Court Watch #71: Son of a Trademark Sinner
Country Singer Jelly Roll is Sued for Being Jelly Roll. Plus: K-Pop Investigates YouTuber, Shohei Ohtani’s missing millions, and so many bombs but so few lessons learned.
Welcome to Court Watch #71. Life is all about learning lessons and growing from the experience. Alas, this was a week of hard lessons learned for purported criminals in the federal criminal justice system. In this week’s dockets, we learned that…If you’re going to steal a law enforcement car, make sure to check the back seat for a dog. If you’re going to rob a bunch of postal offices, do so without your court-mandated GPS ankle bracelet. You shouldn’t hold up a convenience store with a very distinct facemask. Sometimes it’s not prudent to quote Spaghetti Westerns when threatening a federal officer. It’s never a good idea to tell the FBI that you’re happy if their agents are killed in the line of duty. If you’re gonna bomb an attorney general’s office on behalf of anarchist beliefs, make sure not to have a bumper sticker saying as much. And finally, sometimes bad luck finds you, so don’t put yourself in a position to try to murder someone because you just might get the same cop who arrested you in the past who will easily pick you out of a lineup.
Lessons. They are a powerful thing. So let’s starting learning…about what we found in the dockets this week:
One More For Good Measure: DOJ put too many bomb charges on a guy who is alleged to have mailed a bomb to DOJ.
Sigh: A Cornell student pleaded guilty to threatening to murder Jewish students, citing the terrorist attack on October 7th as the justification.
Save Me: The country singer and rapper, Jelly Roll, was sued for trademark infringement over the use of the word Jelly Roll by a Pennsylvania man who is a member of a wedding band also named Jelly Roll. Don’t worry, we got you covered if you were ever curious what a music trademark registration form looks like for Jelly Roll. And yes, of course, we went deep in the paint on this one. The Jelly Roll wedding band promo kindof slaps. But arguably so does the acoustic version of Sunday Morning. So we’re torn on this. Lawyers for both Jelly Roll(s) did not respond to a request for comment.
Too Real Housewife: A divorce proceeding helped uncover a multi-million dollar tax evasion case in New Jersey.
Call From Inside The House: The New York Court System is being sued by one of its court officers who was injured chasing a fleeing suspect.
Half Eaten: A man who firebombed an anti-abortion office in Wisconsin was sentenced to more than seven years in jail. Law enforcement were able to identify him by getting discarded food he threw in the trash and cross referencing the DNA.
You’re Out: Shohei Ohtani’s former interpreter was charged with stealing more than 16 million from the baseball superstar.
Interesting: The feds are investigating a man living in Veterans Medical Center housing in California who allegedly is walking around with an AR-15.
Bad Odds: An NYPD detective was able to identify a man accused of shooting people in a Bronx convenience store because, in the words of his affidavit, “I am familiar with [the shooter’s] appearance, having arrested him several years ago…”
Quick and Dead: An Arizona man was charged with threatening a U.S. Forest law enforcement officer. According to the complaint, the man “claimed not to have "murderous intent," but when I explained that he just described intent to murder me, he replied something to the effect of "You gotta understand how I'm feeling right now ... I wish it was like, just, self-defense. That's what I could have said all along, ya know." I asked [the man] if he could go back in time, would he like to shoot me and then call it self-defense. [the man] said no, because he is too slow, elaborating by saying "there is the quick and the dead. I am good as dead." [the man] clarified that mentally, that is where he was at though.”
Colorful: A rainbow facemask helped break the case of a robbery in Virginia.
Classic: The co-founder of a Christian health care ministry pleaded guilty to stealing 8 million dollars.
Read: An Idaho man was arrested for material support to ISIS, though we were most interested in a seemingly throwaway paragraph of the complaint that notes a cryptocurrency ISIS fundraising operation run out of Gaza.
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Hard Pass: A Pennsylvania man was indicted for threatening FBI agents, purportedly telling them if “an agent disappeared, it was probably him.”
Oy: Members of the Orthodox Jewish community in New York are suing Washingtonville, arguing they were prevented from building multi-unit housing because of their faith.
Fire Away: A Hawaiian electric company was sued. The complaint argued that they were not properly prepared for the wildfires that ravaged the area.
Buried Lede: Most news organizations covered the number of COVID prosecutions released this week by DOJ, but they may have missed the more important point in the report. The head of DOJ’s COVID Taskforce says “the government lacks sufficient resources to prosecute fraudsters who didn’t just commit pandemic fraud, but targeted the elderly through romance fraud schemes, U.S. companies through business email compromise (BEC) schemes, and government programs through unemployment insurance fraud.”
Our Favorite: We just absolutely adore jury notes.
Stay Home, Stay Safe: The Justice Department isn’t happy about the lack of teleworking options for a science teacher in Arkansas.
Come On, Man: Law enforcement was able to crack the case of burglaries at Post Offices by tracking the GPS ankle bracelet the defendant had on from a previous conviction.
Sleep Easy: DOJ is on the case of unsafe CPAP machines.
Eyes On: The Heritage Foundation is fishing for records related to SEC lawyers who got crosswise with a federal judge in a digital licensing case.
Interesting: A sex trafficking victim is suing a Florida motel alleging that the company should have known that prostitution was occuring on the premise and that their employees were complicit in a variety of ways.
Ugh: A former Human Resource employee at Tesla is suing the company alleging that she was unduly fired because of a “coffee chat” event that allegedly involved a discussion where one of the participants relayed a time she was told by a coworker that “us whites have to stick together when Mexicans are coming for our jobs.” The plaintiff, who is black, disputes that she then asked one of the participants if she was white. She was terminated four days before her stocks vested.
So Many Sighs In This Newsletter: A Maine man was indicted for threatening on YouTube to murder immigrants
That Escalated Quickly: An owner of a Florida food truck that made national news because it was the target of an antisemitic vandalism was charged with cyberstalking his business partner with a series of increasingly violent and racist emails.
Stolen: A North Carolina man is accused of using multiple stolen credit cards to buy gun parts online.
Smog: California is a lot more polluted than it thought.
Dog-Gone-It: A California man was indicted for stealing a Customs and Border Protection vehicle with a K9 dog inside of it. According to the charging documents, “When asked how he was in possession of the BP Vehicle, he stated “I went there, and they gave me this car.” Also, for good measure, two years ago he stole a car from the Naval Special Warfare Recon squad.
Sticky: A man accused of bombing the Alabama Attorney General’s office was identified because of his Antifa stickers on his car.
Oh: The K-Pop group, NewJeans is trying to figure out the identity of a YouTube poster who falsely called one of their singers the “eldest daughter of a Vietnamese farmer.” They need the true identity of the YouTuber so they can move forward with defamation charges in South Korea. John Yoo of the New York Times had the scoop, with an assist from us.
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Then the Jellyroll wedding band should be sued by the estate of Jelly Roll Morton.