One of the lawyers behind the Prenda Law copyright case has pleaded guilty to federal charges of fraud and money laundering. The lawyer has made $6 million filing lawsuits over porn, some of which he filmed.
The defendant and lawyer, John L. Steele, previously bragged about earning millions from suing people over illegal porn downloads, the Star Tribune reported. Federal prosecutors revealed that Steele and Paul Hansmeier, a Minneapolis attorney, created two fake businesses to acquire copyrights for the pornographic films, some of which they filmed themselves.
The materials were mostly posted on file-sharing websites. Steele and Hansmeier among other lawyers filed John Doe lawsuits against the downloaders and subpoenaed Internet service providers to identify defendants.
Steele and Hansmeier, along with lawyers who worked for them, reportedly collected more than $6 million in settlements, between April 2011 and December 2012. In his plea agreement, Steele wrote that he and Hansmeier "used extortionate tactics to garner quick settlements." The plea agreement states, "defendants dismissed the lawsuits rather than risk their scheme being unearthed" when defendants appeared as though they would not settle.
The guilty plea brings the long and bizarre saga of profiting from copyright lawsuits to a close. During the series of lawsuits, Steele came into conflict with his former housekeeper and even his own mother-in-law. It began getting more serious when U.S. District Judge Otis Wright sanctioned Prenda Law and the duo for having "defrauded the court" and later submitted their case to the FBI, according to Ars Technica.
The bizarreness continued in 2013 as the lawyers linked to Prenda Law began to file anti-hacking lawsuits in state courts. Prenda lawyers were accused of recruiting "sham" defendants to get ISP subscriber information, which Steele now admitted to.
The U.S. District Judge Joan Ericksen of the District of Minnesota will be sentencing Steele. His alleged co-conspirator, Hansmeier, was also arrested and charged at the same time as Steele although his case is yet to be resolved.
