Paul Hansmeier, the “porn troll” lawyer who made millions by threatening people who downloaded porn from torrent sites with what prosecutors called “sham copyright infringement lawsuits,” will finally pay for his scheme—and attempts to avoid facing justice for his actions—after a federal judge in Minnesota slammed him with a 14-year prison sentence.
Prosecutors in April had asked for a 12-year term, as AVN.com reported at the time.
United States District Court Judge Joan Ericksen gave Hansmeier a perhaps backhanded compliment on his intelligence, calling him “smarter than all get out,” but then quickly admonished him for using that intelligence to illegally extract cash from unsuspecting people—to the tune of $6 million.
"It is almost incalculable how much your abuse of trust has harmed the administration of justice," Ericksen told Hansmeier before letting him know that he would be spending the next 14 years of his life behind bars, according to a report by The Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
Hansmeier and his law firm, Prenda Law, were not the only firm that made money by filing questionable copyright lawsuits against porn fans who download clips off the internet, counting on the victims’ sense of shame at viewing porn to extract cash “settlements.” But as Ars Technica noted, Hansmeier and his co-conspirators took the shady practice of “copyright trolling” to a new level—uploading the porn clips themselves in order to better track when and by whom they were downloaded.
Eventually, Hansmeier and Prenda began producing their own, original porn films, solely for the purpose of suing anyone who downloaded them.
Hansmeier’s partner in the scheme, lawyer John Steele, is scheduled for sentencing next month. But because Steele cooperated with investigators, he is expected to be hit with a lighter sentence.
Hansmeier, on the other hand, “blamed other lawyers who were hired to file lawsuits on his behalf, lied to the courts about his own involvement and ordered the destruction of evidence,” the Star-Tribune reported.
