Lawsuits and Chess Politics
By Bill Wall
Zsuzsanna (Susan) Polgar, former world
women’s chess champion and a board member of the US Chess Federation (USCF), is
being sued by the USCF for alleged unauthorized email access. She
allegedly accessed email messages sent between other USCF board members and a
lawyer without authorization. Her husband, Hoainhan
(Paul) Truong, is being sued for allegedly authoring so-called “Fake Sam Sloan”
posts on Usenet.
In December 2006, when Paul Truong, business manager and
husband of Susan Polgar (they were married in
December 2006), became a candidate in the election for the USCF Executive
Board, many posts signed by Sam Sloan (and sometimes by a fake Ray Gordon) were
made on the Internet targeting several USCF members and candidates in the
election. Fake Sam Sloan identities were coming from
In May, 2007, Polgar and Truong
moved to
In June, 2007, Truong filed for personal bankruptcy.
In July, 2007, Susan Polgar and
Paul Truong (along with Randy Bauer) were elected to four-year terms to the
Executive Board of the USCF. Sam Sloan, a candidate to the board, was
defeated. He sat on the USCF Board from 2006-2007, before losing his bid
for re-election the following year.
Shortly after the election, Susan Polgar
and Paul Truong became dissatisfied with the re-design of the USCF Web site by
Brian Mottershead and Hal Bogner,
whose company ChessMagnetSchool was working on the
redesign. Polgar and Truong asked that Mottershead and ChessMagnetSchool
be fired.
Mottershead and Bogner then made
accusations of fake posts on the Internet by Truong. Susan Polgar responded that Mottershead
and Bogner were waging a vendetta. She said, “These
people started all these accusations the day after I criticized them about
their job performance.” She later said, “I have an impeccable reputation,
and they are trying to damage my reputation.”
In September 2007, there appeared postings of an
advertisement of a bogus sexually explicit DVD of Mr. Sam Sloan's wife.
The postings were meant to ensure the defeat of Sloan in his bid for
re-election to the USCF board in 2007.
During and after the 2007 Executive Board election, there
were over 2,500 separate Internet postings by someone impersonating Sam Sloan
(known as the “Fake Sam Sloan” postings).
From June 2005 until September 26, 2007, an individual posted over 2,500
messages on the USENET purporting to be Sam Sloan and several other individuals
in the chess community.
On October 2, 2007, Susan Polgar
and her husband, Paul Truong, who is also a board member of the USCF, were sued
by Samuel H. Sloan, a former board member, for allegedly making offensive
posts in his name (Fake Sam Sloan) on Internet bulletin boards and Usenet
newsgroups such as rec.games.chess.misc. He
accused Susan Polgar and Paul Truong of posting
thousands of remarks in his name over a two-year period in an effort to win
election to the board (Polgar and Truong were elected
to the board and Sloan was defeated). Many of the remarks supposedly made
by Sloan were defamatory or obscene. Susan Polgar
and Truong both denied writing the posts in Sloan’s name. The
lawsuit was filed in
Several females, including a few who worked for or with
the USCF, were also targeted by this imposter. In addition to
impersonating Sam Sloan, these posts attacked and/or libeled the USCF, Sam
Sloan, Ray Gordon, Brian Lafferty, Bill Goichberg,
Erik Anderson, Beatriz Marinello, Hal Bogner, Paul Hoffman, Jennifer and Greg Shahade,
and other USCF members. The language was frequently extremely profane,
obscene, indecent, and racist. U.S. Code 47 USC 223(a)(1)(c) states that
it is a crime if one utilizes a telecommunications device without
disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass
any person who receves the communications.
Sam Sloan filed a $20 million lawsuit in
In his lawsuit, Sloan as plaintiff,
listed his defendants as Paul Truong, Susan Polgar,
Joel Channing, William Goichberg, the USCF, Bill
Hall, Herbert Rodney Vaughn, Gregory Alexander, Frank Niro,
Grant Perks, William Brock, Randy Hough, Randy Bauer, Jim Berry,
On November 29, 2007, a letter was sent to Truong
demanding that he formally admit or deny that he was involved in the Fake Sam
Sloan postings. Truong refused t comply
with this request.
On January 15, 2008, four members of the USCF Executive
Board issued a statement asking Truong to step down from his position on the
Board. Truong denied any wrongdoing and refused to resign.
However, while the suit was pending, a specially-created
USCF subcommittee hired an attorney, Karl Kronenberger
of
The rest of the committee members were Randy Bauer
(chair), Bill Goichberg, Joel Channing, Randy Hough,
and Jim Berry.
In January, 2008, David Ulevitch,
a computer expert with OpenDNS, examined a report by
Brian Mottershead, an administer at the USCF, and
concluded that Paul Truong was the author of about 2,500 messages on the
Internet posted in other people’s names, particularly Sam Sloan. Ulevitch wrote that Mottershead’s
report “provides over a dozen different data points from IP addresses to
locations to user-agents and more that all lead to a single conclusion with an
overwhelming amount of evidence.” The IP
addresses for the fake Sam Sloan posts were all owned by the XO Communications
located in
Another computer expert, Dr. Robert
Jones of Craic Computing LLC, concluded, “The
technical approach taken by Mr. Mottershead in his
analysis is valid and it appears to have been carried out professionally and
correctly.” Dr. Jones agreed
that the person identified as ‘chesspromotion’ on the
USCF’s internal forum Web site was the author of the
fake postings, but was unable to identify the real person behind the user
account ‘chesspromotion.’
In June 2008, Susan Polgar
quoted directly from confidential email communication between the subcommittee
and Mr. Kronenberger in email messages to the USCF
board and on her chess forum Web site (susanpolgar.blogspot.com).
In one message, attorney Kronenberger outlined legal
strategies and stated, “We want to put Truong in a position where he has an
incentive to resign from the board, and indeed does resign from the
board.” Kronenberger asked Polgar
how she had seen the confidential email messages. He contended that the
email messages were stolen and that Polgar obtained
illegal access to Rany Hough’s email account and
published illegally obtained material.
In February 2008, another lawsuit (lawsuit #2) was filed
by Gordon Roy Parker (Ray Gordon). He based his suit on the report
alleging that Paul Truong faked postings on the Internet in Mr. Parker's
name. Parker also named Sam Sloan in his suit as part of a conspiracy to
destroy the USCF and profit from its demise. Mr. Parker sought damages,
saying he was libeled and defamed. Parker runs a web site on how to
seduce women. He charged that the USCF
conspired to make fake Usenet posts in order to defame Parker.
On June 25, 2008, the USCF filed a lawsuit (lawsuit #3)
in San Francisco Superior Court seeking subpoenas to force Internet service
providers to turn over the IP addresses that had been used to gain access to
the USCF board's email accounts. At the
time, this lawsuit cited unknown people as defendants (USCF against John Does
1-10). It was amended in October,
2008 to name the defendants.
Susan Polgar maintains she
found the email messages on the Internet, but did not access them without
authorization. In August, 2008, Susan Polgar
said in an interview that "the messages were public knowledge; they were
on the Internet."
On July 28, 2008, the USCF instituted legal proceedings
against Polgar and Truong in the District Court of
Lubbock, Texas for leaking confidential emails from the USCF Executive
Board. The USCF charged them with wire fraud and the U.S. Secret Service
has said that the case was referred to its
On August 9, 2008, a motion to remove Paul Truong from
the USCF Executive Board was put before the delegates of the USCF. The
motion was defeated by a clear majority of the delegates present.
In August 2008, Susan Polgar
filed her own lawsuit (lawsuit #4) in
Susan offered to settle her suit against the USCF for $1
plus an apology from the USCF for all the grievous wrongs done to her.
Sloan’s lawsuit was dismissed on August 28, 2008, by US
District Judge Denny Chin of the
On September 2, 2008, Judge J. Curtis Joyner dismissed
Gordon Parker's lawsuit because it was not coherently argued very well by Mr.
Parker, who acted as his own attorney.
On October 24, 2008, a new lawsuit (lawsuit #5) was
filed: USCF & Randy Hough vs. Susan Polgar and
Gregory Alexander, Case Number CGC-08-476777. This suit was filed in the
Superior Court of California in
Paul Truong said that the latest suit was part of a
vicious political witch hunt by the USCF against him and his wife, Susan Polgar.
A new complaint attached to the
The USCF filed a lawsuit (lawsuit #6 – USCF vs Susan Polgar and Paul Truong,
Case No. 2008MR000751) on December 29, 2008, in the Seventh Judicial Circuit
Court in Springfield, Illinois (the state where the USCF is incorporated) seeking
the removal of Susan Polgar and Paul Truong from its
USCF Executive Board. The suit charges that Polgar
stole email messages between some USCF board members and Karl S. Kronenberger, the
The new USCF lawsuit included information supplied by
United Online, and Internet service provider, that listed Paul Truong as the
account holder of the IP address used to create some obscene postings. The username was chessspammer@netzero.net. The IP addresses were all used at the same
dates and times as the Fake San Sloan postings.
The customer who owned that account was Paul Truong. The IP addresses matched the one associated
with Truong’s Roadrunner Internet Service provider in
Gordon Ray Parker re-filed his lawsuit in the Eastern
District of Pennsylvania, but most of it was dismissed on December 29, 2009. The judge (J. Curtis Joyner)
allowed a libel claim against Polgar and Truong for two specific statements (that Mr.
Parker was living with his mother, although she was dead, and that Mr. Parker
wished he had solicited eight year-old girls).
Sam Sloan re-filed his lawsuit on January 16, 2009 and it
was denied on January 26, 2009.
So it looks like there are at least six
lawsuits involving Susan Polgar, Paul Truong, the
USCF, and the Fake Sam Sloan (FSS).
All of these lawsuits are already having repercussions.
Dr, Eric Moskow, a
New USCF Board elections are coming up. The candidates are: Mike Atkins, Jim Berry, Ruth Haring, Bill Goichberg, Eric Hecht, Mikhail Korenman,
Brian Lafferty, Blas Lago, Brian Mottershead,
Mike Nietman, and Sam Sloan.
Here is the Mottershead report:
http://www.chesspals.com/Mottershead%20Report%20PDF.pdf
also see Dylan McClain’s reports in the New York Times