Daniel Rigmaiden admitted a federal tax-fraud conviction but disputed how CNBC’s American Greed portrayed his conduct and past. He said he used software to automate fraudulent tax returns and collect refunds—not black-hat hacking, malware, or control of other people’s computers. His lawsuit’s appeals also took separate procedural steps: a 2019 appeal was dismissed as premature, and a later 2020 appeal was affirmed under Florida’s fair-report privilege.
Why Daniel Rigmaiden sued over American Greed
In November 2018, Rigmaiden, representing himself, pursued a Florida defamation case against NBCUniversal, CNBC’s parent company, and Arizona Republic journalist Dennis Wagner. The case concerned an episode of CNBC’s American Greed that described Rigmaiden and his history. He sought unspecified damages and an injunction to stop further distribution of the episode, according to Ars Technica’s November 19, 2018 report.
Rigmaiden was convicted in a separate federal tax-fraud case. Ars reported that he pleaded guilty under an April 2014 agreement and received a time-served sentence of 68 months. That conviction is distinct from the disputed descriptions that formed the subject of his defamation suit.
What Rigmaiden meant by “not a hacker”
Rigmaiden’s argument was about the methods attributed to him, not a denial of the tax-fraud conviction. In his complaint, as quoted by Ars, he wrote: “Plaintiff did not use black-hat computer hacking to steal money from the IRS.” He described using software to automate fraudulent returns and refund collection, while denying that he used malware or bots, spread viruses, took remote control of random computers, or hijacked computers to send spam.
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Those denials are Rigmaiden’s account in the complaint; they should not be mistaken for independent findings resolving every factual claim in the broadcast. The distinction he drew was between automating fraudulent filings and breaking into or commandeering other computers.
Which parts of the portrayal did he dispute?
Rigmaiden challenged several claims about his alleged conduct and earlier history. Ars reported his responses as follows:
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- Threatening emails: The episode used emails to portray him as threatening violence and as a threat to the U.S. government. Rigmaiden said he did not write or send them and that someone else had. Ars also described a federal affidavit attributing violent language to an unidentified “Hacker”; Rigmaiden disputed that the label referred to him. The reporting did not resolve the disputed authorship.
- Computer hijacking in 1998: He disputed the claim that he hijacked computers that year.
- Identity-theft sentence: He disputed a description that he served six months for identity theft. He said a 1999 California sentence was 180 days for acquiring access-card information and that he did not serve that term after missing a probation hearing.
- Bots and willingness to kill: He denied using bots in the tax-fraud scheme and disputed the portrayal that he would kill if a plan went wrong.
These are competing descriptions reported in connection with the lawsuit, not a finding here that every disputed detail was true or false.
What did CNBC’s side argue?
As reported by Ars, NBCUniversal’s lawyers opposed Rigmaiden’s request to stop distribution, arguing that an injunction would be an unconstitutional prior restraint. Lawyer Dana McElroy made that argument in a motion to dismiss. Rigmaiden responded that the defendants had invented defamatory elements of his past. Those were adversarial positions in the case, not rulings on their own.
What happened in court?
The appeals must be kept separate. The 2019 appellate order did not decide whether the broadcast was accurate or whether Rigmaiden had been defamed. The later 2020 affirmance addressed a different appeal and relied on Florida’s fair-report privilege.
Quick Recap
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| Date and court action | What it decided |
|---|---|
| May 15, 2019 — Florida Third District Court of Appeal | The court dismissed Rigmaiden’s appeal because it challenged a nonfinal, nonappealable order. The dismissal was without prejudice to an appeal after a final, appealable order. It was not a decision on the truth of the episode or the merits of the defamation claim. Read the 2019 order. |
| September 30, 2020 — Florida Third District Court of Appeal | The court affirmed in a later appeal involving NBCUniversal. It cited Florida authority allowing reasonably accurate and fair accounts of information in official documents, even where those documents contain errors. Read the 2020 decision. |
| July 24, 2023 — Florida court filing | A later filing described the underlying 2019 trial-court dismissal as resting on the view that the challenged statements merely restated public records. This is a later summary of the trial-court reasoning, not the 2019 appellate order. Read the 2023 filing. |
What readers should take from the case
- Rigmaiden’s federal tax-fraud conviction is established in the reporting; his suit concerned other claims about his conduct and past in a television episode.
- His “not a hacker” position described how he said he carried out the fraud. The complaint’s denials are attributed claims, not a court’s finding that the disputed details were wrong.
- The 2019 appeal ended on a procedural issue. The later affirmance invoked the fair-report privilege for reporting based on official records.
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