Washington Defense Attorney alleges in Declaration that at least one expert for Plaintiffs in copyright BitTorrent cases is fake

[TimeOmnivore]

Right, so basically, J. Christopher Lynch, a copyright defense attorney from Washington, has submitted a Declaration to the US District Court for the Western District of Washington, in which he alleges, under penalty of perjury, that at least one expert who has been called upon by plaintiffs in a variety of copyright file-sharing BitTorrent cases is fictitious. This person's name is Darren M. Griffin. Griffin is claimed to be someone with a relation to "Crystal Bay Corporation" in South Dakota "in its technical department", using this position to have obtained Subpoenas in hundreds of cases (included several in the district this was filed in).

 

Lynch has provided to the court several pieces of evidence to support his claim that Giffin is not real. To sum it up (as there's a lot of it), there is no technical department for Crystal Bay Corporation, and the address given for that location is a mailbox center. No one, including Giffin, has ever worked there. No one has claimed to have met or spoken to Darren M. Giffin, and there are no employment records, tax records, payment records, immigration records, no address, no family members, no computer science classmates (Griffin claimed to have a CS degree), no photographs, no correspondence, no voicemails, and no emails to be found involving "Darren M. Griffin". Lynch also claims to be suspicious that "Peter Kurtz", the so-called president of Crystal Bay Corporation, is also fictitious, but does not directly claim this, going on to say that Kurtz is, at the very least, not the president of Cyrstal Bay Corporation. He also claims that declarations made by Messrs Lowe, Perino, and Arheidt have glaring inconsistencies and should also be looked at (though he's not claiming these 3 aren't real people, just that there's some funny business going on).

 

From Lynch's declaration:

Quote

"Darren M. Griffin" has filed over 500 declarations in United States District Courts, including over 50 declarations filed in this district, all claiming to be employed by or a consultant to Crystal Bay Corporation.

 

You can see more detailed information about this, here, at 33:06:

 

Here is Lynch's conclusion, which he stated at the end of his declaration:

Quote

I am confident that "Darren M. Griffin" is fictitious. I am confident that "Crystal Bay Corporation" of South Dakota did not employ investigators. I am confident that the declarations of Mr. Lowe, Mr. Perino, and Mr. Arheidt are inconsistent with records of the United States District Court, as I detail here. I would be willing to provide more information to the Court as may be requested.

 

I declare under penalty of perjury of the laws of the United States that the foregoing is true and correct.

1

 

There's a lot more info to be found if you're interested (such as fake signatures), and I highly recommend watching the video by Leonard French, which I linked above, in full, in which he goes over Lynch's entire declaration.

 

But, yeah, it will be very interesting to see what happens from here on in - according to Leonard French, if a judge confirms these allegations, it would likely mean additional investigation, possibly by the state bar or a criminal prosecutor. From there, who knows, but I hope if this is true (and it looks like it is) that all cases in which Griffin was a key component of get looked at again and any future dealings with businesses or plaintiffs that involve Giffin's name get thrown out entirely and those trying to subvert the Courts get punished to the fullest extent of the law.

[Guest]

You must be really bored or hate bittorrent with your heart and soul to go through all the people and their backgrounds to discover that one of them is a phoney(fake).

J. Christopher Lynch=party pooper

[TimeOmnivore]

1 minute ago, Some Random Member said:

You must be really bored or hate bittorrent with your heart and soul to go through all the people and their backgrounds to discover that one of them is a phoney(fake).

1

He noticed inconsistencies in some cases he was working on and delved deeper. Also, from my understanding, he's a trademark/copyright/IP defense attorney - he defends the people accused of copyright theft (such as by them torrenting movies), so I'm not sure where you got the idea that he hates BitTorrent. Though he very well might, I'm just not sure how you arrived at that conclusion.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, TimeOmnivore said:

He noticed inconsistencies in some cases he was working on and delved deeper. Also, from my understanding, he's a trademark/copyright/IP defense attorney - he defends the people accused of copyright theft (such as by them torrenting movies), so I'm not sure where you got the idea that he hates BitTorrent. Though he very well might, I'm just not sure how you arrived at that conclusion.

Why else would you go through some companys people in the hopes that they are fake?

[TimeOmnivore]

1 minute ago, Some Random Member said:

Why else would you go through some companys people in the hopes that they are fake?

... I don't follow. He went through the trouble to make sure that the plaintiffs (who work for the copyright holders) in some of his cases weren't subverting the law after having noticed several inconsistencies with their stories. Turns out (allegedly) this particular group created a fake expert in order to get the Subpoenas necessary to sue thousands of individuals for breaching copyright. How does this indicate that Lynch hates BitTorrent?

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, TimeOmnivore said:

... I don't follow. He went through the trouble to make sure that the plaintiffs (who work for the copyright holders) in some of his cases weren't subverting the law after having noticed several inconsistencies with their stories. Turns out (allegedly) this particular group created a fake expert in order to get the Subpoenas necessary to sue thousands of individuals for breaching copyright. How does this indicate that Lynch hates BitTorrent?

As english isnt my first or second language, especially the law part of it. I understood that The person that is fake was someone who worked for bittorrent. Can you elaborate on what side he really is on, and what the deal is?

[TimeOmnivore]

Just now, Some Random Member said:

As english isnt my first or second language, especially the law part of it. I understood that The person that is fake was someone who worked for bittorrent. Can you elaborate on what side he really is on, and what the deal is?

The fake, "Darren M. Griffin", was basically the guy the copyright holders created out of nothing so they could obtain the information they needed to sue a lot of people for copyright infringement. Basically, he claimed to have years of experience working in IT, and told the Courts false information (since he doesn't exist) that allowed the copyright holders (think Paramount Studios, or Sony Entertainment, although not them specifically) to illegally obtain the information needed from ISPs to sue the people using torrents. Griffin was on the side of the copyright people suing everyone for infringement, who otherwise shouldn't have been able to do so.

[Revamp]

6 minutes ago, Some Random Member said:

As english isnt my first or second language, especially the law part of it. I understood that The person that is fake was someone who worked for bittorrent. Can you elaborate on what side he really is on, and what the deal is?

I am getting basically this company, used fake names claiming them to be investigators of sorts in order to get subpoenas that shouldn't have been approved due to lack of evidence/means. This means the clients Lynch is defending against copyright claims, could technically all be dropped if this is found true as they had no grounds to start the case anyways. If the cases are then dropped due to these fictitious "employees", the cases will likely be thrown out completely and unable to be brought back up against his clients in the future.

 

I sped-read through this so could be completely wrong. Someone correct me if I am, but that is how I took it.

[2FA]

12 minutes ago, TimeOmnivore said:

Griffin was on the side of the copyright people suing everyone for infringement, who otherwise shouldn't have been able to do so.

Not necessarily, it didn't say he was the only expert called upon so there could have been others as well.

[SJD]

These allegations are not new: Mr. Lynch has been collecting the evidence of wrongdoing for years. As for why this declaration was submitted now, see my Saturday's blog post (and the Griffin tag as well).