MINNEAPOLIS — The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals filed last week a decision upholding the verdict and sentencing in the fraud case against Prenda Law’s Paul Hansmeier.
Hansmeier was sentenced in July 2019 to 14 years in prison for fraud. His partner John Steele was sentenced the following month to 60 months. They were ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $1,541,527.37. The defendants, according to court documents obtained approximately $6 million from fraudulent copyright lawsuits, of which they acknowledged “more than $3 million.”
As XBIZ has reported, Hansmeier, along with Prenda partners Steele and Paul Duffy, “created a series of fake entities through which they obtained copyrights to pornographic movies, some of which they [also] 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.”
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 the sentences in 2019, after an initial investigation conducted by the FBI and IRS-Criminal Investigations.
Steele pleaded guilty in March, 2017.
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision filed last week granted Hansmeier the right to continue appealing the judgement against him.