Interesting stuff... Stephen Richer while working in the Steptoe & Johnson LLP (now Steptoe LLP) cryptocurrency department out of Washington D.C. in 2019, represented Overstock and Patrick Byrne when Byrne stepped down. Richer played a key role as a legal and policy advisor to Overstock and its blockchain ventures (Medici Ventures and tZERO) during their regulatory challenges and cryptocurrency initiatives. Richer was one of the legal counsel from Steptoe in the shareholder class action litigation surrounding Overstock’s controversial OSTKO "digital dividend". Richer represented Overstock in defending the structure of the token distribution against allegations by short sellers that the digital dividend constituted market manipulation under federal securities laws. Courts ultimately sided with Overstock's legal defense, dismissing the core market manipulation claims on the grounds that the mechanics and conditions of the digital dividend were fully and publicly disclosed. Although Richer scrubbed this from the internet. In 2019, when he published his CyberNinjas style "audit" report that aired unfounded election fraud conspiracies based on anecdotal "evidence," Richer was also employed in Steptoe’s Blockchain & Cryptocurrency Practice Group (led by former federal prosecutor Jason Weinstein and former DHS official Alan Cohn), as Richer and the team regularly advised cryptocurrency enterprises, including Patrick Byrne's tZERO and Medici Ventures. Richer advised Overstock’s fintech arms on federal securities compliance, navigating alternative trading system ("ATS") frameworks with the SEC, and addressing token classification (security vs. utility tokens). Steptoe partnered closely with Byrne's Medici Ventures through broad industry initiatives. Steptoe founded and administered the Blockchain Alliance, a public-private forum that facilitated dialogue between leading crypto/blockchain companies and federal law enforcement agencies (such as the SEC, CFTC, FBI, and DOJ).Coin Think Tank, Bitcoin, Digital Assets, Crypto Currency. Medici Ventures and tZERO participated alongside Steptoe in educating regulators and law enforcement on regulatory compliance, anti-money laundering (AML), and smart contract standards. During that period Byrne was making a strong push for his blockchain voting app Voatz, that even in 2021, while Richer was Maricopa County Recorder collaborating with the Maricopa County Board of Supervisor, Jack Sellers was oddly (all things considered big picture at the time considering the Arizona Audit funded by Byrne was in full swing), Sellers commented to the Arizona Republic with positive support for Byrne's Voatz blockchain voting. voatz.com/2021/08/30/city-of… 12news.com/article/news/poli… azcentral.com/story/news/loc… Interestingly, during the Arizona Audit, Richer was part of negotiating the agreement for his law firm partner from Steptoe and Johnson (who represented Overstock and Byrne), former Congressman John Shadegg, to get paid $500 an hour to serve as the "Special Master" in Maricopa County, accessing the voting machine source code and hard drives. On November 4, 2020, Shadegg spoke at a Trump campaign volunteer event telling Trump campaign volunteers, "THEY'RE STEALING IT FROM YOU RIGHT NOW!," adding, "we just got word that there were hundreds of thousands of ballots dropped in just now." Both Kenneth Scott Koch and Sommer Tolley attended that event. Richer's law partner Shadegg and his team took copies of the Splunk logs and source code of the Maricopa County voting machines during Shadegg's analysis in 2021, that he was paid very nicely for by Arizona taxpayers. azmirror.com/2022/01/28/spec…