Andrew Crossley, the man behind the catastrophic and now defunct law firm ACS:Law, has been declared bankrupt.
Crossley, whose cynical anti-piracy activities left the reputations of himself, his clients and countless others in tatters, was dealt with by the High Court on May 20th.
Days earlier, Crossley – who had been admonished for allowing the details of around 6,000 Internet users to be leaked onto the Internet – had his £200,000 Information Commissioners fine reduced to just £800 because he pleaded poverty.
However, PC Pro caught up with him at his £700,000 home on May 25th, discovering a beautiful Bentley (a purchase previously revealed by leaked ACS:Law emails) sitting pretty in the driveway.
Crossley will face the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal later this year for his earlier behavior when carrying out so-called Speculative Invoicing in order to squeeze payments from alleged file-sharers.
Last week there was a directions hearing on the issue to prepare for the tribunal and unsurprisingly Crossley was trying to get everything done on the cheap and threw in some utterly brazen requests.
As reported by Will Gilmour, an expert on UK pay-up-or-else schemes, Crossley asked for the Solicitors Regulatory Authority to cover his costs in the upcoming tribunal, even though they are the body that sent him there.
Crossley said he was concerned that without being able to compete with the £85K the SRA has set aside for his prosecution, he’d suffer an “inequality of arms”. This, from a man who threatened to bring down the full weight of the law on anyone sharing *one* file online.
Furthermore, on the same cost-cutting grounds Crossley requested that all expert evidence be excluded from the hearing and even asked for an order to prevent the SRA making any further requests for disclosure of documents from him.
The response from the tribunal to Crossley was “NO” on all counts. Tune in during October to see what happens to him in the tribunal. We doubt it will be pretty.
