EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW —

Paul Hansmeier finally cops to being a porn troll, after a years-long saga

Hansmeier's lawyer calls plea deal a "fair resolution."

CYRUS FARIVAR - 8/18/2018, 8:30 AM

Paul Hansmeier, the Minnesota lawyer who was head of the porn trolling operation known as Prenda Law, has finally pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering charges.

As Ars previously reported, co-defendant and fellow attorney John Steele pled guilty in March 2017 to federal fraud and money laundering charges. Over the course of several years, Steele said he and a co-defendant, Hansmeier, made millions with "sham entities" that threatened Internet users with copyright lawsuits.

The two now-disbarred lawyers also worked with a third, now-deceased lawyer, Paul Duffy, in this operation that Illinois authorities dubbed extortion. ... Basically, the group orchestrated their own pornographic film, seeded it on BitTorrent websites, and then targeted users who downloaded it—threatening them with lawsuits if they didn’t pay $3,000 to avoid embarrassment in court. It was a lucrative business: the trio made over $3 million, according to the plea deal.

Hansmeier's guilty plea brings the seemingly neverending tale of Prenda Law to a close, mostly. However, Hansmeier’s attorney, Manny Atwal, suggested that there would be further appeals to come. ... "The plea agreement allows Mr. Hansmeier to appeal the denial of his pretrial motion to dismiss the indictment," the federal defender said in court Friday, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. "I think we came to a fair resolution and will see what happens at sentencing and the 8th circuit."

CYRUS FARIVAR
Cyrus is a Senior Tech Policy Reporter at Ars Technica, and is also a radio producer and author. His latest book, Habeas Data, about the legal cases over the last 50 years that have had an outsized impact on surveillance and privacy law in America, is out now from Melville House. He is based in Oakland, California.
EMAIL cyrus.farivar@arstechnica.com // TWITTER @cfarivar

Minneapolis lawyer pleads guilty to federal fraud, money laundering charges in porn troll scheme

In an elaborate plan, he enticed people to download movies illegally and then sued.

By Dan Browning Star Tribune AUGUST 17, 2018 — 8:04PM

Paul Hansmeier, a Minneapolis lawyer who pioneered a lucrative scheme suing thousands of people for copyright violations after they downloaded pornography that he and a partner had planted on an internet file-sharing server, pleaded guilty Friday to federal fraud and money laundering conspiracy charges.

Hansmeier, who is suspended from practicing law, had been scheduled for trial Sept. 5 in Minneapolis. His plea agreement allows him to withdraw the plea if he is successful in appealing the district court’s denial of his motion to dismiss the case.

“I think we came to a fair resolution and will see what happens at sentencing and the Eighth Circuit,” said Manny Atwal, the federal defender representing Hansmeier.

According to the plea agreement, Hansmeier admitted that he and John Steele formed a law firm known as Steele Hansmeier in September 2010 and began representing individuals and entities that owned copyrights to pornographic movies. They monitored websites and obtained the internet addresses of individuals who downloaded or tried to download the movies, then filed copyright infringement lawsuits against those “John Doe” individuals to find out their identities so they could sue them personally.
....

dbrowning@startribune.com 612-673-4493 @BrowningStrib