Voices for Voices®

The Revolutionary Lawyer Fighting For The Poor | Episode 164

• Founder of Voices for Voices®, Justin Alan Hayes • Season 4 • Episode 164

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The Revolutionary Lawyer Fighting For The Poor | Episode 164

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Chapter Markers
0:01 Negative Stereotypes Impacting Appalachia
13:23 Legal Battles Against Social Security Administration
26:25 Showing Gratitude to Supporters

Attorney Ned Pillersdorf returns to shine a light on the real Appalachia, a community often misunderstood and misrepresented. Join us as Ned shares stories from his impactful legal career in eastern Kentucky, describing his relentless fight against negative stereotypes and systemic injustices. His narrative takes a poignant turn when discussing the tragic fallout from the Eric C. Conn scandal, a fraudulent scheme that left thousands without social security benefits and led to devastating outcomes. Through Ned's firsthand account, we explore how these legal struggles reflect broader social challenges and the need for continued advocacy and change.

In our exploration of this legal saga, discover the incredible efforts made to restore justice for nearly 4,000 individuals wrongfully affected by the Social Security Administration's actions. Learn how advocacy, public exposure, and the involvement of high-profile figures like Commissioner O'Malley and Senator McConnell have helped shift perceptions and policies. However, the battle isn't over, as we focus on the ongoing mission to help the "Forgotten 500" who remain in dire need. As we express deep gratitude to our listeners and supporters, we acknowledge that change begins with engagement and a courageous voice—yours.

This episode uncovers the stark reality of how systemic bias and negative stereotypes have impacted innocent residents in Appalachia, particularly amid the fallout from the Eric Conn scandal. Ned Pillersdorf shares his insights on the struggles faced by clients, legal battles fought, and the ongoing need to advocate for those who have been marginalized.

• Exploration of negative stereotypes surrounding Appalachians
• Impact of Eric Kahn's fraudulent activities
• Mass suspensions of benefits and the human toll
• Legal battles led by Ned Pillersdorf and volunteer lawyers
• Comparisons to historical injustices during the McCarthy era
• Importance of community engagement and solidarity
• Ethical considerations in judge recusal during sensitive cases
• Ongoing efforts to raise awareness and support for affected individuals

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to another episode of the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. I am your host, founder and executive director of Voices for Voices, justin Allen Hayes. Thank you for joining us, whether you're tuning in on video on TV or podcasts on the audio side, we thank you. We're well into the 155 plus episodes and we couldn't do this without your love, your support, so thank you for that.

Speaker 1:

With attorney Ned Pillersdorf, who the tagline of his law practice is, we represent underdogs. He represents clients throughout the eastern half of Kentucky in both civil and criminal cases. He started as a public defender in the 1980s and what we didn't cover on the last episode is he's also highly active in the eastern Kentucky community and helped found the Floyd County Animal Shelter with his wife, Court Appeals Judge Janet L Stumbo, and he also coached in the Prestonburg Little League for over 20 years and was a head coach of the David School Varsity High School basketball team for five years. Over 400 jury trials, among other awards. In 2001, he was named the Criminal Defense Attorney of the Year from the Kentucky Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys, and Judge Ned Pillarsdorf and Judge Stumbo have three daughters Sarah Nancy and Samantha Pillarsdorf.

Speaker 1:

As far as what is practiced, what they focus on is criminal law, civil rights, personal injury, property injury, employment law.

Speaker 1:

And he is an incredible person because, as you saw and heard in week one, he is not just focused on his clients, he's focusing on how he can affect change on a bigger scale than just the clients. And he's focused 100% on the clients but kind of that secondary goal is that overarching goal is really how we as an organization really, you know, when we saw a few episodes of, you know, vinnie Paul Tan Investigates and Closing Arguments on Court TV, the fact that he was just being so candid and sharing and he had that and has that willingness to want to help others. And we agree from our organization, that's really the core of us as humans and as an organization. What Ned got into a little bit in last week's episode we're going to dive a little bit deeper into and those are really two areas so, the first being negative stereotypes of Appalachia individuals plus the big con which you may have seen or heard on Apple's platforms. So, ned, thank you for hanging with us for our second episode and joining us.

Speaker 2:

I appreciate you having me Absolutely.

Speaker 2:

I appreciate you having me Absolutely so you want to jump into the negative stereotypes about Appalachia and how that impacts things. The really where. That just hit home to me. You know I live and practice in Floyd County. I've been here 43 years and I'm not a native of the area. I did marry a coal miners daughter I love to add the fact that she was the first woman elected to the Kentucky Supreme Court and Janet Stumbo and she did resign after a 26 year career to basically join in, for lack of a word. The air con battlefield, which is a dark cloud, has been hanging over appalachia, for I guess we're coming up on our 10-year anniversary. Uh, to briefly get your viewers up to speed, ericon probably had one of the biggest social security practices in the country. If you watch the documentary the Big Con on Apple TV or their podcast, it's an amazing story and I recommend the podcast and the documentary.

Speaker 2:

What Khan did and his crimes were not that complicated. He got into a bribery arrangement with a social security judge in huntington west virginia and for seven years they met halfway between my home county of floyd and huntington west virginia at a gas station in louisa lawrence county kentucky, and I think it was nine thousand dollars a month he was bribing the judge and I think it was $9,000 a month. He was bribing the judge. This eventually resulted in Khan being indicted and charged. At one point he cut off his ankle bracelet and went to Honduras and it became a national news story. More important to me than Khan, who I just regard as a narcissist, was how the Social Security Administration reacted. Memorial Day 2015 is a stealer phrase today that will live in infamy. Got a phone call as I was driving home that day from a local lawyer. He said that one of our clients who was a Social Security recipient had received a letter immediately suspending his benefits. And on the other line was a phone call from recipient had received a letter immediately suspending his benefits. Wow, and on the other line was a phone call from the Bill Lee step Lexington Herald leader reporter saying he understand that at least 900, maybe more former con clients, mostly in Appalachia, were all getting suspension of benefits, immediate suspension of benefits letters that day. That's 900 people losing their benefits. And I'll never forget kind of the defining moment to me is when I got back to the lawyer and I said to him it's not just our client, leroy Burchett, who he's calling about, the number is 900. And he immediately said, without hesitating oh Ned, there'll be suicides.

Speaker 2:

And 10 days later the suicide started. Leroy Burchard, someone I knew, shot himself in front of his family, lost his benefits. He was a mental health, had significant mental health issues. And then, I think the next day, a young lady from Martin County, kentucky, which is on the West Virginia border she was was actually driving to my office, pulled off on the side of the road, put a gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger. And I'm chairman of the board of the Davis School, the school for low-income kids in Floyd County. We were having a meeting and I couldn't figure out why is a state police detective here at a meeting of the David School? And he said Ned, I need to talk to you. And he said I just came from a suicide scene. And he said that woman got one of those letters.

Speaker 2:

Well, the letter is from the Social Security Administration and the history of Kahn was before Kahn got indicted. It was actually during the week of one of the Senate shutdowns, but they had a hearing about Kahn. Kahn took the Fifth Amendment and the leader of the charge was Oklahoma Senator Tom Colburn. He was a doctor, well-respected member of the Senate and he was kind of leading the charge about what Kahn was doing. This was actually at a time before Kahn was even indicted. But Coburn said I want to shock your listeners he did this thing called lying. And he immediately said without any justification, all of the Kahn clients were in on the scam. There was zero evidence any Kahn client was in on a scam. Eric Kahn never told a single client by the way, I'm driving up to Lawrence County, kentucky, today to bribe the judge. That never happened.

Speaker 2:

But he slimed the people and, as a result, the Social Security Administration began these oppressive hearings and this is truly a retreat back to the days of Bill McCarthy, killed by association. Every hearing started out saying you're a former con client. Because of your association, any evidence Khan submitted is automatically inadmissible and there's a secret finding of fraud you can't challenge because Khan was your lawyer. Remember, these people are totally innocent. Many of them operate with significant intellectual and mental health issues and these oppressive hearings went on. They were mass hearings. We had about 1,800 hearings.

Speaker 2:

We had to scramble around and find volunteer lawyers. The reason we had to find volunteer lawyers is the way you get paid in the Social Security cases. You can get some of the back pay. O'connor already got the back pay. The good news was we found, through the wonderful work of Alpared, legal Aid and other organizations, nascar. This was the biggest volunteer mobilization in the history of this nation. We found lawyers to do more than a thousand hearings. These hearings are not walking over the courthouse and getting a reckless driving charge reduced to speeding. These are complex hearings with clients with mental health and intellectual challenges. So we had these hearings and then we had a bunch of good news the federal courts. We argued they have brought back the days of Joe McCarthy and we talked about Milo Radulovic and Milo Radulovic in the history of this nation. He was in the Air Force and during the Joe McCarthy days. Arguably the beginning of the end of the Joe McCarthy era is when courageous CBS journalist Edward R Murrow said they are putting Milo Radulovic through a hearing based on secret evidence in an envelope that neither he nor his lawyer can see nor challenge. But Conkline's got those same manila envelopes and we had the wonderful opinion called Hicks v Colvin.

Speaker 2:

The Sixth Circuit agreed with Judge Thapar Judge Thapar and he was then a US District Judge. He's now on the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati. He wrote a remarkable opinion denouncing these hearings and the first sentence resonated. He said the former concliants have been afforded less rights than Al-Qaeda terrorists. I learned how to spell Al-Qaeda as a result of all this. And what Thapar was talking about was there was a famous Hamdi case where Hamdi was an Al-Qaeda guy captured on the battlefield. Did he have the right to see and challenge the evidence against him?

Speaker 2:

And after we won in the Sixth Circuit, the SSA did not stop. They challenged it in the Seventh Circuit. We won again. I went to South Carolina and won the Gary Kirk case, which I'm proud of because the judge in a published opinion praised my not my the volunteer lawyer network. And we eventually won in every appellate court.

Speaker 2:

But what fueled all this Was this negative anti-Appalachian stereotypes Beverly hillbillies Are the people of Appalachia viewed as lazy, shiftless people, quick to get on the draw? Here's my question If Kahn's clients let's say Kahn had represented a bunch of investors and the Securities Exchange Commission was going to put them through hearings, would they have gone after those clients as relentlessly as they went after the con clients? We litigated against them for nine and a half years, uh, and they would never negotiate with us. Uh, and kind of the. We've been kind of on a winning streak toward the end, um, and you know, looking back, you know, did we make some decisions right, made some decisions wrong? I've beaten myself up. When this first started we did not convey hard enough and important enough that the former conch line should not represent themselves. In Appalachia we have a lot of very religious people who think if they pray a lot they'll be fine, think if they pray a lot they'll be fine. And if I had to do it all over again and this is on me and I regret this and have remorse we should have been more aggressive and telling these people not to represent themselves because it's disaster.

Speaker 2:

I ended up, if you watch a documentary, putting hundreds of signs in front of the SSA office, doing a little criminal trespassing, I guess don't represent yourself. What we did right. We participated in podcasts, a documentary, and I don't know if this was related or unrelated, but a year or two ago, when Apple TV was heavily promoting the documentary the big con they actually flew me and some other people out to Hollywood for a premiere, which was interesting, and I remember the plane stopped in Salt Lake City. We were changing planes and suddenly the SSA wanted to talk settlement, which had never happened in nine years. And you can't convince me that the premiere of the documentary and the publicity didn't produce a change in strategy. Now, to be clear, no one from the SSA ever said hey, ned, that documentary kind of bothered us. But after that we got a settlement for the Forgotten 500.

Speaker 2:

And this once again goes back to the Appalachian stereotypes stereotypes this is merely for more of the legal issue. After the first round we won about half the cases, but we had 750 people who lost their benefits. After we won the Hicks case, declaring these mass hearings unconstitutional, we stuck a stake in Joe. 250 people got their benefits back because they had active cases in federal court. How about the other 500? The SSA said they all defaulted. They all got letters saying they had so many days to file appeals and for whatever reason they didn't.

Speaker 2:

Well, here's some law I learned that I did not know. And, by the way, I had help from WilmerHale, one of the most prestigious law firms in the country. And, by the way, I had help from WilmerHale, one of the most prestigious law firms in the country. That law firm is full of former US Supreme Court law clerks. It's Robert Mueller's firm, by the way. By the way, they were heroic and co-counseling with me. But what about the other 500? There's something called the American Pipe Doctrine. Basically, if there's a pending class action, that tolls everyone's statute. So we argued they didn't default.

Speaker 2:

And we eventually got a wonderful settlement with the Social Security Administration. We got 90% of what we wanted and we're still trying to get the word out to these 500 people. And I say that get the word out. You know, we've been representing this volunteer network for 10 years. We don't know who these almost 4,000 people are. Social Security Administration will not give us their names and addresses, citing Social Security confidentiality. So the settlement with the forgotten 500, I want to know who they were. Let them know. The settlement was wonderful. Here's what it was these 500 people, the people we've been most worried about, the people who've been talking about killing themselves or homeless. If they simply ask for a new hearing, they get their monthly benefits back now and if they win their new hearing, they get seven, eight years of back pay. That's six figures.

Speaker 2:

The problem was and this goes back to the nature of Appalachia how do we get hold of these 500 people? Well, we held press conferences, did social media and once again, we asked CSA for their names and addresses and the answer was no. So we probably got hold of maybe 200, hopefully 250 of the 500. And these are the people who live up in hollers probably have mental health challenges and those hearings, by the way, are going on now. So, at the end of the day, how successful were we for the former con clients? Here's what the scoreboard says they targeted 3,800 people.

Speaker 2:

Thanks to recent courageous action by SSA Commissioner O'Malley, who I think, unfortunately just resigned last week, he's canceled thousands of hearings, canceled overpayments of tens of millions of dollars. Today we have about 400 former con clients who have lost their benefits. Now we have reached out to our great governor, andy Beshear, who's been a great ally. Please contact President Biden before you go out of office. These 400 people never should have lost their benefits. They were never involved in the conspiracy with khan. Uh, and, as I say, it was all of this fueled by anti-apalachian stereotypes beverly, hillbillies that that's my opinion. Uh, the ssa. They would talk about fraud, they'd talk about saving the government money. But I just can, can't believe that if Khan's clients had not fit the Appalachian stereotype mold, none of this would have ever happened. We're still trying to help these people and, like I said, justin earlier, podcast to me. Yes, I wanted to help the Khan clients I represented in front of me, but there's a bigger picture here.

Speaker 2:

Did Tom Colburn, influential senator, start this smear saying all the con clients were involved in a criminal conspiracy? Did that motivate that bureaucracy to come at these people relentlessly to the point where Judge Sapar said they were treated worse than Al Qaeda terrorists? Judge Sapar is no liberal, he's Mitch McConnell's favorite judge, republican. And you know one of the last things, by the way, commissioner O'Malley did, I wish I'd received more publicity. For the first time after nine and a half tough years, he wrote a letter to Senator McConnell and said oh, by the way, the Kahn clients were innocent. He said they were unwittingly drawn in. That's the first time in nine and a half years, pardon my language. We stopped with all this SSA crap that they were somehow Kahn's criminal co-conspirators or in on the scam, as the late senator colburn uh, infamously said wow, I mean that's an that's incredible.

Speaker 1:

When you talk about social security administration, that's that's part of the our nation and uh, to have people being taken advantage of like, like that is just that it's unheard of and it obviously shouldn't be happening. And the the fact that, like you said, you're able to uh bring together uh as many uh attorneys to to help, uh just shows uh how many other people uh are, uh you know, in it. And, like you said, those hearings weren't short hearings, they were complicated and so these attorneys knew kind of what they were getting into and it just, like you said, you talk about, you know treated worse than you know somebody in Al-Qaeda. I mean that's really saying it's saying a lot. I mean that's really saying it's saying a lot. And, like you said, if the individuals didn't fit that Appalachian stereotype, would that have occurred? And just as ironic as that is, with you flying out to Hollywood and you know stopping in Utah and then getting that call, it's very interesting and I think we all can agree that was probably somehow related to the premiere and that happened happen.

Speaker 1:

And we're saying a lot more of how the media and these Netflix specials on certain cases and they're getting revived and sometimes that's just part of what it unfortunately takes is the spotlight needs to get shown, it needs to go from a flashlight to a spotlight and thank you for that work that you have and you're continuing to do there, because that's huge and working with or against the government and having all that and being told the confidentiality they can't give you the names and to be able to contact those individuals. I mean that that right, there is, uh, that's a heinous thing to to to do. We're, we're in america and you know you should be able to get a hold of these individuals and uh, that's uh that. That that's just hard to even think about having my parents draw on Social Security and if they were impacted like the individuals you have and you are representing, I couldn't imagine how are they going to continue on and to you know, have you and the team of attorneys. I think that's huge and shows a big heart too of kindness and that's just amazing.

Speaker 1:

Could you touch on we're getting close to the end of the second episode on judge recusal for certain cases, where you know there's the ethics side, if there's a certain case or certain topic that comes up that usually judges will say, hey, I'm going to recuse myself from this particular case for association with some people involved and what recusal means. And then maybe lastly just touch on when Judge Mullins like you said, I think it was last week you said it was a one-minute hearing and you said, with all due respect, I think you should recuse yourself. And when he said no, how rare that really is.

Speaker 2:

Sometimes. Sometimes when you represent a client, you need to ask a judge or recuse your. If you're a lawyer, you want to get along with judges, but you've also, more importantly, got an obligation to your client. And Sabrina did have a criminal case after we filed the lawsuit and I asked Judge Mullins to recuse. And, in fairness to Judge Mullins, he recused, but he did. If you look at the transcript of the video, he indicated to me that he didn't think he needed to recuse. He assured me he could be fair and impartial and this is just me.

Speaker 2:

Subjectively, I felt uncomfortable, more with his demeanor than what actually said, and I declined to actually go back and practice in that court after that. Now you know Judge Mullins isn't here today, but that's just me subjectively. He did. I got the impression he did not appreciate me asking him to recuse, but you know when your attorney uh quote spike lee sometimes you gotta do the right thing and I you know sabrina was facing felony charges. She eventually got sent to prison and this was an important hearing. She was actually charged with the escape. The escape was she was off the ankle bracelet.

Speaker 2:

Oh my gosh, she was off the ankle bracelet because she cut off the sex with the bailiff, the administrator. So it was an important hearing and, in fairness to Judge Mullins, he did recuse. It made me uncomfortable and that's probably all I need to say about that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that sums it up Well, ned. We're at the end of our second episode. I just want to give you a big thank you for coming on being transparent, really talking about the SSA cases and what's going on there the big con, and then what happened with Sabrina and what's really continuing to shed a huge spotlight on Letcher County with what's happening there. Thank you so much for joining us, ned.

Speaker 2:

I appreciate you having me. Thanks you bet.

Speaker 1:

We want to thank you, our listeners, our viewers. We couldn't do this without you. We want to thank again Attorney Ned Pillersdorf. He represents the underdogs of eastern Kentucky helping clients and helping the big picture of helping people. That may be impacted on some of the case material, and so we wanna thank him for joining us for two episodes, taking time out of his busy schedule, and we wanna thank you, our viewers, our listeners, couldn't do this without you, your support. We ask you to subscribe, like share, and we will be with you next week on another episode of the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. So until then, I am Justin Allen Hayes, founder and executive director of Voices for Voices, and please be a voice for you or somebody in need.

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