MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — Federal judge Joan Ericksen has sentenced Prenda Law’s John Steele today to 60 months in prison for fraud.
Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Erica H. MacDonald of the District of Minnesota announced Steele’s sentence today. The initial investigation was conducted by the FBI and IRS-Criminal Investigations.
Steele pleaded guilty on March 6, 2017. He was also ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $1,541,527.37. Steele and former partner Paul Hansmeier reportedly obtained approximately $3 million from fraudulent copyright lawsuits.
Hansmeier was sentenced to 14 years in prison last month.
As XBIZ has extensively reported, Florida attorney Steele, along with Prenda partners Hansmeier and Paul Duffy, “created a series of fake entities through which they obtained copyrights to pornographic movies, some of which they filmed themselves and then uploaded the films to file sharing websites to lure others to download them.”
The attorneys, according to our previous report “would then file fake copyright infringement lawsuits, concealing their own roles in the distribution of the films. Steele admitted to investigators he and Hansmeier would threaten the individuals involved in the fake lawsuits with financial penalties and public embarrassment if they didn't agree to pay a settlement fee.”
“While John Steele assumed an equal partnership in the settlement mill,” last month’s sentencing document for Hansmeier read, “Steele primarily handled the business side of operations — interacting with clients, organizing business entities, collecting payments, producing movies and paying bills. Steele was the brash frontman whose false bravado and half-truths drew the ire of defense attorneys and judges, but witnesses repeatedly identified Hansmeier as the Machiavellian presence behind the scenes directing the creation and dissemination of false statements to courts.”
“It is almost incalculable how much your abuse of trust has harmed the administration of justice,” Judge Ericksen said during Hansmeier’s sentencing
For more on John Steele's sentencing, visit the Department of Justice website.