After its sham “fraudit” was thoroughly discredited by the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors on Wednesday, the comical Cyber Ninjas received more bad news on Thursday.
The Hill reports, Arizona judge fines Cyber Ninjas $50,000 a day until it turns over election review records:
An Arizona judge has fined Cyber Ninjas, a firm hired by the state Senate to conduct a review of Maricopa County’s election results, $50,000 a day until it turns over records from the review to The Arizona Republic, the outlet reported.
On Aug. 24, 2021, Maricopa Superior Court Judge John Hannah ordered the firm to turn over public records including emails and text messages, among others, to the Republic. In his Thursday ruling, Hannah found Cyber Ninjas in contempt of that order.
The Republic in June 2021 sued Cyber Ninjas and the state Senate for records and asked for $1,000 a day in sanctions against the company, according to the outlet.
Hannah said that Cyber Ninjas’s noncompliance was deserving of sanctions 50 times higher than the $50,000 a day he was imposing, The Republic reported.
“It is lucidly clear on this record that Cyber Ninjas has disregarded that order,” Hannah said in the ruling, according to the outlet. “I don’t think I have to find Cyber Ninjas is not acting in good faith. All I have to do is find they are not complying, and their noncompliance is not based on good faith and reasonable interpretation of the order. I think the variety of creative positions Cyber Ninjas has taken to avoid compliance with this order speaks for itself.”
Hannah also said he wants to put the firm “on notice,” saying he will issue individual orders for those responsible for providing the records if Cyber Ninjas continues not to comply, the outlet reported.
“Our goal here is not to get sanctions, it is to get documents,” Craig Hoffman, attorney for The Republic, said at Thursday’s hearing.
Hannah’s ruling came three days after the state’s court of appeals ordered Cyber Ninjas to pay the Republic over $31,000 in legal fees following a failed appeal by the firm, according to the outlet.
Cyber Ninjas has turned over some of the documents from its review to the state Senate, The Republic reported. It remains unclear how many related records the firm still has that are subject to court orders.
Cyber Ninjas previously suggested to the court that The Republic should pay the federal rate for providing public records, claiming that producing them would cost the firm around $65,000 to $70,000, the outlet noted.
But wait! There’s more bad news for Cyber Ninjas. NBC News reports, Cyber Ninjas, company that led Arizona GOP election ‘audit,’ is shutting down:
Cyber Ninjas, the company that led a partisan review of 2020 ballots in Arizona, is closing down following a scathing report by election officials and the [imposition] of $50,000 a day in fines.
“Cyber Ninjas is shutting down. All employees have been let go,” Rod Thomson, the company’s representative, said in a text message Thursday evening.
The Florida-based company, founded in 2013, has less than a dozen employees, according to its LinkedIn page.
A reporter for The Guardian earlier Thursday reported Cyber Ninjas’ plans to shut down.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge John Hannah said he would impose a $50,000 fine against Cyber Ninjas every day until it hands over documents related to the so-called audit after the Arizona Republic newspaper filed a public records request, The Associated Press reported Thursday.
Jack Wilenchik, a lawyer for Cyber Ninjas, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This might have something to do with the fact that Cyber Ninjas is stiffing its lawyer. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy. Cyber Ninjas’ Arizona Election Probe Lawyer Asks to Quit, Alleges He Isn’t Being Paid.
How many Ls can a lawyer take in one day? Wilenchik asked the Arizona Supreme Court today to stay Hannah's order for sanctions. Supreme Court denied motion within hours.
— Ryan Randazzo (@utilityreporter) January 7, 2022
And the Arizona Senate Republicans who hired this clown show for their sham “fraudit” are reportedly stiffing Cyber Ninjas for $100,000 – enough to pay for the cost of production of ducments which Cyber Ninjas pegged at around $65,000 to $70,000.
“Cyber Ninjas say the Arizona Senate owes it $100,000, as the firm that conducted the review of the 2020 election continues to complain that it is insolvent and therefore cannot provide public records as ordered by Arizona courts,” reports @azcentral.https://t.co/K7oAZu8U3Y
— American Oversight (@weareoversight) December 22, 2021
They are all complicit – Cyber Ninjas is the agent of Senate Republicans – and Judge Hannah is going to have to start throwing butts in jail to force compliance with his order. I suggest that he start with the one person most responsible for this fiasco, Senate President Karen Fann.
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UPDATE 1/10/22: “FOIA’d texts reveal Fann, Logan fracture”, https://azcapitoltimes.com/news/2022/01/08/foiad-texts-reveal-fann-logan-fracture/
Cyber Ninjas founder Doug Logan told Republican Senate President Karen Fann in text messages that he was unable to sell the firm because of “too much negativity around the name,” but he plans to sell off all its assets to pay debts and eventually file for bankruptcy. His lawyer says Logan can’t fulfil a court order to release public records because the company has no money, even though Trump allies raised millions of dollars for the unprecedented partisan election review.
Logan and Fann have been at odds over $100,000 of the $150,000 the Senate agreed to pay Cyber Ninjas, which has been withheld.
The text messages were sent from Logan to Fann on Monday and released to The Associated Press on Friday in response to a public records request.
Logan told the AP his dispute with Fann stems from the outstanding $100,000 payment and the Senate’s refusal to pay his legal fees in the public records dispute, which he believes is required under their contract.
“I have no intention of throwing you or anyone else under the bus, but I expect the time has also come for me to stop completely covering for decisions I didn’t make,” he continued to Fann.
Judge John Hannah of the Maricopa County Superior Court said Thursday he will fine Cyber Ninjas $50,000 a day starting Friday if it doesn’t release public records. He warned that he’ll extend the fines to “individuals who are responsible for compliance with this order,” and not just the company, if necessary.
“The court is not going to accept the assertion that Cyber Ninjas is an empty shell and that no one is responsible for seeing that it complies,” Hannah said.
Logan told the AP he plans to comply with the court order, but he wants more clarity from the judge and money from the Senate to cover costs, which he said the court is underestimating.
“When the rulings of the court are no longer ambiguous, and are within our capabilities to execute; it will happen,” he said.
When the judge starts throwing people in jail, include the bombastic Sonny Borrelli. He hyped the “audit” as much as anyone, and was Fann’s right hand man.
25 plus years in IT here, Cyber Ninja’s are not and never were an actual InfoSec company.
The name Cyber Ninjas is a giveaway.
Back in the earlier days of the internet “cyber” is what people called online sex.
You know, typing with one hand while “releasing the hostages” with the other.
Before webcams.
Cyber Ninja’s is the name a 12 year old aspiring con man would give a company trying to con other 12 year olds.
Their website is a red flag with an IP address. A very amateur looking red flag.
If Doug Logan had tried to PowerPoint his way into a contract with me, I’d have run him out of the conference room, partly because I forbid vendors from using PP, then chased him out of the building and called the FBI.
Wait, is it the FBI? Is there a Cyber-Police, SVU? I actually don’t know, I’ve never had anyone approach me that was such an obvious conman.
The AZGOP is not filled with the brightest folks, and the GQP has become a circular grift.
Hey! PowerPoint helped me earn a living & ensure a reasonably comfortable retirement. Really came in handy when showing slides of buildings we installed our system on including close-ups of how discreet the system is. Especially on National Register of Historic Placed like the old Maricopa and Pima County courthouses & California State Capitol.
Appreciate where you’re coming from though, too many PP presentations have a habit of giving Sominex a run for their money.
No offense meant, Wileybud, I suspect you were using PP as it’s intended.
Tech vendors will send in a sales rep and a technical engineer to to pitch products.
Sales reps always want to show a PP deck to impress the C-level exec’s.
I don’t allow C-level exec’s in tech discussions, so we’d ban PP, and we’d grill the engineer on the performance of their tech.
Fun story, one time a sales rep from a big storage company left his PP slides with us anyway, and I used them later to get $175,000.00 USD back after we’d spent a few million with them.
He’d made a promise in the slide deck and forgot about it during contract negotiations.
Then I fired him from our account. Two weeks before Christmas.
Because that is how you work a vendor for your employer and the shareholders, and why I like to remind everyone that John Kavanagh doesn’t know how to negotiate with our tax money.
You get the best price you can, you don’t throw $900,000.00 unearned taxpayer dollars into a contract at the last minute because you’re owned by the CEO of GEO.
Don’t feel too bad for that sales rep, BTW, he just got moved to another account and makes 250,000 in a bad year.
No offense taken Sharpie! That sales rep tale is hilarious, glad you were able to hold him to account for his negligence.
Cyber Ninjas sounds like a company designed and built by Donald Trump. I’d go a step further than saying Karen Fann is ultimately responsible and lay it on The Donald.
Not a named party to the lawsuit.