Jonathan Lee Riches | |
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Born | |
Known for | Litigiousness |
Jonathan Lee Riches is a convicted fraudster known for the many lawsuits he has filed in various United States district courts. [1] Riches was incarcerated at Federal Medical Center, Lexington, Kentucky, for wire fraud under the terms of a plea bargain. His release date was April 30, 2012. [2] He was arrested for violating his federal probation in December 2012, when he left the Eastern District of the state of Pennsylvania without permission. He allegedly drove to Connecticut and impersonated the uncle of Adam Lanza, the shooter in the Sandy Hook Elementary School incident. [3]
Since January 8, 2006, he has filed over 2600 [4] lawsuits in federal district courts across the country, [5] some of which have received considerable press attention. [6] Among the more famous defendants of his lawsuits are New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, [7] former President of the United States George W. Bush, [8] former Attorney General of the United States Janet Reno, [9] Martha Stewart, [10] NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon, [11] former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, [12] [13] entrepreneur Steve Jobs, [14] celebrity blogger Perez Hilton, [15] Somali pirates, [16] and pop star Britney Spears. [17] He also sued the late Benazir Bhutto, Pervez Musharraf, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service on November 7, 2007, to prevent him from being deported to Pakistan and tortured upon his release from prison in March 2012. [18] There is no known evidence of any attempt to deport Riches.
On April 9, 2008, Riches filed a request for a temporary restraining order in a US District Court against Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two, developer Rockstar Games, FCI Williamsburg, and Grand Theft Auto itself, claiming that the defendants "put me in prison." The inmate stated, "Defendants contributed to Plaintiff committing identity theft. Defendant's games show sex, drugs and violence which offends me." Riches continued, "Defendants put me in prison. I face imminent danger from violent inmates who played Grand Theft Auto who will knock me out and take my gold Jesus cross." [19]
Riches attempted to intervene as a plaintiff in the Madoff investment scandal, claiming that he "met Bernard Madoff on eharmony.com in 2001" and taught Madoff identity theft skills. [20]
In May 2009, Riches filed for an injunction against the Guinness Book of World Records, seeking to stop them from listing him as "the most litigious individual in history". [21] Guinness spokeswoman Sara Wilcox told The Huffington Post that there was no such listing, and no plan to create one. "'Most litigious man' is not something Guinness World Records has ever monitored as a record category," she said. The action—like the vast majority of Riches's filings—was dismissed. [3]
Some of Riches's defendants are not even persons subject to suit. These include "Adolf Hitler's National Socialist Party" and the "13 tribes of Israel." [22] One lawsuit, in which George W. Bush was the first-named defendant, also includes another 790 defendants that cover 57 pages. They include Plato, Nostradamus, Che Guevara, James Hoffa, "Various Buddhist Monks," all survivors of the Holocaust, the Lincoln Memorial, the Eiffel Tower, the USS Cole, the book Mein Kampf , the Garden of Eden, the Roman Empire, the Appalachian Trail, Plymouth Rock, the Holy Grail, Nordic gods, the dwarf planet Pluto, and the entire Three Mile Island accident. [23]
A number of Riches's lawsuits have been dismissed as being "frivolous, malicious" or for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. [12] Willis Hunt, the U.S. District Court Judge who dismissed Riches's suit against Vick as "farcical," opined that his lawsuits were clearly self-promotional. As per 28 U.S. Code § 1915(g), he is barred from proceeding in forma pauperis. [24]
In July 2018, Riches was indicted by a federal grand jury in Arizona. He is charged with making false statements and other frauds after an attempt to file a lawsuit against Gabby Giffords while posing as Jared Lee Loughner. [25]
A collection of Riches's lawsuits was published on April Fools' Day of 2016. [26]
In November 2018, Riches self-published Nothing is Written in Stone: A Jonathan Lee Riches Companion, which contains a selection of his lawsuits as well as an autobiography. [27]
Frivolous litigation is the use of legal processes with apparent disregard for the merit of one's own arguments. It includes presenting an argument with reason to know that it would certainly fail, or acting without a basic level of diligence in researching the relevant law and facts. That an argument was lost does not imply the argument was frivolous; a party may present an argument with a low chance of success, so long as it proceeds from applicable law.
Vexatious litigation is legal action which is brought solely to harass or subdue an adversary. It may take the form of a primary frivolous lawsuit or may be the repetitive, burdensome, and unwarranted filing of meritless motions in a matter which is otherwise a meritorious cause of action. Filing vexatious litigation is considered an abuse of the judicial process and may result in sanctions against the offender.
The United States Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility, commonly known as ADX Florence or the Florence Supermax, is an American federal prison in Fremont County to the south of Florence, Colorado, operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice. ADX Florence, constructed in 1994 and opened one year later, is classed as a supermax or "control unit" prison, that provides a higher, more controlled level of custody than a regular maximum security prison. ADX Florence forms part of the Federal Correctional Complex, Florence, which is situated on 49 acres of land and houses different facilities with varying degrees of security, including the adjacent United States Penitentiary, Florence High.
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Participants in the Madoff investment scandal included employees of Bernard Madoff's investment firm with specific knowledge of the Ponzi scheme, a three-person accounting firm that assembled his reports, and a network of feeder funds that invested their clients' money with Madoff while collecting significant fees. Madoff avoided most direct financial scrutiny by accepting investments only through these feeder funds, while obtaining false auditing statements for his firm. The liquidation trustee of Madoff's firm has implicated managers of the feeder funds for ignoring signs of Madoff's deception.
The recovery of funds from the Madoff investment scandal has been underway since the scandal broke in December 2008. That month, recovery trustee Irving Picard received funds from the Bank of New York account where Bernard Madoff held new investments into his Ponzi scheme. As it has been concluded that no legitimate investments were made on the investors' behalf for at least the last 12 years of operation, recovery has proceeded on a "money in/money out" basis. Investors are entitled to receive no more than the nominal cash amounts that they paid in and did not subsequently withdraw, without regard to inflation, interest, opportunity cost or the false statements that Madoff provided them. Those statements combined to a total balance of approximately $64 billion, while the admitted claims amount to $19.5 billion. As of March 2024, the trustee had recovered $14.7 billion toward these claims through legal action against Madoff associates, feeder funds and beneficiaries of the scheme, and had made fifteen distributions to investors. Action by the Department of Justice has recovered an additional $4 billion.
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A search on PACER, the U.S. government website for court documents, found more than 2,600 lawsuits filed by Riches and 49 filed by his alias, "Gino Romano."