with their money. The indictment in this case is more than sufficiently detailed, and has been supplemented by voluminous governmental disclosures that have gone well beyond what the government is legally obligated to provide.
In other words, the government was just as exhausted by the end of Hansmeier's 64-page motion as the rest of us were. It's ready to prosecute and Hansmeier is trying to argue it all away as though the grand jury had returned a dozen single-count indictments over several months or years, rather than the multi-count indictment tying all of Prenda's bad behavior together.
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Filed Under: doj, fraud, paul hansmeier
Companies: prenda, prenda law
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Never enter into a war of attrition against the government. It has more experience in grinding slow the gears of justice.
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Re: Grinding
Hopefully he'll be dust before the system is done with him.
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Still waiting for horse with no name/Whatever/Just Sayin'/My_Name_Here's prediction to come true at some point...
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Because they lost. big time. Of course they'll try to shrug it off and attach themselves to some other fraudulent loser asshole with all the sex appeal of a maggot-infested pineapple left out in the sun, but there you go.
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and the downside is...?
Um. Good!
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Re: and the downside is...?
Some people have got it into their heads that lawyers, courts and litigation are "A GOOD THING(tm)" instead of an absolute last resort to obtain Justice.
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yes! I hope this approaches slam dunk levels of magnitude here! For once I agree with nasty government, but this dumb fucking lawyer must have really pissed off a judge or important person to get this kind of attention.
"The government is not required to prepare a treatise for the defendant explaining why precisely his conduct constitutes fraud."
Well, it should be! I might hate bad-faith litigation, but bad-faith prosecution is even worse, a lot of actually innocent folks are rotting in jail from it!
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What the defense is arguing is, "that's not fraud, because the statutes don't clearly lay out this exact set of circumstances, and you haven't shown a precise fit to the statutes". And the government is saying "You lied to people in order to get them to pay you money that they didn't owe you. That's all we have to show, and we have."
That's not the prosecution pulling a fast one. That's the defense trying to make the prosecution prove the foundations of basic fraud law in their filings, which is not actually something the prosecution should have to do.
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There's also the various foot-dragging techniques which are generally losing proposals can be very effective in a war of attrition. Things like disputing the venue, trying to get the judge and prosecutor kicked off the case, and accusing every juror, one by one, of some imagined conflict.
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*sigh* Only a lawyer would say that this is a bad thing...
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wow.
64 pages to make the point, in effect, that copporn and popcorn are really the same thing.
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It's possible he couldn't, in that he had nothing to offer that would be greater than the possibility of prosecuting him and they were sure enough of their case that they didn't think a plea bargain would be worth it on their side.
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Agreed. Look at two subtle hints in the government's reply:
p. 17:
p. 24:
Someone's shadow is lurking behind the bus. Is it John's?
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It seems that if John Steele, Paul Hansmeier and Paul Duffy had played their cards right, Steele and Hansmeier would have plea bargained early for a light sentence in order to nail holdout Paul Duffy, whose eventual death would have basically wasted those two plea-bargains as far as the prosecution was concerned.
... or can plea bargains be reversed if the person the bargainee agrees to testify against (hence the main reason for offering the plea bargain) ends up dying?
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You mean Prenda v World, or SCOXQ v World?
Or a new movie "A lien v Prendatort"
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Serious question about observing a Federal Court case
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