Shared here with thanks to @bdmthrfkr, who just posted this to v/politics; https://voat.co/v/politics/2805622

Article archived: https://archive.is/pX4GT

Original(see here for legal documents pdf): https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-10-22/paid-protest-firm-crowds-demand-sued-23-million-extortion-plot

Excerpt:

_{Quoted links are also via archive.is}

"Paid protesters are real," writes the Los Angeles Times, after a lawsuit filed by a Czech investor against a business rival spotlighted the seedy, and very real business of people hired to express fake outrage, support, and everything in between.

According to a lawsuit filed by investor Zdenek Bakala, Prague-based investment manager Pavol Krupa hired Beverly hills company Crowds on Demand (COD) to stage a protest near Bakala's home in Hilton Head, SC.

In the Bakala case, Crowds on Demand is accused of spreading misinformation through a website, putting on protests and organizing a phone and email campaign targeting several U.S. institutions with ties to Bakala, who got an MBA from Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business and had an estimated net worth topping $1 billion earlier this decade, according to Forbes. -LA Times

Crowds on Demand provides pop-up "protests, rallies, flash mobs, paparazzi events and other inventive PR stunts," according to its website.--

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--In 2014, ABC's "Nightline" reported that a group backed by the beverage industry was hiring people to protest a soda tax measure - posting ads on Craigslist for paid protesters at $13 an hour.

https://archive.is/pX4GT/0752d2d777d62023a88599435a9582bc653f45c1.jpg

^{[^ advertisement for paid anti-Trump protest: "STOP TRUMP - up to $1500/week"]}

During the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, many noted what appeared to be a man, Vinay Krishnan - who works for progressive activist organization Center for Popular Democracy, paying a woman named Vickie Lampron who was later seen in the Kavanaugh hearing.

Proof the protestors were paid off in line. #Kavanaugh #ConfirmKavanaugh #ActivismInAction pic.twitter.com/hMLpP4zWPn

— Adam W. Schindler (\@AdamSchindler) September 4, 2018

Krishnan said that the money was given to people to pay fines in case they were arrested.

As the Times notes, paid protesters aren't a recent phenomenon.

Longtime California political consultant Garry South, who was a campaign strategist for California Gov. Gray Davis, said it’s long been common for campaigns and political parties to pay people a few bucks or perhaps provide a meal in exchange for attending a rally. He recalled a 2002 rally in San Francisco where he said that tactic was used.

“It turns out, the San Francisco Democratic Party, to bolster the crowd, had basically gone down to skid row and paid people $5 or something to tromp up to Union Square,” South said.

But he sees a big difference between that kind of activity and the paid protests allegedly organized by Crowds on Demand.

“What’s different is the commercialization of the process,” he said. “It just contributes to the air of unreality that exists in this day and age with essentially not being able to believe your own eyes or ears. I don’t think it’s particularly healthy. But it probably inevitably was going to come to this.” -LA Times

Crowds on Demand, meanwhile, shamelessly boasts on their website that they were hired by a business rival to "cripple the operations" of a manufacturing business owned by a convicted child molester, which resulted in the hiring company buying the molester-owned business for "5 percent of its previous value."