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Prenda Saga Update: John Steele Pleads Guilty, Admits Entire Scheme
- vermontdevil 10y agothey are truly scummy esp with their ADA shakedowns. ADA was a great way for people with disabilities to get equal access but now I fear its future due to the constant abuse by scumbags like Prenda and others.
- raverbashing 10y ago* its future
- vermontdevil 10y agod'oh
- bbarn 10y agoIs, not was. We're starting to see patent trolls migrating to the much greener government agency sue-able territory of section 508 law suits instead. Only this time, there's practically a for the children argument behind it.
- Bluestrike2 10y agoIt's actually a relatively straight-forward fix to kill the "drive by" ADA lawsuit industry simply by allowing written notice of a violation to business owners and giving them time to fix it prior to allowing suit to be filed. Activist groups could still get violations fixed, but lawyers using it as a vehicle for raking in attorneys fees would be SOL. In the meantime, there's some progress at the state level with the courts starting to hit back against lawyers committing the most egregious ethical violations.
- AnthonyMouse 10y agoThat would fix a lot of it, but the root of the problem is that a lot of the laws are just broken. For example, UC Berkeley was forced to remove free public access to their course lecture videos because they weren't captioned, but paying to caption them just to give them away for free isn't viable. The fact that the law doesn't have an exception for compliance measures whose cost would exceed all profit from the relevant endeavor is a pretty serious defect.
- edraferi 10y ago> UC Berkeley was forced to remove free public access to their course lecture videos because they weren't captioned, but paying to caption them just to give them away for free isn't viable. That is super dumb. Hopefully that specific problem (video captioning) will go away in the next year or two as automatic speech recognition becomes less expensive and more widely available. Basic captioning for compliance should be a single API call. Quality won't be perfect, but good enough for a deaf viewer to get the gist of it.
- chimeracoder 10y ago> The fact that the law doesn't have an exception for compliance measures whose cost would exceed all profit from the relevant endeavor Literally the entire point of the ADA is to force businesses to make themselves accessible when they have no inherent profit incentive to do so. > For example, UC Berkeley was forced to remove free public access to their course lecture videos because they weren't captioned That's a misleading way of phrasing it. As a public university, Berkley was never permitted to post unaccessible content online on the first place - that's a pretty unambiguous part of the ADA and is not anywhere close to new. The DOJ has been enforcing that for two decades. Berkeley did so anyway, and then was told they would have to caption them in order to keep them online. At that point, they chose to take them down.
- freehunter 10y agoI consider myself to be pretty liberal on things like this, but denying access to all because it's not accessible to some seems way overkill. That's like saying a library can't have any books that aren't also printed in braille. It's an absolutely ridiculous concept and if that's actually a real component of the ADA I cannot believe public libraries haven't been sued out of business yet.
- arjie 10y agoCould you clarify how these shakedowns are performed? Are the victims non compliant with some law?
- jessaustin 10y agoTypically the victims are low-margin businesses operating in old buildings that were designed long before ADA existed. These businesses may never have served a wheelchair-bound customer before, or if they did it was an ad hoc process. In other words, physically lifting a wheelchair over some stairs or just bringing the customer's purchases outside. That's fine for reasonable customers, but the wheelchair people involved in these lawsuits do not behave in reasonable fashion.
- wyldfire 10y agoThey also exploit extremely subtle parts of ADA like specific requirements for signage. Those things are very easily remedied without the need for a suit.
- chimeracoder 10y ago> Typically the victims are low-margin businesses operating in old buildings that were designed long before ADA exited That's not really true. Under the ADA, buildings built before 1992 are generally not required to perform renovations for compliance unless they are already performing renovations, at which point they are required to adherence to the requirements. And the amount that they are required to spend on compliance is a function of the amount that they are spending on the other renovations. It's actually more complicated than that, because there are two sets of requirements (1993 and 2010), with different safe harbor provisions for each, and renovations to old buildings may or may not invalidate the 1993 safe harbor, but that's the general idea.
- al2o3cr 10y agoThere are plenty of "reasonable gentlemen" running "family businesses" who'd be interested in your "if you've been breaking the law for 25 years you can keep doing it" plan.
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- abrookewood 10y agoFrom Wikipedia: Prenda Law, also known as Steele | Hansmeier PLLP and Anti-Piracy Law Group, was a Chicago-based law firm that ostensibly operated by undertaking litigation against copyright infringement, but was later characterized by the United States District Court for Central California in a May 2013 ruling as a "porno-trolling collective" whose business model "relies on deception", and which resembled most closely a conspiracy and racketeering enterprise,referring in the judgment to RICO, the United States Federal anti-racketeering law.
- dredmorbius 10y agoPreviously at Popehat: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=prenda+site%3Apopehat.com&t=ftas&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=prenda+site%3Apopehat.com&t=ftas&i... HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=prenda https://hn.algolia.com/?q=prenda (much of it Popehat)
- masklinn 10y agoThe first link in TFA is to popehat's prenda-law case which is 4 pages of the sordid history of these garbage people back to early March 2013: https://www.popehat.com/tag/prenda-law/ https://www.popehat.com/tag/prenda-law/
- PhantomGremlin 10y agothe deal also contemplates that Steele will cooperate — become a rat, if you want to be unkind A real-life prisoner's dilemma unfolding. Couldn't have happened to a couple of nicer guys. /s
- CodeWriter23 10y agoI know. I thought this meant that this Schadenfreude Fountain had dried up. Looks like instead the story is moving into Act II.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- anonsteele 10y agoI paid up years ago because I had an open AP and didn't want to get dragged into court. Thoughts on how to get any of the ~$2000 back?
- wyldfire 10y agoIt's unlikely, but you could do it. After going through the trouble of bringing a suit -- once you have the judgment against them, you'd have to get in line behind the other creditors. :(
- debt_suer 10y agoUnless they are in bankruptcy it's a free for all once judgement is granted. There is no line and can be collected on by any legal means. I used to work for a lawyer who primarily did collections of business accounts, some of which we personally garunteed, depending on the age/credit of the business.
- wyldfire 10y agoI guess I leaped ahead and assumed that everyone else with judgments would quickly force them into bankruptcy.
- dragonwriter 10y agoSteele is compelled to make restitution to victims of the fraud scheme (even outside of the specific charged offenses, per the plea agreement.) I believe in order to get identified as a victim and have a claim for restitution considered, you would need to work with the Justice Department, probably specifically the U.S. Attorney's office that is prosecuting the case. This is probably more cost effective than pursuing private litigation against Steele or any of the Prenda principales, because the U.S. government does most of the heavy lifting.
- coldcode 10y agoAnyone who has watched Law & Order knows making a deal first is best. I also bet once he is out of jail he will write a book and get hired on some TV channel as an expert and probably make more money than he did as a crook.
- godzillabrennus 10y agoGood. Then he'll be in a position to pay restitution for what he's done.
- daenney 10y agoDid I miss the part in Law & Order where it says this is an accurate representation of US law, the court system etc?
- ChuckMcM 10y agoSo nice to hear they are finally getting down to the time behind bars stage. I hope (although don't particularly expect) that this will have a chilling effect on other unscrupulous lawyers who shake down people using fraudulent constructs.
- mavelikara 10y agoWhy were they (Prenda) caught? Did they try shake down someone powerful?
- chowells 10y agoIIRC, a John Doe defendant got a young aggressive lawyer hoping to make a name for himself to defend him pro bono. The lawyer started digging hard, refused to just accept a dismissal, and went on a counter-attack that eventually dug up enough for other parties to join in. Huh. Phrased like that, it sounds like a John Grisham novel.
- Already__Taken 10y agoWhich is a great story but it's a little terrifying if it's "System working as intended" It seem to have only come this far because they doubled down on some already outlandishly scumbag behaviour. If they'd just stopped this might have all blown over for them.
- caf 10y agoIt does kind of make you wonder how frequent tactics like "strawman defendant" or "made up hacking claims to get discovery" are used by other firms - because it sure seems like these guys got caught because they kept up these sorts of tactics relentlessly.
- jessaustin 10y agoFrom that perspective, all the publicity surrounding this firm might actually make the problems associated with them worse. Other unscrupulous lawyers might study this and learn which specific mistakes not to make, rather than learning to avoid this model altogether.
- meowface 10y agoHow did these guys think they could keep the con running for so long? Being lawyers, you'd think they'd have some common sense.
- sverige 10y ago>Being lawyers, you'd think they'd have some common sense. You have obviously not known or worked for many lawyers. (Present company excepted, of course.)
- wmf 10y agoI've seen a couple crackpot lawyers who think they can get out of anything because, after all, they're a lawyer. (Note that 99% of lawyers refuse to represent themselves.)
- wavefunction 10y agoThe lawyers refusing to represent themselves makes a lot of sense. With another lawyer you've got the potential to argue on appeal about your counsel, and they are also potentially freer to move and communicate than a hypothetical lawyer charged with a crime. Plus there's the network affect from your lawyer's additional experience and contacts throughout the system.
- mulmen 10y agoBeing lawyers they have enough common sense to do the math and figure out that the cost of being caught would never outweigh the profits. At that point the only incentive is to make as much money as possible for as long as you can.
- pktgen 10y agoI don't know about that - is ~10 years in federal prison worth a few million dollars (after splitting it between Hansmeier and other co-conspirators)? Also, they're not going to get to keep the money. As lawyers, I'm betting they could make the same amount of money in the same timeframe practicing legitimately (or, knowing how these idiots operate, "semi-legitimately"), but without the federal prison time.
- theoryofone 10y agoSo what would be the Nash equilibrium in this instance?
- wantoncl 10y agoThey'll both get fucked, and nobody gets the blonde.
- hughdbrown 10y agoBy coincidence, I was viewing this today: http://bestfunny-videos.com/video.php?vid=ObZDipKRH0c&13-55859-Paul-Hansmeier,-Esq.-v.-John-Doe http://bestfunny-videos.com/video.php?vid=ObZDipKRH0c&13-558... My understanding of court procedure is limited, but it is pretty clear that the appellants are making some pretty incredible decisions that surprise the judges, including insisting that the proceedings are a criminal case with the possible outcome that the appellants would face life imprisonment for criminal contempt (17:11 - 17:45). I gather this is high comedy for lawyers.
- MindTwister 10y agoFor those not wanting to click through that site, here is the youtube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObZDipKRH0c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObZDipKRH0c
- nikcub 10y agoThat's a great clip Fun fact: Tallman, the judge in the middle with the great stories - is one of three judges who sit on the FISA court
- pktgen 10y agoThe judge in the middle is Judge Pregerson.
- throwanem 10y agoSo is he the one on the FISA court, or is Tallman? I mean I'm impressed with the whole panel and it's a hilarious proceeding, but I'd be interested to see this point cleared up, and Wikipedia's list [0] doesn't mention either. (I don't really know where else to look.) [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Court https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intell...
- pktgen 10y agoTallman is on the appellate level of the FISA court [1], which is why his name doesn't appear on that Wikipedia page. Pregerson isn't on the FISA court at any level. [1] http://www.fisc.uscourts.gov/fiscr_membership http://www.fisc.uscourts.gov/fiscr_membership
- _pmf_ 10y agoThese types of operations abound in Germany, too. Arguably, adult movie producers make more money via "Abmahnanwälte" than via regular distribution.
- downandout 10y ago>Upon entry of judgment after his sentencing, John Steele will be a convicted felon with a federal fraud conviction. His career as a lawyer — or, more generally, as a gainfully employed person — is over. While I share everyone's hatred of the tactics these people have employed over the years, I also hate that felons in the US are given such a hard time after they have served their sentences. People make mistakes and should be allowed to move on from them. A couple of years in federal prison shouldn't carry with it a lifetime of financial despair.
- cmdkeen 10y agoWhilst I agree with your criticism of the treatment of felons in the US in most jurisdictions a conviction for a crime of dishonesty, especially one in a professional context, will haunt you for life. In the context of this specific individual it would be a bold company that put him in a position to have any influence over money, management or clients.
- rfrey 10y agoFor sure, that covers the "career as a lawyer" part. It's the "as a gainfully employed person" that is troubling.
- LeifCarrotson 10y agoIt makes sense that it would. But should it also make it difficult for him to find housing, to benefit from aid programs like food stamps, or to flip burgers for minimum wage? If John Steele can't get housing, can't get food, and can't get a job, but is also supposed to obey the law on penalty of more jail time or another felony on his record, what's he likely to do?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- nojvek 10y agoSuppose someone is a felon, can the average Joe run a background check to know what crime was committed? I.e would happily hire someone who was caught in possession of marijuana or a bit of drugs, but not a pedophile, mobster or serial killer.
- jmnicolas 10y agoThere's something that I don't understand in this case(I'm not American): to my knowledge in the US the Police can trap you by proposing to sell you drugs or bomb making ingredients and then arrest you. The Prenda modus operandi doesn't seems much different than what the US Police is doing, so why do they face prison ? Don't get me wrong I think they deserve to go behind bars, but I would have thought what they did was legal in the US.
- jamespo 10y agothe police in most countries can do a lot of things civilians can't
- _r_o_y_ 10y agoI'm not American either, but if i recall correctly, it's different when dealing with copyright because when you share your work (they publish themselves on torrents) there's an expectation that the work comes with a license
- mikeash 10y agoIf a private citizen tries to sell drugs or bomb ingredients, then extorts the buyer by threatening to tell the police, I think that would probably be illegal as well. A lot of the trouble here is how they went about this scheme, not merely the basic idea of what they did. They repeatedly lied to defendants and courts about their operations. Some of the materials they sued over were things they didn't actually have copyright for, but they used false documents to claim that they did. Those false documents involved forged signatures and even invented a person who didn't exist. They even filed defamation lawsuits against a person whose signatures they forged, for daring to say that they hadn't signed this stuff. Wikipedia has a huge list of the crazy stuff they've done: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenda_Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenda_Law So, it's not just about trying to entrap people by "pirating" their own content. It's about massive fraud and abuse along the way.
- dragonwriter 10y ago> The Prenda modus operandi doesn't seems much different than what the US Police is doing, so why do they face prison ? There are a lot of reasons, the most critical one being that it involved multiple levels of misrepresentations to the involved courts, which is not part of a normal law enforcement sting operation. (There's also a difference between a criminal sting operation where the prohibited offense is, e.g., buying the goods being offered vs. a civil copyright "sting operation" where the prohibited offense is "copying some work without the consent of the copyright owner", and the active assistance of the copyright owner is involved in the act of copying.)
- coldtea 10y ago>John Steele Pleads Guilty, Admits Entire Scheme John Steele admitted entire Scheme? I though that was Guy Steele's doing...