Brazilian & Irish Zeek clawbacks voluntarily dismissed
Not really sure what’s going on here, but following the filing of a clawback lawsuit against seven Brazilian and six Irish Zeek Rewards affiliates back in May, the Receiver has now filed notices of dismissal.
No explicit reason is given for the July 7th notices, with the Receiver simply citing a rule that permits a plaintiff to
dismiss an action without a court order by filing a notice of dismissal before the opposing party serves either an answer or a motion for summary judgment.
The court approved the Receiver’s notices (which apply to all Brazilian and Irish net-winner defendants), ordering the respective cases dismissed on the 9th.
Reading between the lines, it appears none of the Brazilian or Irish Zeek defendants had replied to the Receiver’s litigation.
The original lawsuit was filed on May 1st, with summons executed via email against Brazilian investors on May 5th and Irish investors on May 14th.
Under North Carolina civil law, respondents are required to file a response to civil lawsuits within 30 days of receiving a summons. July 7th is roughly fifty to sixty days from the date of summons in both lawsuits.
In other jurisdictions where defendants have failed to respond to clawback litigation, default judgement has been sought in North Carolina. Why that wasn’t followed through with the Brazilian net-winners is as of yet unclear.
Both the Brazilian and Irish clawback lawsuits however were dismissed without prejudice, meaning the Receiver is free to file again at a later date.
One possibility for the dismissal I can think of is that litigation might later be filed via local courts in Brazil and Ireland.
All in all Brazilian and Irish top Zeek Rewards net-winners stole $1.8 million dollars from the scheme’s victims. For now, seemingly, they are off the hook.
Footnote: Our thanks to Don@ASDUpdates for providing a copy of the Receiver’s July 7th “Notices of Voluntary Dismissal” and the court’s subsequent July 9th order.
maybe the costs of pursuing the case against brazilian and irish netwinners is too high, and maybe receiver bell feels he will not get the desired cooperation from the courts there in enforcing foreign judgments? so, why waste time?
I would say that they don’t have any jurisdiction in Brazil or Ireland. That’s why they emailed the summons to see if it would scare people in to paying, when no one responded that had to dismiss.
I haven’t heard of any other foreign net-winners receiving a summons via email. All seems very strange.
I don’t have access to that particular case, but here’s an example from “Bell v. Solomon et al” (the BVI net winners):
It means that the summons, printed out on paper, will be sent out via a local lawfirm. It will most likely include a translation to the local language, but the local lawfirm should normally handle factors like that.
Email summons would have been stopped by the District Court.
This article should probably be corrected.
I didn’t find the original source there, but all similar cases have the “NOTICE: Counsel shall print …” requirement.