Man is charged with filing appeal on behalf of woman he didn't know
A Pittsburgh man has been charged with making false statements for filing a habeas petition on behalf of a woman he didn’t know.
Grand jurors on Tuesday added the charge against 48-year-old Frederick Banks, the Associated Press reports.
Banks is already accused of stalking an FBI agent by using his name and phone number on a phony Craigslist ad seeking sexual partners. The FBI agent had investigated Banks in a prior case involving pirated software that sent Banks to prison for five years.
Banks allegedly filed the appeal on behalf of a woman accused of drowning two of her young sons. The appeal says the CIA directed the woman to kill her sons through electronic signals in the agency’s “Telepathic Behavior Modification Program.” Banks is listed on the document as a “legal assistant.”
At a mental competency hearing on the stalking charge last month, prosecutors said Banks had also filed a motion on behalf of Bernard Madoff, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports. He has been identified as a “vexatious litigant” who filed 304 lawsuits between 2004 and 2013, according to a prior court analysis. He has also sued the pope and Donald Trump.
