UPDATE:

Apparently Joe has filed a frivolous criminal complaint against me.

I received the following e-mail today:

On 9/22/06, VITO CECCIA < 32056@lapd.lacity.org> wrote:

Mr. Beard, I am Detective Ceccia #32056. I am an investigator for the
Los Angeles Police Department. A criminal complaint has been made
against you by Joe Escalante. Please call me at 213-972-2934 or email
me regarding this matter. I would like to get your side of the story.
Thank You.

My reply to Detective Ceccia:

Dear Detective Ceccia,

The story in a nutshell is that Joe Escalante concealed royalty income
from and plagiarized the work of an old friend who is now deceased, and
sold it to Sony and Adidas (there's much more involved in Joe's wrongdoing in
this matter, which goes back to the 1980s, but that's the most egregious of his
offenses connected with this matter). When the original creator of the work Joe
sold as his own died, Joe invaded an online forum dedicated to memorializing
that person and commenced to harass and abuse various people who knew the truth and
who stated it clearly in that forum. During that period of time, I attempted to
appeal to whatever better nature Joe might have, and get him to make reparations for
his theft. His response was to call me a blackmailer and threaten me with legal
sanctions including a criminal complaint with the FBI and the LAPD, and I assume
that your inquiry is the fruit of that threat.

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a blackmailer. I made it very clear to Joe that I was not threatening him or demanding money from him. I did urge him to make amends with his former bandmates and pay them the moneys owed for many years for royalties and sales of work he did not create yet passed off as his own, but as I myself did not stand to profit by this, I don't see how he can call it blackmail. Furthermore, no threat was given or implied. I let Joe know that I am in possession of public record documents (which I received from Joe's deceased ex-bandmate) that clearly show him committing perjury in a court of law regarding the matter of the royalties he owes, and I told him that those documents will be published and publicized as aggressively as possible, and that his best option for minimizing the damage to his reputation that might result from that would be to make proper reparations, so that it would be possible to conclude the article(s) with an account of his willingness to undo his own theft of royalties and heal the long-standing rift between him and his ex-bandmates. In essence, I offered him an opportunity to ameliorate or lessen the impact of publication of these public documents, and nothing more. Whatever his ultimate decision (and he seems to have made it) those documents WILL be published, and the initial groundwork has been laid already at http://www.vandalscandal.com

Joe has a long history of abusing both the legal system and the unwritten rules of basic gentlemanly conduct in order to further his own agenda, and this is simply another example of that behavior. He has been known to harass his detractors via frivolous lawsuits and complaints, threatening telephone calls, e-mails, and other communications, etc., and in the past has abused his status as an attorney and used the wealth he has garnered via plagiarism and theft of royalties to overwhelm the relatively meager legal defenses of those he has stolen from. These facts can be corroborated by many people familiar with him and with the facts of his history in the music industry. Just a year or two ago, Joe filed a lawsuit against Brett Gurewitz, CEO and founder of Epitaph Records, in connection with a flyer that was being posted around town explaining some of Joe's more egregious legal transgressions. Mr. Gurewitz successfully countersued Joe for filing frivolous lawsuits and won. In 2005, Joe wrote an e-mail physically threatening Kevin Anderson, the attorney representing his ex-bandmates in The Vandals. Lawyer Anderson informed Joe that he would require a letter of apology including a promise by Joe to maintain a minimum distance from Mr. Anderson (I believe an explicit proviso was included to the effect that Joe avoid even driving on Mr. Anderson's street), and that failure to provide this apology and promise to maintain distance would result in the State Bar Association being informed of Joe's physical threat. Joe did provide that apology letter, with the promise to maintain his distance from Mr. Anderson included, and no more was made of the matter. I believe that Kevin Anderson still has this letter and could be persuaded to produce it if that would be helpful.

Please forgive me if this is a strictly honest and straightforward inquiry on your part, but it crosses my mind that you may in fact be a friend of Joe's, and that this investigation may be a product of croneyism. I hope that is not the case. Whatever your connection with Mr. Escalante, I urge you to serve justice and your own conscience in this matter, and refrain from any temptation to abuse the law yourself in furtherance of Joe's selfish, greedy, abusive, and hateful agenda. The bottom line is that lawyer Escalante is dirty, dirty, dirty, and this criminal complaint (whatever its nature may be) is entirely without merit. If Joe Escalante is in fact a friend of yours, I further urge you to seek out a better class of friend in future.



Detective Ceccia responds:

Mr. Beard,
I have no personal connection with Mr. Escalante. I clearly saw from the emails you sent Escalante that you yourself are not looking to make any monetary gains by your actions. Unfortunately the internet may not be the proper forum for situation. Escalante's former band mates may want to address the matter in civil court. Although you are not looking to making any monetary gains from your actions, you are acting as a third party interested in having reparations made to Escalante's former band mates. You are threatening to obtain property, in the form of reparations, from him on behalf of others by publishing information about him on the internet. Per 518 and 519 of the Penal Code subsection three and four fear for extortion could be induced as a threat to expose, or impute to an individual any deformity, disgrace or crime or to expose any secrete affecting him. If you have a contact number please email it to me. Thank You for your time. Det Ceccia.



Here are the sections of the Penal Code that Detective Ceccia referred to in his e-mail: 
    518.  Extortion is the obtaining of property from another, with his
    consent, or the obtaining of an official act of a public officer, induced
    by a wrongful use of force or fear, or under color of official right.

    519.  Fear, such as will constitute extortion, may be induced by a threat, either:
      1. To do an unlawful injury to the person or property of the individual
         threatened or of a third person; or,
      2. To accuse the individual threatened, or any relative of his, or member of his
         family, of any crime; or,
      3. To expose, or to impute to him or them any deformity, disgrace or crime; or,
      4. To expose any secret affecting him or them

I replied to Det. Ceccia:

Dear Detective Ceccia,

Thank you for your swift reply. I'm glad to hear that you have no personal connection with Joe, and I am willing to take your word for it.

I don't know what information Joe provided you with, but if he showed you any e-mails purporting to be from me that clearly show me committing any crime, then that information was tampered with before you saw it. I'm sure you are aware that e-mail is extremely easy to alter, and I categorically deny sending any to Joe that would constitute a crime.

Regarding California Penal Code 518 and 519, I have a few points to make:

1. No "wrongful use of force or fear" has been made. Informing someone of an inevitable and unavoidable publication of information is not the same as threatening them with the avoidable prospect of same... and since the information in question is verifiable fact from the records of a public court, the term 'wrongful' doesn't apply.

2. Without wrongful use of force or fear, subsection 3's proviso against imputing a crime to an individual is void. In other words, while it may be a crime to wrongfully accuse another of a crime, it isn't a crime to rightfully do so, especially when evidence exists in the public record showing that the person did in fact undeniably commit the crime. In any case, accusation is not the same as simple presentation of information from the public record.

3. PC 519 subsection 4 states that "[exposing] any secret affecting him or them" constitues blackmail. The information involved is a matter of public record and/or common knowledge in the (large) community of people who knew Joe and Steven "Stevo" Jensen when they both played in Stevo's incarnation of The Vandals. Since the information is not secret, subsection 4 clearly does not apply even if we ignore the fact that no "wrongful use of force or fear" exists.

If you have any further questions for me, I will be delighted to answer them. Unfortunately, I have no telephone number in the United States where I can currently be reached. If you would like to schedule a conversation, and the schedule does not conflict with my other responsibilities, I can try to call you.
In response to my communication above, Det. Ceccia informed me that the matter would be dropped entirely.