From Stage Props to Federal Probes: After Leonard Cohen’s Fantasy with Brian Johnson, Kelley Lynch Calls in the FBI for a Dose of Reality

Use of Media Staging to Influence Perception: .” In Maclean’s (Aug. 22, 2005), Cohen staged an “up close” profile with journalist Brian D. Johnson months after first alerting him that litigation was coming and that “it would get nasty.” He invited the journalist into his home for a Seder dinner with matzo ball soup, beef brisket, and Hebrew singing; showed him a modest duplex in Los Angeles and an unrenovated Montreal rowhouse; emphasized props like a broken toaster, popsicles, TV dinners, and a small portable CD player; and allowed small cues of refinement — three kinds of premium tequila in the freezer — to appear “innocent” rather than extravagant. This presentation was crafted to disarm the interviewer and reinforce the false impression of a man living simply, thereby insulating himself from accusations of excessive spending.

Malice in Wonderland: An Action-Packed Nomadic Romp Through the Wreckage of Leonard Cohen’s Legacy

By Kelley Lynch

Updated Book Summary – 2025 Edition

In this genre-defying memoir-meets-legal-thriller, Kelley Lynch invites readers through the looking glass into a world where celebrity mythology meets federal misconduct—and where the wreckage of Leonard Cohen’s carefully crafted public persona gives way to a trail of forensic audits, forged trust instruments, weaponized restraining orders, and IRS whistleblower filings.

What began in 2004 as a professional separation from Cohen—the internationally acclaimed artist she once managed—rapidly devolved into a decades-long saga of judicial retaliation, estate fraud, and constitutional abuse. From the SWAT raid to the psychiatric hold, from the courtroom to Cohen’s secretive legal maneuverings, Lynch lays bare how a coordinated smear campaign co-opted the press, weaponized law enforcement, and criminalized federal whistleblowing—all to protect a multi-million dollar IP empire rooted in offshore accounts, shell corporations, and misreported income.

Lynch exposes how a fraudulent 2005 default judgment was leveraged as the cornerstone of Cohen’s so-called “tax narrative”—a fan-fiction fantasy filed with the IRS that erased her ownership stakes in Traditional Holdings, LLC, Blue Mist Touring, and Old Ideas, LLC. With a sharp eye for both legal nuance and theatrical farce, she dissects how the Cohen team—spearheaded by attorneys Robert Kory and Michelle Rice—constructed a fictional IRS Binder of doctored documents, co-mingled forensic spreadsheets, and declarations of perjury to mislead federal agents and crush her public credibility.

🎨 Artwork Featured in the Book:

• "The Default Judgment That Keeps on Giving": A surrealist take on Cohen’s forged financial redemption arc.

• "Hollyweird: A Double Illusion": A visual allegory of the City Attorney’s entanglement with celebrity-driven gag orders.

• "Probate Crime Scene": A Roerich-style landscape featuring the LA legal bar, corporate tombstones, and a flaming IRS memo.

📚 Part memoir, part indictment, part forensic chronicle, Malice in Wonderland explores:

• How Leonard Cohen’s estate was laundered through probate court using a forged trust admitted as false by his own children

• How LAPD’s Threat Management Unit and the LA City Attorney turned a civil tax request into a criminal harassment campaign

• How Sylvie Simmons’ biography I’m Your Man helped convert legal fraud into cultural legend

• How Cohen’s legal team submitted false narratives to the IRS and DOJ to obstruct oversight

• How $48 million in IP assets were omitted from estate tax returns—and how Cohen’s heirs profited off the cover-up

In Lynch’s telling, the estate becomes the crime scene, and the only thing more theatrical than the trials she faced is the cast of characters themselves—from celebrity fixers and Hollywood handlers to "I Care a Lot"-style trustees orchestrating asset sales while laundering defamatory fiction through court filings.

Written with biting wit and an unflinching command of the legal record, Malice in Wonderland is both a cautionary tale and a roadmap: a warning of what happens when courts ignore federal preemption, when journalists worship celebrity over facts, and when a whistleblower becomes the villain in the very story she tried to correct.

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Copyright © 2024–2025 Kelley Lynch.
All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction or modification of this content or accompanying artwork is strictly prohibited. For licensing inquiries or legal citations, contact the author.

(Also see: Leonard Cohen’s 2019 trademark registration; Hipgnosis asset sale; FMV valuations of IP.)

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Posted by: Odzer Chenma
📍 Los Angeles | 📧 Email This | 📰 BlogThis | 📎 Labels: Constitution, IRS, DOJ, Cohen Estate, Fan Fiction, Tax Fraud, Judicial Misconduct

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Malice in Wonderland: An Action-Packed Nomadic Romp Through the Wreckage of Leonard Cohen’s Legacy By Kelley Lynch

In this gripping memoir-meets-legal-thriller, Kelley Lynch pulls readers through the looking glass into a world where fame, fraud, and federal law collide. What began as a professional fallout with legendary artist Leonard Cohen in 2004 evolved into a decades-long saga of legal warfare, betrayal, and institutional cover-up—one that would ultimately entangle probate courts, tax agencies, law firms, and auction houses. Artwork: Anjani Thomas auctions off Leonard Cohen's financial instrument (part of his estate property; see Julien's Auction for further details, 2025)

Malice in Wonderland follows Lynch’s extraordinary journey as she confronts the weaponization of a fraudulent trust instrument, a $48 million IP laundering operation, and a California justice system manipulated to silence a whistleblower. From the courtroom dramas surrounding Cohen’s estate to the behind-the-scenes orchestration of default judgments, restraining orders, and tax fraud, this book reveals a surreal and often disturbing story of fiduciary misconduct and federal obstruction—with real consequences for constitutional rights, due process, and the rule of law. Artwork - Hollyweird, a double illusion.

With biting wit and a forensic eye for detail, Lynch chronicles her nomadic life on the run from legal abuse, her persistent efforts to expose a complex network of deception, and the bizarre cast of characters who populate this twisted Wonderland—including heirs, handlers, and “I Care a Lot” style trustees. Artwork - the Defafult Judgmwent that keeps on giving; now featured in the LCFT/Estate of Leonard Cohen federal tax showdown being laundered through LASC probate.

Part memoir, part exposé, Malice in Wonderland is a cautionary tale about what happens when truth threatens power—and what it takes to survive when the estate becomes the crime scene. Artwork - Probate Court Federal Tax Crime Scene featuring the corrupt LA legal bar. A scene only a tax division litigator could truly love!

Copyright © 2024 Kelley Lynch. Unauthorized reproduction, distribution, modification, or use of artwork and content in any form is strictly prohibited without written consent. All rights reserved. (for this story see also Leonard Cohen's Trademark registration, 2019, and FMV)

🚨 FROM MUSIC MOGUL TO TARGETED WHISTLEBLOWER: The Leonard Cohen PsyOp – Kelley Lynch Exposes a Decade of Retaliation, Corruption & Manufactured Threats

SWAT Teams, Gag Orders & Celeb Tax Fraud—How Kelley Lynch Says LA Officials Turned a Business Dispute Into a Decade-Long Constitutional Nightmare By the Grand Illusions Investigations Desk | 📍 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA — A federal civil rights case filed in the heart of Hollywood has cracked open what could be the most explosive intersection of fame, fraud, and First Amendment violations in recent memory. Kelley Ann Lynch, a former music industry powerhouse once trusted to run Leonard Cohen’s business empire, is now taking her years-long fight to federal court—alleging a labyrinthine conspiracy involving SWAT teams, gag orders, domestic violence statutes misused as censorship tools, and what she says was a multi-million-dollar tax fraud orchestrated with surgical precision by the late Leonard Cohen’s legal team—with a little help from the LAPD Threat Management Unit and the City Attorney’s Office. And what triggered it all? “I asked for tax returns,” Lynch says. “That’s when the nightmare began.”

🎤 SEX, LIES & SPREADSHEETS: INSIDE THE BUSINESS EMPIRE At the core of Lynch’s federal complaint lies a paper trail that reads more like an accounting horror story than an indie label audit. According to the complaint, Lynch was a legal owner or partner in Traditional Holdings, LLC (KY), Blue Mist Touring Company, Inc., and Old Ideas, LLC—entities that allegedly haven’t filed tax returns in over two decades and never issued her the IRS-mandated K-1s, 1099s, or corporate records she was entitled to receive. Instead of working through IRS channels, tax court, or partnership reconciliation, Cohen’s team allegedly slapped Lynch with a civil harassment order in Colorado—ex parte, with no evidence hearing—and then “laundered” the order into a California domestic violence restraining order. No romantic relationship. No violence. No due process. Just a rubber stamp and a criminal record.

📁 THE INFAMOUS “IRS BINDER” — A TROJAN HORSE? Lynch claims the pièce de résistance in the smear campaign was an “IRS Binder” handed to police and the courts by Cohen’s attorneys Robert Kory and Michelle Rice. But while the binder claimed to “debunk” Lynch’s fraud allegations, it apparently contained no business tax returns, no K-1s, no evidence of Lynch receiving the financial records she was demanding. Instead, the binder allegedly included: • Fabricated tax refund claims • A sham “forensic report” without sourcing • Legal declarations riddled with misstatements • A narrative Lynch says was built on perjury and cover stories “They criminalized whistleblowing,” Lynch says. “They reframed IRS filings as ‘threats’ and business disputes as ‘domestic abuse.’”

🧾 “KEEP INCITING HER—YOU’RE MAKING ME RICHER THAN F&K” The case takes an even darker turn when Lynch reveals an internal email sent by Michelle Rice to a Hollywood fixer, who was working as a proxy enforcer for Cohen’s team: “Do me a favor and keep inciting her to file more motions. You’re making me richer than f&k… I think I can pay off my mortgage on my $2 million Hollywood Hills home with jetliner views by the end of this year.” The email, Lynch says, is smoking-gun evidence that the legal machinery was never about “protection” but about harassment-for-profit. “They fed the LAPD a script,” she says. “I was criminalized for reporting tax fraud and trying to access corporate records.” The LAPD’s Threat Management Unit wasn’t investigating threats—they were acting like concierge security for celebrities, weaponizing state power to shield the powerful and silence dissent.

🧨 FROM IRS INFORMANT TO PUBLIC ENEMY As early as 2005, Lynch says she reported tax fraud involving Cohen’s entities to: • The Kentucky Revenue Cabinet • The IRS Commissioner’s Staff • DOJ • The FBI • California’s Franchise Tax Board A U.S. Treasury agent eventually instructed her to contact IRS Criminal Investigator Luis Tejeda, sparking a federal investigation.

But instead of being treated as a whistleblower, Lynch says she was recast as a stalker, subjected to: • LAPD TMU surveillance • Secret meetings between LAPD, City Attorney, and Cohen’s team • Gag orders blocking her speech • Criminal charges based on protected speech • SWAT-style police visits to her home

📜 CONSTITUTIONAL DOMINOES FALLING Lynch’s lawsuit reads like a crash course in federal preemption, constitutional violations, and judicial theater gone rogue. She alleges: • Violations of the Petition Clause: for speaking to the IRS, FBI, DOJ • Speech criminalization: for using the courts and media to correct defamatory narratives • Due process abuse: for being sentenced based on documents she never saw, from a hearing she never attended • Supremacy Clause infringement: where local DV laws were used to override federal tax procedure She also argues that California's own Constitution—which protects even broader speech rights than the First Amendment—was trampled in the process.

🔥 COORDINATED SMEAR CAMPAIGN OR JUSTICE? Lynch alleges that Robert Kory, Michelle Rice, and their Hollywood fixer spearheaded a decade-long harassment operation designed to: • Isolate her professionally • Undermine her legal filings • Feed damaging material to LAPD TMU • Portray her to courts as “unstable” and “vengeful” • Obstruct federal investigations into tax fraud “They wanted to discredit the messenger before she could expose the message,” she says. “And it worked—for a time.” The tactics allegedly included inserting irrelevant and defamatory narratives into public filings—such as bizarre references to Leonard Cohen’s daughter Lorca’s statements, which had nothing to do with Lynch but were weaponized to stain her reputation. At the heart of it all was a pipeline of misinformation flowing directly into the LAPD Threat Management Unit and the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office—two powerful agencies that acted less like neutral law enforcement and more like public relations enforcers for a celebrity-backed smear campaign.

💼 “I WASN’T HIS EX—I WAS HIS PARTNER” Lynch insists this case was never about “revenge,” “love gone wrong,” or celebrity gossip. “They fabricated that entire angle to discredit me,” she says. “Leonard Cohen and I weren’t lovers. We were business partners. I managed his business affairs, which he obsessively micromanaged from behind the scenes. I asked for the books, and they tried to burn down my life.”

⚖️ STAKES BEYOND HOLLYWOOD The lawsuit doesn’t seek damages—it demands: • Federal intervention • A public accounting • An injunction against future misuse of protection orders • Expungement of restraining orders entered without due process • Referral to the IRS Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney’s Office And above all, it calls for recognition that whistleblowers reporting tax crimes shouldn’t be jailed, gagged, or hunted for speaking out. “I wasn’t just stripped of my rights,” Lynch says. “They tried to erase the truth. But the documents are real. The fraud is real. And now the courts will see it.”

📺 COMING NEXT: Could Kelley Lynch’s case change how restraining orders are used in civil litigation? When will federal agencies intervene? Is the LAPD Threat Management Unit operating beyond its constitutional bounds? We’ll be watching. 📰 Follow the Grand Illusions Investigations Desk for exclusive updates, document dumps, and in-depth profiles—next: “Meet the Enforcer: Who Is Cohen’s Fixer?”

Disclaimer: The article and accompanying illustrations present Kelley Lynch as a "haute couture Buddhist" hipster character in an imaginative and stylized portrayal. This depiction reflects an artistic and surreal interpretation inspired by the complex legal disputes and public narratives that followed her split from Leonard Cohen. The choice to portray Lynch adorned in jewels and sophisticated attire references Cohen's statements after their parting, where he attributed her alleged “downfall” to extravagant spending on items like jewelry, shoes, and haute couture—a narrative Lynch firmly disputes. The artistic representation, while not intended as a literal portrayal, emphasizes the intensity and multifaceted nature of her legal claims, offering a metaphorical view into the high-stakes drama of her experience. This stylized depiction serves to underscore the layers of conflict, public perception, and personal resilience inherent in her story.

Copyright © 2024 Kelley Lynch. Unauthorized reproduction of this article or artwork is strictly prohibited.

EXCLUSIVE: The Leonard Cohen Files — Shell Companies, Tax Schemes, MK Ultra Mind Control, a Mata Hari Seductress Fiction, and the Whistleblower Who Knew Too Much

They called him the prophet of longing. A monk-poet in a fedora who murmured eternal truths over flamenco guitar. But behind Leonard Cohen’s mythic persona lies a web of shell corporations, weaponized legal filings and courts, perjured and fraudulent documents, a forged trust, and a whistleblower war that’s about to erupt on the federal stage.

At the center of the unraveling? Kelley Lynch — not just Cohen’s longtime personal manager, but a business partner and co-owner of multiple entities that comprised the Cohen financial empire now being weaponized against her. And the only person who has the documentation to blow it all up.

Grand Illusions Investigations has reviewed Lynch’s Addendum to Declaration: Evidentiary Presentation of Fraud, Perjury & Misrepresentations, a damning exposé submitted to the IRS, DOJ, and FBI, and set to be filed in U.S. District Court. We’ve also reviewed hundreds of pages of legal filings, whistleblower communications, federal tax disclosures, probate documents, and sworn declarations submitted across multiple jurisdictions.

What it reveals isn’t theory. It’s a meticulously documented blueprint for a multimillion-dollar tax fraud and judicial obstruction scheme—built on celebrity fan fiction, falsified court records, and a devastating abuse of federal processes.

The Myth of the Monk: To the public, Cohen was a figure of saintly detachment. But the tax architecture surrounding his fortune told another story: Cohen orchestrated a lattice of entities—Traditional Holdings, LLC, Blue Mist Touring Co., Inc., Old Ideas, LLC, and Old Ideas Legacy, LLC. These vehicles held publishing income, touring revenue, literary rights, and licensing deals. Internal documents, including correspondence between Cohen and his legal and tax advisors, confirm these entities were structured with the intent to defer taxes and obscure true ownership. The entities were treated like shell corporations, the IP assets bounced around like a game of three card monte, and fraudulent tax returns were filed—or not filed at all in the case of BMT and TH, which have no federal filings from 2004 to the present.

Cohen’s tax fraud followed him from the 1970s, when he maintained offshore accounts to conceal global income from the IRS, through the 1980s, where the IRS challenged his use of multiple Social Security numbers, and into the 1997 and 2001 Sony-related IP transactions—structured as unnecessarily complex stock deals to avoid triggering taxable events.

As Lynch's forensic filings to the IRS show, Cohen failed to report the proceeds of a multimillion-dollar stock sale through Sony, unilaterally extinguished a deferred annuity obligation, disguised more than $6.7 million in income as "shareholder loans" from Traditional Holdings, and misappropriated millions from other entities. When Lynch objected to these moves, she was publicly smeared, and driven into legal exile.

Lynch hired a CPA in September 2004 who discovered fraud on Cohen-related entity filings with the IRS. She then hired tax litigators. Cohen, meanwhile, was attempting to privately force her to meet with him and Richard Westin—his personal corporate and tax lawyer—to unravel their corporate and tax shenanigans. She refused.

From approximately October 2004 through May 2005, as Cohen realized he had failed in his attempts to coerce Lynch and understood she had already gone to the IRS, he hired PR firms to publicly defame her. During this period, Cohen and Robert Kory offered Lynch millions that she was rightfully owed, but conditioned the payment on her cooperation in targeting every one of Cohen’s former representatives for cash. They wanted her to submit perjured or false testimony in secret mediations, civil and other litigation, and to commit perjury in statements to the IRS and other tax authorities. Lynch refused. She knew they were blatantly lying about numerous individuals—including the Grubman Indursky firm, Greg McBowman—and falsely claiming that Neal Greenberg and Richard Westin solely created the tax structures and corporate entities. In truth, Cohen himself designed these mechanisms, instructed his representatives, and repeatedly told Lynch and others he disdained "ordinary income taxes," instead demanding capital gains treatment for transactions that were never structured accordingly.

The IRS Binder: Fiction as Strategy: At the heart of Leonard Cohen’s defense was not an audit trail or financial transparency, but a narrative device—a glossy, curated “IRS Binder” created by his legal team at Kory & Rice LLP. Far from a legitimate submission of financial records, this dossier functioned as a calculated piece of misdirection. It relied on a fraudulent 2005 co-mingled default judgment, perjured declarations, a bogus forensic "report" spreadsheet that co-mingled entity assets, and statements from Robert Kory falsely claiming Kelley Lynch had access to all necessary tax information. Cohen’s team coupled these materials with a media blitz, strategically aligning with biographer Sylvie Simmons and compliant journalists to reinforce the myth of Cohen as a betrayed monk rather than a manipulator of corporate structures. The Binder presented fiction as fact—weaponizing narrative to discredit Lynch’s whistleblower complaints and obscure the real story of tax avoidance, misallocated income, and obstruction. This wasn’t audit material. It was a screenplay.

The narrative: Lynch, a seductive Mata Hari, hypnotized Cohen using MK style mind control tactics while he lived in monastic exile, misappropriated his "retirement" fortune, and pursued him across the country. The truth? Lynch had reported Cohen to the IRS, complete with a tax opinion from her former legal and accounting representatives, laying out Cohen's civil and criminal tax fraud.

MK Ultra & Mata Hari: In perhaps the most outrageous twist, the IRS Binder also invoked MK Ultra mind control tactics. Cohen had previously claimed that he was a participant in such experiments during his time at McGill University—when in fact, he merely took a psychology course. Yet Cohen’s team told federal authorities that Cohen similarly had been psychologically destabilized by his fictitious Mata Hari—casting him as too spiritual to manage his tax and financial affairs.

This “MK Ultra” fiction was matched by another: that Kelley Lynch was not only a seductress, but a type of Mata Hari agent who lured Cohen into transferring millions while cloaked in Buddhist mysticism. These absurdities, submitted to federal agencies, helped shift scrutiny from Cohen’s unfiled returns to Lynch’s whistleblower complaints—further proving the retaliatory use of narrative fiction as legal defense.

Weaponized Misogyny, Biographical Disinformation: At the heart of the cover story lies a biographical smear. Sylvie Simmons' book, I’m Your Man, repeats the Cohen camp’s defamatory tropes: that Lynch was a mentally unstable former lover who inspired Cohen’s late-career "redemption." The book omits Lynch’s ownership interests, tax submissions, and Cohen's own financial directives and transactions. Instead, Simmons relies heavily on interviews with Cohen's lawyers, lovers, and insiders—failing to consult legal filings, IRS disclosures, or Lynch herself. At no time was Kelley Lynch Leonard Cohen's lover or mistress.

From the Maclean’s article to Rolling Stone, unscrupulous journalists regurgitated Cohen's fan fiction defense: the monk betrayed by a temptress. The goal was clear: destroy Kelley Lynch’s credibility, sabotage IRS scrutiny, and convert Cohen's civil and criminal liability into literary tragedy. Cohen’s team parlayed this myth into legal and financial advantage, all while journalists and biographers gained commercially and professionally from pushing a sanctified, sanitized Cohen narrative.

After Cohen: Estate Fraud and Federal Exposure: Following Cohen’s death, the machinery didn’t stop. It metastasized. Robert Kory used a forged trust document—as admitted under oath by Cohen’s children—to assume control of Cohen’s estate. This enabled the: • Sale of Cohen’s IP catalog to Hipgnosis for $50 million • Concealment of Lynch’s co-ownership in TH, BMT and OI • Creation of Old Ideas Legacy, LLC to bury unreported assets • Omission of $48 million in IP from the federal estate tax returns, as revealed in estate and probate filings before Los Angeles Superior Court

Retaliation and the State as Enforcer: As Lynch continued pressing for tax documentation, the LAPD and LA City Attorney entered the frame. Their contributions: • Sham criminal prosecution of Lynch for emailing IRS, FBI, DOJ, and other authorities • Misuse of restraining orders to suppress whistleblower disclosures and request federal tax information • A SWAT raid and attempted psychiatric commitment initiated after reporting the tax fraud • Continued public defamation of Lynch. The source of this retaliatory action? LA Government Actors, Cohen’s IRS Binder, and the fabricated tax fraud defense narrative. A tool of obstruction, not transparency.

Next Stop Federal Court: Lynch has submitted formal complaints to the IRS Whistleblower Office, IRS, FBI, DOJ, and the U.S. Tax Court, and is preparing a comprehensive federal complaint for filing in U.S. District Court. Her filings are supported by a trove of documentation: corporate bylaws, CPA reviews, tax correspondence, sworn depositions, and probate records—including Kory's use of a forged trust document following Cohen's death, through which he reassigned Cohen's fraudulent default judgment to himself as trustee, in order to roll back entities not covered by the judgment and pursue the Hipgnosis deal. Lynch has submitted signed entity resolutions, proof of forged trust instruments (Reeve Chudd's deposition confirming he altered Cohen's trust documents following his death), and direct evidence of the unauthorized use of her Social Security number, along with communications with federal authorities. This is not speculation. It is a case file. And it’s coming to court

This case isn’t about Leonard Cohen’s music. It’s about how celebrity and fabricated media narratives were used to discredit a federal whistleblower, suppress evidence, and obstruct justice. Kelley Lynch seeks transparency, tax documents, and judicial accountability. The evidence she’s now putting before federal courts is not poetic. It appears to be criminal. And it may be the reckoning the Cohen estate never saw coming.

Disclaimer: The article and accompanying illustrations present Kelley Lynch as a "haute couture Buddhist" hipster character in an imaginative and stylized portrayal. This depiction reflects an artistic and surreal interpretation inspired by the complex legal disputes and public narratives that followed her split from Leonard Cohen. The choice to portray Lynch adorned in jewels and sophisticated attire references Cohen's statements after their parting, where he attributed her alleged “downfall” to extravagant spending on items like jewelry, shoes, and haute couture—a narrative Lynch firmly disputes. The artistic representation, while not intended as a literal portrayal, emphasizes the intensity and multifaceted nature of her legal claims, offering a metaphorical view into the high-stakes drama of her experience. This stylized depiction serves to underscore the layers of conflict, public perception, and personal resilience inherent in her story.

Copyright © 2024 Kelley Lynch. Unauthorized reproduction of this article or artwork is strictly prohibited.