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MARION DIAMOND We own an online document preparation business which helps the pro se litigant (http://www.docupro.net). We currently have three federal lawsuits against our company in which we are being accused of violating an agreed order to not type pro se bankruptcy petitions for Maryland debtors. We signed an agreed order for no other reason last year than to stop the harassment of not only us, but every person who ever worked for us, and we were unable to conduct our business or afford the legal fees needed to defend ourselves. Last year, our company became a target of the bankruptcy court in Boston, and they brought a sham lawsuit against our company for the sole purpose of putting us out of business. The discovery process, along with the stress, nearly caused me a nervous breakdown and the collapse of our business which we had built for the past ten years. This original lawsuit was brought against our company because a former customer (Kristen Crociati) lied about her property affairs; when she got caught at her 341(A) Meeting by the sitting Trustee, Stephen Shamban, she said we told her not to list her house. Stephen Shamban has an office up in Braintree, MA, and another Docupro store owned once had an office nearby his office. Docupro used to have up to 40 offices throughout Maryland, presenting the pro se litigant. We were so angry that this customer lied to us on her questionnaire (which we rely on for typing her information onto the proper forms) that we filed a lawsuit against this customer in the Superior Court in our County. Her lie got us sued and ruined our reputation up at the bankruptcy court. Her new bankruptcy attorney, who is also a trustee in the same court in which she filed her original bankruptcy, removed our lawsuit up to the bankruptcy court where they had no jurisdiction. This attorney, William Billinham, not only is a trustee in the bankruptcy court but once had a law office right across the street from our Pembroke, MA office and moved, we believe, because he could not compete with the prices we charged the public. I personally did some investigative work on this former customer, and found she had hidden other properties as well and thought if I proved she lied about other property then they would drop the lawsuit against our company. I sent ample proof that this customer not only lied to us but was continuing to lie to the U.S. Trustee's office while being questioned. It made no difference what we showed them. It became very clear that this lawsuit was being used as the smoking gun to put our company out of business. To this day, 1-1/2 years after the customer filed bankruptcy, she still has not received a discharge because they know if they discharge it they will be caught in a fraud by us. In the meantime, the credit card companies got screwed out of getting paid when this debtor clearly had equity enough in her home to pay them and we got sued. She is being protected by the trustee's office for helping them put us out of business. In the meantime, we lost our ability to type for other pro se litigants in Maryland. We agreed to this because we had an online business and felt if we gave up fighting a lawsuit, we were not ever going to win; we could just continue typing for all the other states as we were already doing. We made it clear when we signed the agreed order that it did not include any other state. Not two months later, the Trustee's office started another investigation of our company and filed three new lawsuits against us for violating the agreed order. All we did was refer customers to a petition preparer in Rhode Island who received all of the money from the pro se debtors. They are now trying to find our company over $24,000 for referring less than $1,100 of business to the Rhode Island preparer and put us out of business nationwide. My husband, who has high blood pressure and is nearly 60 years old, passed out and put his head through a wall in our house when we received these latest lawsuits. Trustee's offices around the country have brought over 300 lawsuits against bankruptcy petition preparers like ourselves and we are being punished severely for helping the public save money on attorneys' fees. Both my husband and myself are suffering from depression because of all of this. We feel we will be unable to make a living and we may lose everything we worked so hard for. These lawsuits are brought under the disguise of "protecting the public" but the public has never brought one complaint against our company. Instead, the trustees in the bankruptcy courts (who are local bankruptcy lawyers when not sitting in as trustees) solicit affidavits from our unsuspecting customers and they harass the customer at home and at their place of work until our pro se customer signs an affidavit designed by the US Trustee's office to fit a lawsuit they have already planned. This year we have been hit with three federal lawsuits which caused even our own attorney to quit our case because the U.S. Trustee's office harassed him daily with paperwork and phone calls. They papered him to the max and he said he could not longer represent us without us paying at least three thousand dollars a month to him. WORKING TOGETHER TO ATTAIN FAIRNESS | ||
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