Doing it Wrong: Puffy Cheek Bandit Tries to Use the FDCPA in a Non-FDCPA Way, Fails

The plan is, I’m going to marry Cazzie L. Williams in a quick but tasteful ceremony where I’ll probably cry a little from happiness — the kind where all you have to do is lightly blot the corners of your eyes and there’s nothing gross like snot or mascara smears — and we’ll register at Williams-Sonoma and of course I won’t wear white because I’m pushing 40 and the jig is up but the reason I’ll do this is because Williams’s $390 billion dollar lawsuit against the District of Newark, New Jersey; the Federal Bureau of Prisons; and the United States Department of Treasury is SURE to be a slam-dunk.

It’ll still be a cash bar, though, because I’m not sure when, exactly, they’ll back the 47 trucks filled with money up to our door.

The future Mr Mike Bevel (the aforementioned Cazzie L. Williams) is representing himself because he’s brilliant and I love him. At issue is this:

Cazzie L. Williams had been a former postal worker who moonlighted as “The Puffy Cheek Bandit.” (A nickname he did not give himself, p.s., just so we’re clear.) As the Puffy Cheek Bandit (so called because all witnesses mentioned Williams’s puffy cheeks), Williams knocked over roughly 27 banks in five states and got away with more than $100,000.

All told, Williams pleaded guilty to robbing four banks in New Jersey, and admitted robbing 23 more in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland and Virginia in a period beginning September 19, 1998, in Newark and continuing regularly until June 19, 2000.

He was sentenced to 13 years.

Which brings us to the case he’s filing. Almost as soon as Williams took up residency in prison, he began working on overturning his conviction. He has claimed that his plea agreement was defective, which, in his mind, should have voided his criminal judgment.

None of the courts where he tried this were particularly crazy about his legal arguments, and Williams seemed to be getting nowhere. Which is why he changed tactics recently and is now trying to overturn his judgment using the FDCPA.

Wait, what?

According to Williams’s sworn affidavit of 8 February 2011, he believes that he was “kidnapped by the richest and most powerful organization in the world, the UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT, and was involuntarily detained (for the past 8 years of his life), and extorted in its dungeon, the BUREAU OF PRISONS to liquidate an unlawful prison debt of 156 months, and an unlawful debt of $105,797.85 made payable to defendant UNITED STATES DEPT OF TREASUREY based on a ‘BANK ROBBERY’ charge he never pled guilty to.”

It’s that “unlawful debt” part that triggered, in Williams’s mind at least, the FDCPA connection. Because why wouldn’t there be an FDCPA connection?

Well, of course, there are a frillion reasons why, the main being, as explained by an industry attorney: “The FDCPA does not provide for injunctive relief of any kind, just damages and attorneys’ fees, and it certainly could never be used to collaterally attack a judgment, be it civil or criminal, in light of the Rooker-Feldman doctrine.”

There’s also the matter of: none of the entities named in the suit are technically sue-able. As the article I linked to above points out, “Absent a waiver, sovereign immunity shields the United States and its agencies — including all defendants named here — from suit.”

But still: $390 billion! I– I mean, we – are going to be rich!