Warning lawyer complains about “thugs” and threatening letters

Thousands of bloggers and website operators in Germany and Austria had received warning letters over the past few months because of the integration of Google Fonts.

The background to this was a decision by the Munich District Court in January 2022, which assessed the integration of Google Fonts, a library of more than 1,400 fonts, as a violation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Reason: The IP addresses of the website visitors end up on Google/Alphabet.

The result of the judgment was a veritable wave of warnings. At least two lawyers stood out with a particularly large number of letters: the Berlin lawyer Kilian Lenard and the Lower Austrian lawyer Marcus Hohenecker.

Lenard is currently being investigated for commercial fraud and extortion in 2,418 cases. The lawyer is said to have collected 346,000 euros on behalf of a client from website operators.

The Austrian case is likely to have a much larger dimension. Lawyer Hohenecker had sent out mass warning letters on behalf of a client and demanded 190 euros in damages.

In January 2023, the Vienna Public Prosecutor’s Office for Economic Affairs and Corruption (WKSTA) got involved in the investigation. This happens from a damage sum of five million euros. Accordingly, Hohenecker would have to have sent at least 26,000 letters, like the standard calculated at that time.

The WKSTA stated that “the exact number of warning letters as well as the amount of damage is the subject of the investigation”. However, one assumes “several tens of thousands of warning letters”.

Hohenecker has now publicly complained about threats and attacks on his person. In the ORF program “Bürgeranwalt” Hohenecker reported that a “shitstorm” caused the tires of his car to be punctured several times.

There was also a riot in front of his office and he received threatening phone calls and threatening letters. In addition, “thugs” would have visited him at his home address. According to Hohenecker, web hosts, tax consultants and the bank had given him notice.

The lawyer also blamed the “power of the media” for the fact that the investigations by the public prosecutor’s office, which had initially been discontinued, and a disciplinary action by the bar association had been resumed. However, the large number of warning letters probably contributed to this.

Good news for the affected recipients of the letters: The demands of 190 euros each should be obsolete, as the standard writes. In the ORF program, Hohenecker said that he had “enough of the matter”.

If the investigations lead to an indictment and a conviction, Hohenecker faces a prison sentence of up to ten years. The presumption of innocence applies to the lawyer.