Download the original attachment LYNCHED BY COURT ORDER HOW TO STEAL MILLIONS OF DOLLARS BY TURNING PUBLIC COURTROOMS INTO A PRIVATE PLAYGROUND Author: Mac Koch-Lebel In Essex County, Massachusetts, a group of lawyers supported by several state and federal judges, after having stolen over $800,000 using invalid court orders, is now ready to liquidate and distribute among themselves the rest of the estate of 87-year-old Mary Jane Chalupowski, still worth about $1,500,000. When a Lawsuit is a Crime Except for the affected few, almost no one in this country would ever believe that each year, millions of dollars change hands (are stolen to be exact) in staged litigation schemes devised with the sole purpose of generating fraudulent bills for alleged attorney’s fees. In the process of such schemes, various unsuspecting, law-obeying citizens are being pulled into a vortex of unnecessary litigation, disguised as legitimate court proceedings. The result is financial and emotional devastation, comparable only to lynching, if we think of lynching not as the sudden outburst of irrational group hatred, but as the “cool, calculating deliberation of intelligent people,” as defined by Ida Wells-Barnett in 1900. With violence and corruption widely accepted as an essential part of the American lifestyle and culture, this new, refined version of common robbery goes largely unpunished, as did lynching for decades. The instances of formal prosecution of predatory lawyers who use staged litigation schemes to make their living are few and far in between. In early 2003, the attorney general of California, alerted by politicians, filed a civil lawsuit against a group of shakedown lawyers who had been harassing local small businesses by fabricating abusive lawsuits with a sole purpose of ruining the businesses while generating extortionate attorney’s fees. In October 2003, three years after more than 60 lawyers and county employees were arrested on charges of bilking Florida’s Miami-Dade County out of millions of dollars through fraudulent personal injury lawsuits, the County filed a civil racketeering (RICO) lawsuit against the perpetrators found guilty in the criminal proceedings, in order to recoup over $15 million in losses suffered by the County as a result of the massive public corruption schemes. The headline-making cases involving staged litigation schemes in which their perpetrators go after assets belonging to businesses or local governments are rare. More typical victims of staged litigation schemes never make it to the media limelight, simply because there is nothing sensational about them. They are unsophisticated, middle-class working people, who, through effort and everyday prudence, have managed to accumulate some wealth, but have no power or connections; hence they are unlikely to put up the costly and risky fight necessary to stop, let alone expose, the schemes. The typical victims, vulnerable for one reason or another, targeted by the perpetrators of the staged litigation schemes, are being forced into overwhelming, confusing court proceedings through various tricks, false accusations, or through turning simple courts actions into complicated legal ordeals. Why would anybody intentionally fabricate complicated legal proceedings, and why would the courts allow it to happen? The reason is simple: money. Less than 10% of all practicing lawyers have an actual job with a guaranteed paycheck showing up at the end of every week or month. The vast majority of lawyers are “self-employed” which means that they are, in fact, unemployed until they find a client willing to give them money in exchange for some legal services, the extent of which may range from defending a traffic ticket