Patterico's Pontifications

7/18/2007

Yagman: Patterico Made Me Do It!

Filed under: Buffoons,Crime,General — Patterico @ 12:10 am



In this post I said of the Stephen Yagman trial:

I have a wonderful story to tell you about the trial — a story that will put a smile on all of your faces. But I don’t have time to tell it now. Stay tuned, though — this one is good.

Here it is.

A few weeks ago, Patrick Range McDonald, a writer from the L.A. Weekly, asked me for my thoughts regarding the Yagman trial. Specifically, he wanted to know how I felt about Yagman citing my web site in court testimony as a place where threats have been made against him.

According to McDonald, when Yagman testified, Yagman claimed that part of the reason that he transferred his house to his girlfriend had something to do with a concern for his personal safety. (Don’t ask me why; I don’t understand the logic.)

Yagman’s lawyer asked him if he had received any threats. Why, yes, Yagman said, he had — he had received some Internet threats.

Where did they come from, his lawyer asked.

Well, Yagman testified, there’s this one site operated by Patrick Frey, who works for the District Attorney’s office. It’s called —

At which point the Government objected, and Judge Wilson sustained the objection.

That’s right, folks. Steve Yagman invoked yours truly as a reason for his illegal actions.

“It was an interesting stunt,” McDonald told me, “because Yagman seemed to be trying to find a way to hit that angle of a vindictive government going after him, something his lawyer only brought up during opening arguments and never mentioned again.”

There are just two problems with Yagman’s complaint.

First, and most obviously, I have (of course) never threatened him, on this site or anywhere else.

What could Yagman possibly be talking about? I’m not sure. My best guess — and it’s just a guess — is that he was alluding to this site’s reprinting of Jerry LeFrois’s joyful letter to Yagman, in which LeFrois tastelessly expressed a wish (not a threat) that Yagman would be sexually assaulted in a prison cell by someone named Bubba. (This sentiment, which I disagree with as a long-standing opponent of prison rape, was later echoed by a couple of commenters here. My guest blogger Justin Levine posted the letter, not as a threat, of course, but rather as part of a post that chronicled the history of Yagman’s frivolous lawsuit against LeFrois for intentional infliction of emotional distress.) If that is Yagman’s theory, there’s just one leetle problem with it: those comments all came, of course, after Yagman’s indictment. How could they explain why Yagman committed the acts that he was indicted for?

And that leads us to the second fundamental problem with Yagman’s dishonest little story: regardless of how far back you go, there is no post on this site old enough to have caused Yagman to do the things he was prosecuted for. This blog began in February 2003. Did Yagman crawl into a time machine and travel to the future? Did he read my blog during those precious few moments he had to glimpse the world to come? It’s otherwise quite difficult to imagine how else a blog that began to exist in February 2003 could have caused Yagman to falsify tax returns from 1994 through 1997 . . . or file a dishonest bankruptcy petition in 1999 . . . or fail to disclose bank and brokerage accounts, legal settlements, client payments, and attorney’s fees received in 1999 and 2000. (Source: a press release issued by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California about Yagman’s conviction.)

Yup: he did it in part because of threats he saw on a blog that began several years later.

My guess: Yagman never heard of this blog until he read my quote in McDonald’s first L.A. Weekly piece on the trial, which came out in May of this year. So he made up a little story about how this blog had threats against him. The fact that I am a Deputy D.A. fit nicely with his theme of the Little Guy vs. the Establishment. And he probably figured that his little comment would be objected to — meaning the Government (and jury) would never learn that the blog in question could not possibly have influenced him to commit the actions that got him charged (and convicted).

The narrative was more important than the truth. Somehow, it seems fitting.

8 Responses to “Yagman: Patterico Made Me Do It!”

  1. As much as Yagman’s blatant (come on Leviticus… let’s hear you assistant devil’s advocate… have it ‘er, Phil… defend this!) lie regarding the blog dates makes Yagman more farcical then ever, nothing compares for me to:

    Yagman claimed that part of the reason that he transferred his house to his girlfriend had something to do with a concern for his personal safety.

    Of course, he’s lying. Again.

    But the subtext to his lie is that if he were telling the truth, he would be — somehow — hiding behind his girlfriend and putting her in potential harm’s way to keep himself safe.

    Which is disgusting.

    Yet this is exactly the type of selfish behavior I would expect from someone who steals over three quarters of a million dollars from relatives:

    YAGMAN, IT TURNED OUT, loved spending other people’s money, most notably his aging relatives’, as the prosecution embarrassingly showed. Sagar and Kim accused Yagman of taking control of investments and savings totaling $776,110 from his aunts, uncles and mother, then transferring the money into bank and brokerage accounts under the name of his girlfriend, K.D. Mattox, so the feds wouldn’t know about the sudden cash influx.

    And there’s his girlfriend again.

    Christoph (8741c8)

  2. Back in 1994, I had the occasion to run some raps on Yagman. All his cars were in his mother’s name. I knew something was not quite right and suspected it was only a matter of time before it all came out.

    sam (b42669)

  3. Heh. I kinda doubt that Yagman read your blog in 2003, either; in those days no one read your blog except me and a few of my favorite sock puppets.

    Xrlq (aa20a5)

  4. Ahhhh…sweet schadenfreude.

    Pablo (99243e)

  5. lol@christoph again. i’m not defending this shit. i was sympathetic to yagman for some of his work in the past; police brutality exists (seen it firsthand) and its victims need lawyers too, but i’m not sympathetic to tax fraud and bankruptcy fraud, and i’m not sympathetic to pussies who don’t understand the difference between threats and constitutionally protected mockery. suing that guy for his bubba schadenfreude letter was the act of a pussy. i was surprised that an experienced lawyer could so poorly assess the likely outcome of his own legal initiatives. i’ve never seen anyone threaten him on this blog.

    assistant devil's advocate (6b9b82)

  6. Well said P!

    Justin Levine (9f5960)

  7. Well, you acknowledge the truth in this situation, assistant devil’s advocate, which is great.

    Just like the last time you did the lol@christoph thing and had to admit you were 100% wrong and had jumped to erroneous conclusions based on your own mental map and misunderstanding of Christians vs. atheists.

    I appreciate it.

    We agree again: Yagman may have done some good in his life, most people have, but in his private behavior, he’s a criminal and an irrational farcical one at that.

    Completely unrestrained by honesty, I also tend to think he slandered people left, right, and center including judges he appeared before.

    Christoph (8741c8)

  8. And you (Patterico) are also responsible for Holly Ashcraft tossing her kids in a dumpster and Villaraigosa for cheating on his wife. I think you cost Hiltzik his column too as I remember.

    Insider (b9e225)


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