Category Archives: Spartan Mosquito

My financial mess from legal fight with Spartan Mosquito

Just in case anyone is feeling flush, generous, and appreciative of what I do on this blog, I’m in a $36,000 hole from my years-long legal battle with AC2T, Inc., the Mississippi manufacturer of the Spartan Mosquito Eradicator and the Spartan Mosquito Pro Tech (both scams). The suit is thankfully over (dismissed with prejudice) but the settlement I received covers a little more than two-thirds of my attorney costs. The loss will not bankrupt me and I’ll be fine, but I’d be a much happier person if that hole was smaller. It’s going to bother me for rest of my life so I thought I’d at least ask.

For those who might be interested, I reactivated a GoFundMe page, but there’s also Ko-fi, PayPal, Venmo, and Zelle. DM me for mailing address if you’d like to send discreet package of unmarked bills. Or buy one of my nature photographs!

In case you want to put a face to me, here I am chatting about mosquitoes at a local garden club event. And taking photographs of tiger beetles with my dad.

Judge dismisses Spartan Mosquito’s SLAPP against me

Good news! In a March 14th ruling (below), the judge presiding over AC2T v. Purrington dismissed the case with prejudice. The decision came after Jeremy Hirsch, the company’s chairman-of-the-board, emailed the court to say he no longer wanted to pursue the defamation suit against me, citing lack of money. I suspect the real reason is that he and co-founder Chris Bonner didn’t want to comply with several of the judge’s recent orders, such as coming to Pennsylvania to be deposed (for 6 hours, with me in the room) and handing over documents (emails, texts, experimental data) that they really didn’t want anyone to see. And they likely wanted to avoid the trial, too, which would have been a complete disaster. The 2-page ruling is below:

Although this is great news, the judge did not order the company to reimburse me for my legal costs (approximately $90,000), so I’ll need to sue Spartan Mosquito for malicious litigation. And the judge did not order the company to retract any of its allegations against me (for example, that I am a secret employee of a big pharmaceutical company). And I never got my day in court, which after four years I was looking forward to.

But the biggest bummer is that this company is still selling its tubes to the public.

As a reminder, these are the two guys behind the scam: Chris Bonner and Jeremy Hirsch. They both live in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in large houses with pools.

Chris Bonner and Jeremy Hirsch at a feed store demonstrating their invention, the Spartan Mosquito Eradicator.

For more information

Please see my other posts on Spartan Mosquito.