Jonathan Lee Riches is a real piece of work. I came across him while I was doing some research on Bonnier Corporation. Bonnier is a big media group. They own half of World Publications, based in Winter Park, Florida, which is down the road from me. Bonnier puts out mags like Islands and Spa, Saveur, Caribbean Travel & Life, Transworld Snowboarding, etc. The current head of the Bonnier family is Jonas Bonnier. I noticed that Jonas was the defendant in a lawsuit. That lawsuit was filed by Jonathan Lee Riches.

Ok, well, that’s interesting, you say, but so what? People sue other people all the time.
Ah, but this is Jonathan Lee Riches, the guy who really does sue just about everybody, all the time.

The first thing you should know about Riches is that he’s currently serving time at the Federal Correctional Institution Williamsburg in Salters, South Carolina, for wire fraud. Apparently he was involved in an identity theft ring. (He’ll be released in 2012).

According to court records, a spam e-mail created by a juvenile in Dallas was sent to tens of thousands of America Online customers asking for their personal identification information. That information was sold to Riches who used it to obtain cash from victims’ credit card accounts and to buy merchandise using other people’s credit card information.

So what does Riches do to pass the time in prison? Well, some prisoners read, others lift weights, etc…

Riches likes to file lawsuits.

In fact, he has filed over one thousand lawsuits in federal district courts across the country.

Some of the people Riches has sued are:

Bill Belichick

The New England Patriots coach was sued for “illegal surveillance”. The rambling document, which states that Belichick bugged the home of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, placed a listening device “in Donovan McNabb’s Chunky Soup”, surveilled the home of New York Jets quarterback Chad Pennington, and planted a recording device on San Diego Chargers linebacker Shawn Merriman’s sleeve, finally tells at the end that Belichick illegally taped Riches’ prison phone calls and sold the tapes to CNN.

Source: Smoking Gun:

My heart is broke forever…I’m terrified of defendant Belichick…He told me that if I expose his wiretaps he would get the owner of the Patriots, Mr. Kraft, who owns Kraft Foods, to put poison in the Kraft cheese I eat at prison

Martha Stewart

The entrepreneur who did some jail time herself was sued for supposedly violating Riches’ rights in a real estate deal. Riches seeks $3.5 million in damages from Stewart for “emotional, mental, psychological distress.” Riches says he will donate any damages he collects to television cook Rachael Ray.

According to boston.com:

He claims the real estate listing for the property falsely claimed it was painted with Dutch Boy paint. The suit also states that while touring the property (although records indicate he would have been in incarcerated at the time) Riches contracted poison ivy, was scratched by pricker bushes and fell in a groundhog hole.

Riches also claims he saw Stewart’s turkeys playing football with Vick’s jerseys and that the birds attacked him. And, recently resigned Bush political strategist Karl Rove has found a new job working on Stewart’s estate as her gardener.

Jeff Gordon

The NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon was sued for, in Riches’ words, “Recklessly Drivin’ My Life Crazy.”

Source: WSOCTV:

The handwritten, 3-page complaint goes on to accuse Gordon of a litany of other crimes–from poisoning fans with chemical weapons, to wrecking other drivers by dropping Tic Tacs and oil on the track through a secret trap door under his race car.

In one section Riches states, “Gordon tied me to his bumper during the Talladega race.” Elsewhere he complains, “Karl Rove left the White House to work as Gordon’s tire changer.”

Man, Riches must really dig Karl Rove. He also states that “Gordon told me secret plans to put wings on the #24 car and fly it into Ft. Knox.”

So how is a convicted federal inmate able to keep filing all of these frivolous complaints and wasting time, money and manpower in an already swamped legal system? Simply put, anyone is allowed to do it.

There is one line though that is telling of a man’s mental condition, “Plaintiff seeks 22,000,000,000.00 Billion dollars…” That’s just greedy, not crazy.

Michael Vick

According to AJC, the infamous Atlanta Falcons quarterback (along with PETA, the Humane Society, a prison warden, and a federal judge) was sued for being the ringleader of a “vast conspiracy to kidnap my mind, hijack my soul.”

He said Vick ordered the warden to chemically induce his food, causing him to lose almost 50 pounds. Riches said it was all done as revenge because he caught Vick, whom he called a “NASA creation,” betting on Falcons games in 2005.

This particular lawsuit was tossed out, but there’s another lawsuit, where Riches says Vick stole his dogs for fighting purposes, opened credit cards in Riches’ name and stole his copyrighted property. The suit even claims Vick sold some of Riches’ dogs on eBay and “used the proceeds to buy missiles from the Iran government.” Riches is demanding $62 billion in gold and silver.

Steve Jobs

The favorite guy at Apple, who helped bring us the iPod, got sued by Riches for employing O.J. Simpson as a hitman.

Source: Apple Insider:

The 3-page handwritten complaint alleges that Simpson has been Jobs’s “hitman” since the “1985 MOVE house bombing in Philadelphia, which Jobs started with borrowed pyrotechnics from Great White.”

Also: “O.J. has been providing Jobs with food blenders since the midwest flood of 1993″ and that O.J. also “paid Jobs to clone Dolly the sheep on April 20, 1998.”

Jobs is charged with aiming nuclear missiles at Riches’ brain and Lance Armstrong’s bicycle, as well as price gouging iPhone customers. “On May 10th, 2007, I bought an Apple iPhone for $922.01 at the FCI Williamsburg commissary,” Riches wrote. “Now Jobs sells that same iPod for $199.”

“A cursory review of the complaint is sufficient to establish that it is nothing more than fanciful nonsense,” US District Judge Gregory Presnell wrote in his order for dismissal. “The whole thing reads like a cross between Billy Joel’s ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ and a Dr. Bronner’s soap label, if Dr. Bronner had been a first-year law student with untreated paranoid schizophrenia.”

“Several weeks ago, he filed suit against Elvis Presley and Neverland Ranch for, inter alia, ‘WAR CRIMES Rock N Rollin My Brain’,” the Judge wrote.

While it’s unclear whether Riches’ cockamamy pleadings are products of actual mental illness or simply a hobby akin to short story writing, all complaints filed with the US court system have to be processed, filed and dismissed.

Perez Hilton

This celebrity blogger (real name Mario Lavandeira) got sued for running a web site which invades Riches’ privacy and puts his life in danger.

Source: Smoking Gun:

Riches states that he carried on a years-long sexual relationship with Hilton and once bought the blogger a $23,000 diamond ring. Riches is seeking the closure of Hilton’s popular web site.

Britney Spears

According to Contact Music, Britney got sued for holding Riches at gunpoint and forcing him to commit crimes, like the identity theft he got busted for. Also he says Britney forced him to pay for abortions, breast implants, drugs and alcohol.

Benazir Bhutto, Pervez Musharraf, and the INS

Yes, the poor woman who was assassinated is named in a suit along with Musharraf.

Source: Justia:

Plaintiff seeks a temporary restraining order against Defendants Benazir Bhutto, Pervez Musharraf, Shaukat Aziz and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to stop his extradition to Pakistan on March 2012 because he will be tortured. Plaintiff asserts that the case is one of mistaken identity and that Pakistan wants another Jonathan Lee Riches, who is an international fugitive and made nuclear weapons with Pakistan scientist A.D. Khan.

That’s not all… here comes the really goofy stuff:

Barry Bonds and Hank Aaron’s Bat!!!

The complaint involves Barry Bonds, baseball commissioner Bud Selig, and Hank Aaron’s bat.

Source: The Smoking Gun:

Riches weaves an intricate conspiracy theory involving television ratings, steroids, the cracking of the Liberty Bell, Colombian narco-terrorists, and secretly recorded conversations for which journalists Robert Novak and Judith Miller have transcripts.

A copy of the Bonds complaint can be found here.

The lawsuit allges things like “bat assault, treason, illegal moonshine, treason (again!), stalking, illegal wiretapping, and bad debt” He requests that the court file a temporary restraining order against the broadcast of MLB games, all defendants (amd their pets!!), and is seeking 42 million dollars worth in swiss francs!

You gotta read this thing for yourself, I’m about to lose it.

Grand Theft Auto

On April 9, 2008, Riches filed a request for a temporary restraining order against Take-two (publisher of Grand Theft Auto), as well as developer Rockstar Games, FCI Williamsburg, and the game Grand Theft Auto itself, claiming that the defendants “put me in prison.”

Source: Computer and Video Games:

“Defendants contributed to Plaintiff committing identity theft. Defendant’s games show sex, drugs and violence which offends me.” Riches continued, “Defendants put me in prison. I face imminent danger from violent inmates who played Grand Theft Auto who will knock me out and take my gold Jesus cross.”

And the BIG ONE - Suing the Entire World!!!!

George Bush + 783 others!

Source: City Paper:

Here is the PDF of the document, where Riches does really intend to sue the entire world.

56 pages of nonsense naming Bush and 783 other people in a lawsuit. Who are some of these “others”? Would ya believe Plato, Nostradamus, Che Guevara, Jimmy Hoffa, “Various Buddhist Monks”, the Lincoln Memorial, the Eiffel Tower, the USS Cole, the book Mein Kampf, the Garden of Eden, the Roman Empire, the Appalachian Trail, Three Mile Island, Hillary Rodham Clinton, www.google.com, Pope Benedict XVI, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, John Deere, www.accuweather.com, Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Party, Roc-A-Fella Records, Jay-Z, Japan’s Nikkei Stock Exchange, Gambino (crime family), Three Mile Island, Tony Danza, Islamic Republic of Iran, University of Miami, GEICO Insurance, Jewish State of Israel, Soledad O’Brien, Tsunami victims, The American Red Cross, Jessica Alba, Charles Moose, al-Qaida Islamic Arm, Fruit of A-Loom, Outback Steakhouse, Donald J. Trump, Chris Berman, Puff Daddy, Vince McMahon, Meals on Wheels, Saddam Hussein, Jewish workers at NBC/Universal, Elizabeth Smart, The Panama Canal Commission, Kelly Clarkston, 13 tribes of Israel, Plato, Lincoln Memorial, Boris Becker, Various Buddhist monks, Christina Applegate, Jewish Mossad, National Vanguard Books, Mein Kampf, Venus Williams, Medieval Times, Denny’s, Brotherhood of the Snake, Larry King, Rastafarian natives, National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, the Illuminati , Wu-Tang Clan, Wu Wear Inc., Nordic gods, The Da Vinci Code, Sears Tower, Mike Tyson, Native American Fish Society, Green Bay’s Lambeau Field, Pizza Hut, Ming Dynasty, Barry Bonds, Gangs in Hong Kong, Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, National Hockey League Players’ Association, Philadelphia Eagles (2005 roster), The Waffle House, Skittles Candy, etc…

Remember The Usual Suspects? This guy reminds me of Keyser Soze. Sitting in an interrogation room, reading billboards and making up stories… except instead of a billboard it’s probably all the TV news that Riches is watching.

It’s all there…and I’m tellin’ it straight, I swear!

As AJC says:

A number of Riches’s lawsuits have been dismissed as being “frivolous, malicious” or failing “to state a claim upon which any relief could be granted”. Willis Hunt, the U.S. District Court Judge who dismissed Riches’ suit against Vick as “farcical,” opined that his lawsuits were clearly self-promotional.

Well, duh. Either that or the guy is quite insane.

But I don’t think he’s insane. The guy is too clever and funny - to me it looks like one inmate has discovered an amusing way to pass the time in prison and at the same time get back at the system that put him in there. And since the taxpayers foot the bill, the joke’s on us. We might as well laugh - we’re paying for the comedy!

And as for Jonas Bonnier, well if anyone can find out why he’s being sued by Riches I would love to hear about it. Currently I am unable to get any info on the matter, but I’m sure it’s hilarious.

Bill G

Update

For anyone who cares, I found out about Riches’ lawsuit against Jonas Bonnier. It’s handwritten and basically says the following:

I’m being abused. The Bonnier Corporation is a financial supporter to Federal Prison industries. I’m subjected to a salary of 12 cents a month. This is a constitutional violation and violation of Federal minimum wage laws. I’m working in a slave sweat shop. I seek $42 million.

Double LOL!