Fraud alert: Tens of thousands of anti-piracy settlements potentially illegal

Having forced tens of thousands of P2P users to pay up for costly pre-settlement notices, a number of European law offices and and anti-piracy companies suddenly find themselves on the other side of the gun: The German scene news site gulli.com asked local authorities to start criminal investigations against a well-known anti-piracy law office, and even mainstream news organizations like the Financial Times are starting to take notice. The issue at heart could not only derail current anti-piracy campaigns, but potentially even lead to disbarment of the lawyers involved with these cases. Here's what happened: Two weeks ago, an internal fax with details about the business of Germany's anti-piracy company Digiprotect turned up on Wikileaks.org. The document was supposedly sent by German lawyer Udo Kornmeier, who has been assisting Digiprotect in hunting down thousands of German P2P users, to the U.K.-based law office Davenport Lyons, which has been doing the same thing in the U.K. with evidence provided by Logistep. Both Kornmeier and Digiprotect have publicly declined to comment on the authenticity of the document.

Source: http://www.p2p-blog.com/item-1216.html