Friday, Aug 17, 2012    Text size: 

LAS VEGAS — Attorneys for defunct file-locker site Oron.com have asked a federal judge to unfreeze all of its assets after a $550,000 judgment was entered against the company.

The post-judgment motion to unfreeze assets was made because Oron counsel said it needs funds to plan an appeal of the judgment to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. 

As a result, adult gay studio Corbin Fisher, which sued Oron and later reached the $550,000 settlement agreement with the company over copyright infringement charges, has asked the court to dismiss Oron's motion to unfreeze its assets until the court receives an affidavit of its worldwide accounting of those assets.

Oron, which has yet to pay the $550,000 judgment and still faces court-ordered frozen bank accounts, has not complied with orders for a full accounting of its wealth, Corbin Fisher general counsel Marc Randazza told the court.

And Randazza said there's good reason that Oron hasn't complied with an itemization of its assets — "The defendant has nearly $3 million in gold stashed away," he said.

"Presumably, if the defendant needed money to run its business, it would liquidate or sell a portion of this bullion," said Randazza in an opposition to Oron's emergency motion for disbursement of additional funds. "It could presumably do the same to pay legal fees. However, if it did so, it would be spending funds that were not traceable, and as a practical matter, were not likely to be seized. 

"This is presumably why the funds are laundered in this manner: First the funds are collected through PayPal, then wired to Hong Kong, then converted to gold, and then they are stashed away, free from the eyes of judgment creditors and other authorities."

Randazza, in an attempt to quash Oron's motion, told the court that even if Oron wins an appeal discarding the $550,000 judgment and the case returns to litigation with the infringement not found to be willful, Oron will still face liability for more than $6 million in damages from Corbin Fisher's claims alone. He also said that another suit waged by Flava Works is on deck, with more following.

Randazza noted that Oron continues to generate money by running NovaFile.com, an identical business to Oron.com.

"The equitable relief of disgorgement of ill-gotten profits will be impossible to effect if Oron manages to sweep its illegal profits into bars of gold stashed across Eastern Europe, hidden bank accounts, or the many other crevices where their ill-gotten gains have been stashed," Randazza said. "Requiring Oron to account for all of its worldwide assets before withdrawing funds to pay  further attorneys fees is not merely a requirement set by this court, but it is also a necessary step to avoid their continued dissipation and concealment."

Randazza and Oron counsel Stevan Lieberman did not immediately respond to XBIZ for comments on the latest motions.