Lawyers eye neo-Nazi website founder's assets for $14M award

Attorneys for a Montana real estate agent are eyeing the assets of a neo-Nazi website operator to collect a $14 million court judgment against the man for an anti-Semitic online “troll storm” that he orchestrated against the Jewish woman and her family, court filings show.

More than a year has passed since a federal judge in Montana entered a default judgment against Andrew Anglin, the Daily Stormer's founder and publisher. Plaintiffs' lawyers say the Ohio native has failed to pay any of the monetary award to Tanya Gersh.

Gersh's attorneys from the Southern Poverty Law Center say they intend to identify any of Anglin's assets that could be used to satisfy the judgment. Trying to seize Anglin's assets will be “time-consuming and extremely complex” given his lack of cooperation and history of holding assets in cryptocurrency rather than more traditional forms, law center lawyers wrote in a filing last month.

In August 2019, U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen ordered Anglin to pay $4 million in compensatory damages and $10 million in punitive damages to Gersh. The judge also ordered Anglin to permanently remove from his website the posts in which he encouraged readers to contact Gersh and her family. Anglin eventually complied with that part of the judge’s order, according to Gersh’s lawyers.

Other targets of Anglin's online harassment campaigns also secured default judgments against him after he failed to respond to their respective lawsuits.

In June 2019, a federal judge in Ohio awarded $4.1 million in damages to Muslim-American radio host Dean Obeidallah, who filed a libel lawsuit against Anglin for falsely accusing him of terrorism. Obeidallah said he received death threats after Anglin published an article that tricked readers into believing he took responsibility for the May 2017 terrorist attack...