Brian Kennedy and How Ed 2 Go was Used to Bilk Jobseekers

This was passed to me by someone very special. I usually ask if you want to be credited. Didn’t ask this time. Just let me know if you did. Particularly before I forget it was you that sent me this, which happens often.

Everybody else, remember this is just a complaint. These are just allegations. I haven’t seen any other documents on this case, so view it through the lens of allegations.

Ed2Go-Complaint Download

The quick version is that Cengage, d/b/a Ed 2 Go, a/k/a the people that were apparently working with BlueLedge to draw people into digital court reporting in a way that I found dishonest and arguably defamatory, was working with a man named Brian Kennedy according to this Colorado Attorney General’s complaint. It starts off really well. The man uses like four different pseudonyms for his business dealings. Allegedly.

And Brian even owned the National Association of Pharmaceutical Sales Representatives and the National Association of Medical Sales Representatives.

The allegations, as I understand them from a skim or two, are that the guy basically lies about the products/services he offers and uses pseudonyms, fake organizations, and fake emails to make things more believable. Allegedly, he employed others, and assigned pseudonyms to them too. He then used Ed 2 Go to sell his stuff. He made up somewhere around 30 fake recruiting companies, posed as recruiters, and enticed consumers into using the training he’d designed.

For anyone whose eyes glazed over, basically imagine a world where I start a nonprofit called the Stenographic Society of America, create some trainings under that, and then make tons of fake accounts and organizations to try to get people to buy my stuff. Pressure people into believing they need my stuff. Make believe my stuff will improve their professional outcomes.

And that’s basically where I stopped reading, threw my hands up, and said “I’m just going to publish this.”

No offense to Ed 2 Go, but if this is indicative of the people they’re doing business with and the kinds of things that can occur under whatever “quality assurance” protocols they have, then they’re basically a mechanism that can be used to bilk college students and cry “I didn’t know” when things go bad. I don’t know if the attorneys general of the various states would see it that way. But you think the big company being used to broadcast these programs across the country doesn’t know some of them are questionable?

Maybe it’s just not profitable to have safeguards in place against deceiving consumers.

BlueLedge digital court reporting cartoon depicting court reporting students being thrown down a hole.

P.S., unrelated creative writing exercise.

Anybody else enjoying the Eric Adams coverage?

To all you egalitarians, I just want to say, some recent behavior on Staten Island was not cool. But I truly believe that if Staten Islanders knew who was raising their cost of living and how, they’d be a lot more welcoming, and a lot more angry at the right people.

That journalist I snubbed still reads our stuff. But your middle-of-the-road approach to a situation that has one side that lies and changes the story at will and another side that has been fairly consistent since discovering the malfeasance being enacted upon it was troubling. It’s also troubling that nearly two years after being alerted to and given evidence of a fraud against civil litigation lawyers, including being alerted that the fraudsters complained of got sued and shut down their website, Law360 can’t bring itself to publish about the fraud. Don’t you fucking get it? Others are too afraid to speak up because these assholes collectively control a large percentage of the field and can lock them out of huge amounts of work. I’m insulated against that. I used my insulation to stand up for a field that’s 88% women. When you sit in silence as these folks bamboozle these women, I hope you remember your friends, coworkers, mothers, wives, and sisters, and how you would feel if you learned someone with the power to help them sat in silence as corporations illegally snuffed their careers.

This is a great social experiment. Can a decentralized worker structure organize enough to push back against the illegal actions of a cabal of corporations despite the media blackout and inaction of government? Will other court reporters start sending the fraud timeline to news outlets? Will news outlets ever mention the pilot studies of Testifying While Black? Can society overcome its bias against mental health issues for someone that’s done everything they’re supposed to do to stay stable? If appearances and first impressions are all that really matters, are we inviting a society of conmen? Can outside help be attracted? Will the small businesses of the field rally and realize that the success of my media means tons of work pouring onto the market? Will the corporate fraudsters ever come to the table or will they continue to risk me actually gaining more traction?

I wrote an “okay” Medium article. If we pass it around the community and get enough clicks, maybe it’ll get some attention.

I wonder how many attorneys realize the game of adding extra charges the court reporter doesn’t charge to keep the page rates artificially low is a thing.

Seeing that concert kinda made me a Swifty to the extent someone that doesn’t worship celebrities can be one. Sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby and I’m a monster on the hill. Too big to hang out, slowly lurching toward your favorite city. Pierced through the heart, but never killed.

Orange Legal, A Veritext Company, May Share Location with BlueLedge

To preface this post, I do not suspect the previous owner of Orange Legal of anything untoward at this time. Some in our field disagree with selling small businesses out to large national firms, and I understand why, but I am personally ambivalent to the sole act of “selling out.” The only time that I grilled someone for “selling” was Rick Levy, and that was because he lied to me.

I previously explained that BlueLedge appeared to be using CourtReporterEDU to siphon stenography students to Ed 2 Go and digital court reporting. This was followed by explaining the connections or general friendliness among BlueLedge, Veritext, and Stenograph.

BlueLedge was voluntarily dissolved in 2019 even though it still appears to be in operation. Its address? 101 E Kennedy.

Orange Legal has the same address.

So this strengthens the evidence that Veritext and BlueLedge are close.

As previously posted, BlueLedge was voluntarily dissolved in 2019. Coincidentally, after over 30 years of keeping its regular filings, Orange Legal was administratively dissolved in 2020*. It apparently failed to file its annual report. Dissolution is not a permanent thing. Corporations can remedy that and become “active” again.

But the dissolution issue is not entirely without its problems. According to various sources online, contrary to my previous belief that inactive corporations should not be doing business in a state, it appears that dissolved or inactive corporations may generally continue to operate. It is notable that liability may spill over to corporate officers of inactive corporations and that corporations that are inactive may not be able to defend themselves in court.

In short, the dissolution angle does not appear to be the game changer I thought it was. It’s still pretty interesting and puts any dissolved company that’s breaking the law at a serious disadvantage. For example, in a state like mine, a consumer can bring a deceptive business practice claim. If a consumer were to do that against an inactive corporation, it is apparent the corporation would have to solve the dissolution before it could even begin to defend itself in court. And in New York, where lawyers can cost $400 an hour, that’s a lot of money.

Addendum:

Shortly after release of this post, a reader pointed out Benjamin Jaffe of BlueLedge worked for Orange Legal.

Addendum:

*On 11/28/21, well after publishing, I realized that the holding company for Orange Legal came up in place of Orange Legal and I have now added images for both entries. Note that my original line about when the dissolution took place may be off, but the images of the publicly-available info are exactly what I saw.

BlueLedge Connected with Veritext and Stenograph

BlueLedge is the digital reporting training company that apparently dissolved two years ago in Florida that I suspect is behind CourtReporterEDU. BlueLedge, as far as I can tell, continued to operate after its voluntary dissolution in 2019, because in August 2020, it entered a strategic partnership with Ed 2 Go.

Many reporters reached out to let me know that Veritext used or uses BlueLedge, but I didn’t have time to look into it. Finally, someone sent me the Google search. Step A, if you want to complete Veritext’s digital court reporter partner program, is to register with and complete the BlueLedge program.

This, by itself, isn’t much of a problem. But it strengthens the argument that the court reporting shortage is being exaggerated and exacerbated by Veritext. If the company was genuinely interested in recruiting stenographers, it might have constructed such a detailed pipeline for the education of stenographers. Instead, the company routinely tells stenographers what they want to hear and pours its resources into expanding its digital business despite the potential harm to minority speakers. One reporter brought up to me that Veritext has some involvement with a school in Maryland. I have even reported on its scholarship activities. I’m happy about those pro-steno activities. But at a time when 50% of our field, according to Ducker, is in California, Texas, Illinois, and New York, and while Veritext is working with BlueLedge, a company that has hooked its claws into national recruitment using Ed 2 Go, it remains clear where Veritext’s priorities are — expanding digital recruitment not as a supplement to our shortage, but at the direct expense of stenographic court reporters.

Telling consumers/attorneys that no stenographer is available while taking steps to alienate practicing reporters and undermining our industry’s intense recruitment efforts is just wrong. It’s like Burger King lighting cattle fields on fire and yelling about a beef patty shortage. The only difference is we would all immediately identify the arson as criminal, whereas here, if you hide the dishonest, anticompetitive, and potentially criminal behavior behind layers of dissolved companies and corporate paperwork, you get people defending the bad behavior. What would we do without Veritext? Probably be a lot better off!

Less importantly, Stenograph was getting cozy with BlueLedge as early as August 2021.

So let me add that to Stenograph’s PR problem. We need to boycott the company until it sells for stenography and voice writing only. We want no more expansion of digital court reporting. Keep hard on that line and it will happen. Consider Stenograph an arms dealer. It thinks it will sit there and sell to both sides. Except, in this very particular case, our field of stenographers has far more customers and most of our money is earned as opposed to being “borrowed” from investors. We are in a much stronger position financially even if we believe digital reporting has more actual dollars down on it. A lot of people in our field became CaseCAT trainers. They’re killing your industry and income to build digital. I want to grow stenography so you have more business. So even the CaseCAT trainers have a reason to stand up in defiance here, let alone the rest of us.

Succinctly, the money being sunk into digital reporting is money that investors will be expecting back. When it does not make the returns promised, and we have good reason to suspect it won’t because of companies like VIQ Solutions giving us a window into digital reporting financials ($10 million in losses June 2021), the faucet will turn off. All the companies relying on investor cash flow instead of company profit will start to decline. It is in our best interest as a profession to take the power of our good money away from it. The digital money will dry up on its own. If Stenograph is smart, it will cave to our demands. If it is not smart, we can crowdfund, buy it when it goes bankrupt, and put its employees back to work for us like I’m sure many of them want to be. We can even divvy up what Dutta’s salary would’ve been and give them a raise.

Stenograph, at this point, is relying on our nostalgia of it being “our company” and assuming we will not turn our backs on it. I’ve got some nostalgia of my own. There’s a scene in the original StarCraft that sums up my feelings well. Acting predictably is our enemy. We predictably divide and conquer ourselves time and again. Stand together on this one and watch things roll our way. It’s really that simple.

“An illusion? Are you afraid to face me, Templar?”

“So long as you continue to be so predictable, O Queen, I need not face you at all. You are your own worst enemy.”

This continues to be a profound moment in our field where we must choose between loyalty to each other and loyalty to companies whispering “trust us, trust us” while they systematically work to reduce our numbers and undermine our judicial system for profit. Not the hardest decision in history.