Cartoonist Jayme Gordon sentenced to two years in prison for attempting to defraud DreamWorks
Left: Disney illustration from 1996, right: drawings registered by Gordon in 2000
On 3 May, Jayme Gordon was convicted in federal court in Boston of wire fraud and perjury. He was accused of orchestrating a scheme, based on false evidence, to defraud DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. Gordon claimed that Dreamworks had stolen his characters and the story on which the animated film Kung Fu Panda was based.
On December 16, 2015, a federal jury indicted cartoonist and screenwriter Jayme Gordon on seven counts of wire fraud and perjury stemming from a plagiarism lawsuit the cartoonist filed against DreamWorks Animation in February 2011.
On 18 November 2016, a federal jury found Gordon guilty of four counts of wire fraud and three counts of perjury. He faced up to 25 years in prison.
Ultimately, U.S. District Judge Patti B. Saris has sentenced Jayme Gordon to two years in prison, three years of supervised release and to pay more than $3 million in restitution to DreamWorks, which is the estimated amount the company has spent in this legal proceeding.
