When Curtis Richmond began filing pleadings in the ASD case, the Surf’s Up forum hailed him a hero. Prosecutors see things a different way.

A federal judge should not permit Richmond and three others to intervene in the AdSurfDaily forfeiture case because the pleadings “will cause either manifest injustice, unconscionable delay, or both,” federal prosecutors said late yesterday.

“Movants are but an unhappy few of the many thousands of victims of the fraud schemes
described in the complaint,” prosecutors said of Richmond and three other men who used Richmond’s pro se litigation blueprint.  “They seek to muscle aside their fellow sufferers, and cannot even pretend to be acting in the best interests of the other [ASD] victims.”

Prosecutors said the government is establishing a mechanism to provide refunds to ASD victims and that Richmond’s filings essentially create a small, special class of victims and could result in interminable delays for rank-and-file ASD members.

Absent in the prosecutors’ response to Richmond were direct references to assertions by Richmond and the others that the government had committed crimes. Some ASD members treated Richmond’s assertions as red meat for the masses, using them to feed dissent against the government and build support for ASD President Andy Bowdoin.

Prosecutors virtually ignored the assertions. Richmond was convicted of contempt of court in 2007 for threatening federal judges. He also was ordered by a federal judge to pay damages and costs to Utah public employees targeted by vexatious legal filings. The employees sued Richmond, a member of a sham Utah “Indian tribe,” under federal racketeering statutes.

The Four-Corner Offense?

It is NCAA “March Madness” basketball tournament time in the United States. Sometimes basketball teams try to slow down the game by employing the “four-corner offense,” situating players in a square and simply passing the ball around the square, rather than advancing it toward the basket.

Prosecutors may be anticipating a four-corner offense from Bowdoin and others to slow down the ASD case. They referenced Bowdoin’s own pro se pleadings in the case, but did not respond to them directly in their response to motions by Richmond and the others.

It would not be surprising if the government later takes the stand that Bowdoin’s filings are designed to delay justice. Pointedly, prosecutors described Bowdoin as “apparently proceeding pro se,” a possible sign of developments to come.

For scale, consider that the first filing in one of the Utah cases involving Richmond was entered on Aug. 11, 2004 — four and a half years ago. By Jan. 14, 2009,  the case file had grown to include 321 separate entries, not taking entries that don’t qualify as formal filings into account.

In January, Bowdoin, acting under advice of paid counsel, submitted to the August forfeiture of tens of millions of dollars seized from him. But Bowdoin now says he has changed his mind about submitting to the forfeiture, even though he also concedes ASD was operating illegally at the time of the seizure — exactly what the government contended all along.

The ASD case was nearly litigated to conclusion when pro se pleadings began to pour in. In their response to Richmond, prosecutors streamlined their pleadings — addressing Richmond’s filing and three similar ones by other pro se litigants in the same document, rather than producing an individual response to each of the four motions.

Individual motions might have required to court to act on four more documents, thus slowing down the case even more.

If history is a guide, though, ASD members should not be surprised if the case slows to a crawl, thus delaying refunds. In the past, Richmond has filed pro se document after pro se document — and then turned to appeals courts for remedies when denied by district courts.

He even has named judges defendants in his pleadings.