Prenda's Former Porn Client Comes Forward About His Fears Of Working With Prenda

Legal Issues

from the look-at-that dept

Claire Suddath, writing for Bloomberg Businessweek, has written up a pretty comprehensive article about John Steele, Paul Hansmeier and Prenda Law. If, for some reason, you haven’t been following this story through all the blog posts, Suddath’s article is a pretty good way to catch up on the basics. There are a lot of little things left out, but most of the key points are mentioned. There is one interesting new bit of info in there, which is that Suddath spoke to one of Steele and Hansmeier’s earliest porn clients (back before they switched to only suing on behalf of shell companies controlled by people associated with Steele and Hansmeier), Paul Pilcher of Hard Drive Productions. Pilcher explains that his deal with Steele and Hansmeier was a 50/50 split on any revenue gained, and that Steele and Hansmeier took care of everything, such that he had no idea about the various lawsuits. He just cashed the checks.

The money started rolling in. “They would send me a check for, let’s say, $35,000, for a month,” Pilcher says. “They’d be pounding their chest and jumping up and down, thinking they were the greatest in the world.” Over a year and a half, Steele and Hansmeier filed a total of 65 suits on behalf of Hard Drive against 4,760 people, according to court documents. Pilcher earned just under $200,000, he says, but he never knew what was happening with the suits, how many there were, or who exactly his company was suing. “Getting information out of [Steele and Hansmeier] was honestly kind of painful,” he says. “They claimed they didn’t want me to have records of specific things in case something happened.”

Now that’s interesting. Have you ever heard of lawyers telling their own clients that they don’t want the client to have records of lawsuits filed by that client “in case something happened”? Wow. Pilcher accepted this, even after courts started ruling against Prenda.

In early 2012, Hard Drive was sued twice for harassing plaintiffs to settle claims. Prenda took care of everything—Pilcher didn’t even have to show up in court—but he started to wonder what his lawyers were up to. “I got very uncomfortable feelings from them,” he says. “But I figured, Well, if there are judges involved, and they’re ruling for us, and money is coming in, then it must be OK.”

Now, Pilcher seems to realize that getting in bed with Steele and Hansmeier was a big mistake, and recognizes that lawyers may be gunning for him next.

The prospect of thousands of other people doing the same, or worse, terrifies Pilcher, although his Hard Drive Productions stopped working with Prenda last fall. “If these guys fold, I don’t know if I’ll have people coming out of the woodwork to sue or countersue,” he says. “I’m obviously legally exposed.”

Seems like an important lesson for other content providers thinking of going into the trolling game. It can come back to bite you. In the meantime, I wonder if Judge Wright or others might be interested in hearing some details from Pilcher about his experiences working with Steele and Hansmeier.

Filed Under: john steele, paul duffy, paul hansmeier, paul pilcher
Companies: hard drive productions, prenda, prenda law