Attorney Kevin D. Padrick

Attorney Kevin Padrick

I am no stranger to defamation lawsuits for writings on a blog. I have been threatened multiple times for writing my opinions and the facts as I know them about various companies. I have even been wrongly sued, with a judge dismissing me from the case, but not until after substantial legal fees were incurred to defend my good name.

So when it comes to allegations of defamation launched against bloggers, I take the matters seriously. Crystal Cox bills herself as an “investigative journalist,” but has done a whole lot of things that don’t have anything to do with investigation or journalism.

You see, the story starts with Attorney Kevin D. Padrick, one of the founders of Obsidian Finance Group, LLC. Mr. Padrick was appointed as trustee in the bankruptcy case of Summit Accommodators Inc., a company that he eventually reported was a Ponzi scheme. He further reported that executives at Umpqua Bank knew what Summit was doing, but didn’t do anything to stop it.

Three principals of Summit Accommodators, Mark Neuman, Timothy Larkin, and Lane Lyons, were eventually indicted on charges of conspiracy to commit fraud, misusing over $44 million of customer money.  Brian Stevens, co-founder of Summit with Neuman,  pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to commit wire fraud and conspiring to launder money. I can only assume that these criminal charges were brought in large part thanks to the good work of Kevin Padrick.

Martindale Hubbell AV Rated attorney Kevin Padrick is one of the good guys, right? Not in the eyes of  Crystal Cox, so-called investigative blogger.

At some point Crystal Cox decided Kevin D. Patrick was one of the bad guys. And with that, she launched an internet campaign against him, accusing him of corruption, fraud, tax fraud, stealing money, money laundering, and more. She bought domain names featuring the names of Kevin and Obsidian, posting rants and cross-linking between multiple sites to move her rants up in search engine rankings. Crystal Cox essentially decimated Padrick in front of anyone who might Google his name.  This had its intended effect: Padrick’s business suffered. Kevin Padrick and Obsidian Finance sued Crystal Cox for defamation, alleging damage to his reputation and earnings.

It gets even better. Crystal Cox then attempted to extort Kevin D. Padrick and Obsidian Finance by offering to provide services to “protect online reputations”  for a fee of $2,500 per month. Translation: “Pay me to take down the defamatory material.”

The clear problem here is that I can’t find any proof behind Cox’s allegations against Padrick. But that doesn’t help Kevin D. Padrick when it comes to Google. The postings by Cox appear prominently, and her repeated allegations on multiple URLs might make it appear to an outsider that there is really a story here. What user of the internet is going to take the time to slog through Crystal’s many websites and incoherent rants to come to the conclusion that the sites were all created by the same person, who never proved any bad acts by Padrick? Probably no one.

Kevin Padrick and Obsidian Finance won their case against Crystal Cox, being awarded $2.5 million in damages.  Crystal Cox was found guilty of defamation by a jury for one particular posted about Kevin Padrick. (The rest of her writings were deemed by the judge to be nutting rantings that no sane person would ever accept as statements of fact.) In the course of the case, Cox was deemed to be not a journalist. Essentially, the “shield law” in Oregon didn’t apply to Crystal Cox because she didn’t work for a traditional news outlet, and was “just” a blogger. The thing is, whether a journalist or not, the defamation claim was clear cut to the jury. Chrystal Cox doesn’t need a new trial, and that’s exactly what the judge ruled, because regardless of the applicability of the shield law, the jury found that Cox said untruthful things about Padrick and Obsidian.

Crystal Cox is hell-bent on destroying people who don’t give in to her wishes. She has now gone after Marc Randazza, an attorney she begged to help her with an appeal in the Obsidian case, even going after Marc’s wife and three year old daughter. When things didn’t work out with Marc, Cyrstal went ahead and registered the domain name marcrandazza.com (along with several others) and told Marc she was just doing so to “control the search, and pr” on her case. He smelled a shakedown immediately.

This tells you what kind of woman we are dealing with: Crystal Cox attacked Marc’s innocent wife and three year old daughter.

It is important to stand up to people like Crystal Cox. Companies are frequently playing the part of the big bullies on the playground – – threatening and suing anyone who might criticize them – – and we need to stand up to them and protect our right to speak our opinions freely about them.

But we also need to stand up against those who pretend to be like us – – those of us who want to advance free speech and legitimately criticize the bad acts of bad actors – – but who are really NOT like us. People like Crystal Cox cannot and should not be allowed to lie about people like Kevin Padrick. Cox must be held accountable to keep the rest of us – – who are not defaming – – protected under the First Amendment.

Read more about investigative blogger Crystal Cox’s extortion attempts:

17 Comments

  1. […] Journalist” Crystal Cox’s Latest Target: An Enemy’s Three-Year-Old Daughter “Investigative Journalist” Crystal Cox Attacks Attorney Kevin D. Padrick  Share this:TwitterFacebookLike this:LikeBe the first to like this […]

  2. […] Satyricon is next to Popehat, shields to shoulders. Sequence, Inc. is part of the solution too, by exposing the attacks on Kevin Padrick, and shining a light on Cox’s widespread extortion schem…, so is Philly Law Blog, and before any of the law blogger community jumped on the bandwagon, Salty […]

  3. […] Crystal Cox – Investigative Blogger? No, More Like A Scammer and Extortionist A Blogger Not Like Us Judge rules, again, that blogger Crystal Cox is not a journalist. You know why? Because she ISN’T a journalist. How Crystal Cox Is Helping To Prove The Strength of the First Amendment Investigative Journalist Crystal Cox Attacks Kevin D. Padrick […]

  4. […] Satyricon is next to Popehat, shields to shoulders. Sequence, Inc. is part of the solution too, by exposing the attacks on Kevin Padrick, and shining a light on Cox’s widespread extortion scheme, so is Philly Law Blog, and before any of the law blogger community jumped on the bandwagon, Salty […]

  5. […] “Investigative Journalist” Crystal Cox Attacks Attorney Kevin D. Padrick […]

  6. […] “Investigative Journalist” Crystal Cox Attacks Attorney Kevin D. Padrick […]

  7. Crystal Cox – Trial Theory 04/01/2012 at 7:20 pm - Reply

    […] “Investigative Journalist” Crystal Cox attacks Attorney Kevin D. Padrick […]

  8. […] Investigative Journalist Crystal Cox Attacks Kevin D. Padrick […]

  9. […] At first, people were scared to write about Crystal Cox for fear of her doing the same to them. So I guess it’s too bad for Crystal Cox that there are people out there like Scott Greenfield and Mark Bennett, who aren’t exactly scared of dispensing the truth. Scott Greenfield recently broke the silence, and then the rest of the blogosphere followed. Marc Randazza wrote about what Cox did to his wife and 3 year old child. Popehat helped lead the charge to the truth. The New York Times and Forbes followed suit by writing the truth about Crystal Cox – that writing defamatory posts and then demanding money for “reputation management” to take it down is not protected speech. David Carr, a writer for the New York Times also wrote a piece about how Cox tried the scam on him. Blogger Kashmir Hill also wouldn’t be be silenced, and neither would the Salty Droid or our friends over at the Fraud Files blog. […]

  10. Fraud Files Blog 04/04/2012 at 10:35 am - Reply

    […] long enough and loud enough, someone will believe her.) Now the internet is fighting back, and shining a light on her shenanigans, and Crystal is none too happy about […]

  11. Fraud Files Blog 12/06/2012 at 8:01 am - Reply

    […] went after Marc Randazza after becoming angry with him over his potential representation of her in another case of extortion. The original case was noteworthy, not so much because it demonstrated Cox’s fondness for […]

  12. Fraud Files Blog 12/07/2012 at 6:00 am - Reply

    […] backstory has been covered here before. Crystal gained her nutty notoriety because of her attacks on Kevin Padrick and Obsidian Finance. In steps Marc Randazza, noted First Amendment lawyer, who considered representing Cox in that […]

  13. […] First Amendment lawyer Marc Randazza is amazing. He is truly a “First Amendment Badass.”  Last year, he had an unfortunate incident occur, which proves that no good deed goes unpunished. Marc Randazza briefly agreed to represent “investigative blogger” Crystal Cox in an appeal of the lawsuit against her for defamation of Kevin Padrick and Obsidian Finance. […]

  14. […] the case, Goodstein recounts the history of Cox being hit with a $2.5 million judgment for defaming Kevin Padrick and Obsidian Finance, and her generous offer of “reputation management services” to […]

  15. […] to understand how Cox went from making up baseless allegations of tax fraud and money laundering by Obsidian Finance and Kevin Padrick, all the way to suing about 65 largely unrelated parties for largely unrelated matters, which Cox […]

  16. […] this case involving Kevin Padrick and Obsidian Finance, Padrick was appointed as the trustee for the Summit Accommodators bankruptcy. It was then that Cox […]

  17. […] famous extortionist Crystal Cox is allegedly at it again! Cox is most well known for her attack on Kevin Padrick and Obsidian Finance, which resulted in a $2.5 million judgment against her. But the fun didn’t stop […]

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