In a most unusual and corrup case, I was charged and eventually convicted of 19 counts of simulating the legal process, a Florida statute created in 2014. This was a highly political case that was very personal to the judges in the 20th Judicial Ciruit for Lee County, Florida, some of whom were the alleged victims. The State and judges went through great lengths to fabricate a case by misuing the statutes and maliciously prosecting me.
The trial judges, Margaret Steinbeck and George Richards violated my consitutionally-protected rights and denied me a fair trial in order to manipulate the outcome to their liking. Both judges acted more like co-proscutors for the State than impartial judges, allowing the prosecution to violate court orders and discovery rules. Due to the involvement of the judges, all local attorneys refused to represent me. Unable to afford a good out-of-town attorney, the Court appointed me an attorney from their imaginery “wheel”, and his purpose was to get me to plead guilty or ensure that I lost trial. I tried to have the court-appointed counsel replaced for irreconcilable differences, and for a conflict of interest due to his affiliation with the co-defendant’s attorney, but the court insisted on this specific attorney having the assignment. When my attorney and the prosecutor attempted to extort me through email by threatening to add more charges and arrest my wife if I refused the State’s guilty plea, I felt I had no choice except to represent myself. Still, the court insisted on forcing their attorney as my standby counsel.
My bond was set at 20 times higher than the county’s standard bond schedule, and 200 times higher than a similar case in another Florida county with the same charges. The goal was clear: keep me stuck in jail without the resources to fight these bogus charges from the outside world. Judge George Richards even entered multiple orders denying me access to a law libary or legal resources while in custody.
So, what did I do to upset the powers that be in Lee County so badly? According to the State I gave bad advice to a man named Joel Soucy, and somehow controlled his actions. Mr. Soucy, who is from Massachusetts, owned some rental properties in Fort Myers, Florida. Through his own research he determined that he was the victim of mortgage fraud and believed that the Lee County Court System assisted his mortgage lenders with fraudulent foreclosure using what Judge Joseph Fuller (an alleged victim and one of the judges in Soucy’s foreclosure cases) refers to as the “notrious rocket docket”. This rocket docket was a way for the banks to obtain speedy foreclosure judgments from the court in favor of the banks.
Soucy used a private administrative processes taught by his paid advisor, Winston shrout, a well-known internet guru. With document templates created by Mr. Shrout, Soucy filed a private claim against those he felt damaged him. He also used a private arbitration organization specializing in alternative dispute resolution, and supported by Article 9 of United States Code, the Federal Arbitration Act. The State has erroneously labeled this oganization as a “fake court” and named me as the founder based on my work as a computer consultant. This is not true and the State has falsely labeled these “private processes” as “legal processes” for the purposes of their malicious prosecution. They charged me as a principal and alleged that I gave Joel Soucy bad advice, causing him to do these processes. For his actions Mr. Soucy received probation and I was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Multiple local attorneys (including an alleged victim) have issued legal opinions saying the State has no juridiction of these processes, proving they abused their power and misused the statute. There is something very wrong here!
After completing his private processes Joel Soucy admittedly received advice from a woman named Beverly Grimes, and proposed federal arrest warrants against Lee County officials. These proposed documents were never recorded in any federal or state court, and once again the State has no jurisdiction over them. That didn’t stop them from sentencing me to 5 years for each of these 8 documents. For the single action of Joel Soucy sending an email, the state has wrongly charged me 8 times. They manufactured 19 charges in total from 3 of Soucy’s actions, blatantly violating the double jeopardy clause to give me a ridiculous prison sentence. This corruption is beyond mailicious.
With no physical or financial damages to the alleged victims, and no illegitimate financial gains, why did the State and judges go through all of this? To cater to their powerful egos and punish me for fighting back. I filed a federal civil rights case against the State investigators for violating my rights in the unlawful search of my home, and this was part of the retaliation for me attempting to expose this unbelievable corruption. After witnessing the unfair treatment during my trial, my court-appointed counsel has come to my defense to help me seek a fair trial. As a result he has been shunned and treated as an outcast by members of the court.
The record doesn’t lie, and I may have to spend the rest of my life seeking justice and fighting for my freedom. Handwritten documents by Joel Soucy and many emails important to my defense were blocked by Judge Richards, while he allowed unauthenticated emails from the State to be used against me. Transcripts from the trial and numerous motion hearings will expose the Court’s fraud and personal agenda in this most unfair case. The truth will eventually come out, it always does.
