Six hard drives on computers once owned by Jeffrey Prosser, former owner and CEO of Innovative Telephone, are now in the hands of a U.S. Grand Jury exploring possible criminal charges against Prosser.
The “forensic images” on the hard drives were due to be turned over to the Grand Jury, sitting on St. Thomas by May 6. The hard drives had been held by a mainland technical intelligence firm, which spells its name iTELYS!S, of Haddonfield, N.J., a suburb of Philadelphia.
That firm, according to its letter of May 5, is the “court-appointed computer forensic experts” in the case. (The letter was placed in the records of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court under case 3:06-bk-3009-JKF as document 2836 and can be read by anyone who subscribes to the U.S. Court electronic data system known as PACER.)
The disclosure of the subpoena shows that the U.S. Grand Jury, which has known to have started a secret inquiry into a possible fraud indictment of Prosser some time ago, is still active and now has its hands on what must be a goldmine of previously secret information on Prosser’s finances.
This was yet another setback for Prosser, who has been battling for years to keep his financial dealings hidden from various courts. Most of those prior battles were in various civil courts – the hard drives are now subject to criminal justice procedures.
On the other hand, the subpoena did not reveal the contents of the hard drives—which may or may not be disclosed, in full or in part, at some time in the future. Six hard drives full of data probably translates to hundreds or thousands of pages of information, once printed out. Whether some or all of this material will be self-explanatory is another question.
Prosser’s finances were so convoluted, and according to the U.S. Bankruptcy Judge, Judith Fitzgerald, he was so uncooperative, that she felt she had to appoint a retired U.S. Bankruptcy Judge, Steven A. Felsenthal, to be the Examiner of his finances.
Without ever seeing the hard drives, Judge Felsenthal, his lawyers and his accountants ran up a bill of more than one million dollars trying to figure out Prosser’s various financial dealings.
The drives themselves were given by Prosser to his then valet, Arthur Stelzer, whom he was about to fire, to be turned over to a computer shop for destruction.
Stelzer instead gave them to a lawyer for one of the court-appointed trustees in the case, and the lawyer, in turn, gave them to the bankruptcy judge. This series of events set off a long and nasty set of court proceedings as Prosser, the Trustee’s lawyers, the valet (and his lawyers), engaged in judicial fisticuffs, with Prosser’s lawyers charging bribery, and the other side charging harassment. Those issues are still before various judicial bodies.
Meanwhile, in another ring of the multi-ring circus of the Prosser litigation, lawyers for his former valet have issued a subpoena to American Express to open up Prosser’s credit card accounts from September 2002 through August 2008; this is to take place in a lawyer’s office in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on May 14 – unless, of course, there is a lawyer-created delay in the proceedings.
