Prenda Law is an already defunct law firm known for extracting millions of dollars in settlements from alleged BitTorrent pirates. Now two of its principals have been arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit fraud, money laundering, and perjury. The most interesting fact is that The Pirate Bay plays a key role in the case.
Prenda Law is known for uploading its own torrents to The Pirate Bay, and then suing people over “pirated” downloads. Now the US Government accuses the firm’s principals of running a multimillion-dollar fraud and extortion scheme. According to the indictment, they earned millions of dollars in settlements from the file-sharers by deceiving US state and federal courts. It turned out that they used fake entities to obtain copyrights to porn movies (some of which they filmed themselves), which were later uploaded to file-sharing sites to lure people to download them.
The goal of the defendants was to obtain the identities of alleged file-sharers of their adult content, which was achieved by obtaining a subpoena to compel Internet service providers to disclose personal details of their customers. Once they had necessary information, they used it to extort the accused file-sharers.
Interestingly enough, The Pirate Bay played an important role in this case: its co-founders were heard as witnesses, and the tracker was also named as part of Prenda’s “honeypot scheme”. According to media reports, the two law firm principals have been arrested and charged with 18 counts in total.
At the moment, there are several similar outfits out there, which could be seriously concerned about the possible jail sentences the copyright trolls face.
Thanks to TorrentFreak for providing the source of the article.
A blackhat lawfirm?
