Money laundering and forging documents are not good, I do not support that, I just read that in this article below. I actually forgot about the more devious parts of what they'd done, but I like that they went after stolen content distributors.
Prenda?s massive trolling take revealed: $1.9 million in 2012
As part of his argument showing his relative distance from the scheme, Gibbs has evidence showing Steele and Hansmeier's firm links to Prenda. That includes a spreadsheet showing Prenda's income from the "pirates" as being more than $1.9 million in 2012. Steele and Hansmeier collected about $1.3 million of that, according to Gibbs.
The spreadsheet, which was e-mailed to Gibbs in January of this year, has a section labeled "payment to old owners." Steele and Hansmeier were paid directly and also through a company they jointly owned called "Under the Bridge Consulting," according to Gibbs. He claims he was told in a telephone call that Under the Bridge is owned by Steele and Hansmeier. "The name 'Under the Bridge' presumably refers to a place where trolls congregate," notes Gibbs in a footnote.
The spreadsheet doesn't include payments that may have come from other Prenda accounts, "or settlements that may have bypassed Prenda completely."
Steele and Hansmeier have stated repeatedly they had no ownership stake in the Prenda enterprise. Steele even filed a bar complaint against Gibbs specifically stating "I never had an ownership interest in Prenda Law Inc.," and that he never had an ownership interest in Prenda shells like AF Holdings and Ingenuity 13. Gibbs titled the section of the motion introducing the financial evidence, "New Evidence of Lies and Fraud by Steele and Hansmeier."
A secret interest
And the $1.3 million they were paid directly isn't all, notes Gibbs.
Overall, Hansmeier received $645,821.29?$185,321.28 directly and $460,500.00 through Under the Bridge. Steele received $660,915.94, of which he got $200,415.94 directly and $460,500.00 via Under the Bridge.
Those sums don't include "tens of thousands of dollars in additional payments to or on behalf of Steele and Hansmeier for travel and entertainment, meals, credit card charges, and miscellaneous reimbursements, or payments to Steel?s wife, Kerry Eckenrode Steele," notes the motion. It also does not include payments totaling $37,069.56 to Prenda lawyer Paul Duffy or Duffy Law Group.
The spreadsheet doesn't show exactly how the money flowed into the accounts. It simply lists the money flowing in from the copyright settlements as coming from "pirates," not specifying which Prenda shell handled the money. The spreadsheet doesn't list the individual settlement sums collected by Prenda either, most of which were a few thousand dollars or less. The money transfers shown on the spreadsheet as coming from "pirates" are big lumps of money, in several cases $100,000 or more at a time.
"Steele and Hansmeier were the primary beneficiaries of settlement payments to Prenda Law, giving them a compelling, if secret, financial interest in all aspects of Prenda?s operations and litigation," concludes Gibbs.