In May 2017, a Suffolk County grand jury indicted Chris Rapczynski on twelve felony counts including six counts of workers' compensation fraud, five counts of larceny over $250, and one count of failing to provide workers' compensation insurance. The Massachusetts Attorney General's investigation revealed an elaborate scheme where Rapczynski allegedly established a shell company to avoid paying $66,747 in mandatory insurance premiums while employing construction workers on luxury projects worth over $500 million. Eight years later, the case outcome remains unclear in public records, but a new pattern has emerged: at least ten DMCA complaints targeting websites that reference the indictment.

 

The Shell Company Scheme

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Rapczynski founded Sleeping Dog Properties in 1993, building a reputation as one of Boston's premier luxury contractors with projects ranging from Back Bay brownstones to Millennium Tower penthouses. Between 2004 and 2006, investigators found that Sleeping Dog Properties filed eleven workers' compensation claims, triggering dramatic increases in insurance premiums. Rather than pay these costs, authorities allege Rapczynski stopped obtaining workers' compensation coverage for Sleeping Dog Properties and created a second entity: New England Construction Resources.

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The Insurance Fraud Bureau investigation concluded that NECR and Sleeping Dog Properties operated as a single employer, with NECR established solely to hide Sleeping Dog's payroll and employment information. Authorities alleged that NECR maintained a small number of construction foremen and supervisors who were leased for larger projects, but the entity provided no insurance coverage for the actual construction workers doing the physical labor on job sites.

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From 2006 forward, prosecutors claimed Sleeping Dog Properties employed several construction workers annually with payrolls reaching hundreds of thousands of dollars while maintaining no valid workers' compensation policy. Rapczynski allegedly deliberately misled auditors by failing to disclose that Sleeping Dog Properties lacked insurance coverage. As a result of these alleged misrepresentations, Rapczynski and NECR avoided $66,747 in workers' compensation premiums.

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Attorney General Maura Healey emphasized that when businesses fail to carry workers' compensation insurance, it endangers workers and raises costs for law-abiding businesses. Anthony DiPaolo, Chief of Investigations at the Insurance Fraud Bureau, noted that premium evasion places a financial drain on the system and creates an unfair playing field that benefits dishonest businesses over legitimate competitors.

The Indictment Vanishes From Public Record

 

The outcome of the 2017 indictment remains opaque. No conviction, plea agreement, or case dismissal appears in readily available public records as of November 2025. Chris Rapczynski and Sleeping Dog Properties continue operating in the Boston luxury construction market. His contractor license remains active with the Massachusetts licensing board, and BuildZoom records show 146 building permits worth over $13 million in recent years.

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The absence of clear resolution raises questions about what happened after the arraignment was scheduled for Suffolk Superior Court. Cases can resolve through various mechanisms including plea agreements with deferred adjudication, dismissals, or sealed settlements, but the lack of accessible public information leaves contractors, workers, and consumers without transparency about the case's disposition.

 

The DMCA Suppression Campaign

 

Between January 2018 and August 2025, representatives connected to Chris Rapczynski and Sleeping Dog Properties submitted at least ten DMCA complaints to Google targeting pages that reference the 2017 workers' compensation indictment. These complaints were logged in Google's transparency pipeline and archived by Lumen, a Harvard-affiliated database that documents online takedown notices. Monitoring showed the reported pages remained accessible in Google Search after submission as of November 6, 2025.

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The Lumen Database collects and analyzes legal complaints and requests for removal of online materials, helping Internet users understand their rights and the law. These data enable researchers to study the prevalence of legal threats and document patterns of potential notice-and-takedown abuse.

 

The Law Firms Behind The Notices

 

The DMCA campaign involved multiple entities and law firms submitting notices on behalf of Rapczynski and Sleeping Dog Properties. In August 2025, Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, a major Am Law 100 firm with over 1,000 attorneys, filed at least two notices claiming copyright infringement of "AI-generated photographs." The notices targeted websites including sleepingdogproperties.com, enterprenuer.org, pattyfriedmann.com, and hannahhowell.com.

Prince Lobel Tye, a Boston-based firm that promotes its expertise in Digital Millennium Copyright Act compliance, filed multiple notices between December 2024 and January 2025. These submissions claimed copyright infringement of "headshot of Chris Rapczynski" and labeled content as "false and malicious." The targeted URLs included laurencasper.com, finance.yahoo.com, and intelligenceline.com.

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MWX Consulting filed notices in August 2025 alleging that websites copied an Ideamensch interview and requesting removal of the Enterprenuer.org founder profile. The website operators responded that they believed the DMCA was "knowingly false and filed to profit by forcing the removal of our URL from Google search results, not to address any real copyright infringement."

Other submissions came from attorney Deborah Heines in January 2018, attorney Edward Morris in December 2024, and a redacted submitter in March 2025. The Lumen Database contains records of specific notice IDs including 48365192 and 49545577, which reference DMCA complaints connected to Rapczynski and Sleeping Dog Properties.

 

Targeting Court Record Reporting

 

The burst pattern of complaints tracks closely with pages that mention the 2017 indictment. Many notices invoke interview text or "AI-generated" images as the basis for copyright claims, but the targeted content consistently includes references to the workers' compensation fraud allegations announced by the Massachusetts Attorney General's office.

This evidences an orchestrated attempt to scrub court-record reporting from search visibility. The DMCA was designed to protect copyright holders from actual infringement, not to suppress lawful reporting about public court proceedings. Knowingly mischaracterizing lawful reporting as copyright infringement can trigger liability under 17 U.S.C. Section 512(f) for material misrepresentation.

 

The 512(f) Liability Risk

 

Section 512(f) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act states that any person who knowingly materially misrepresents that material is infringing shall be liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys' fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner, or by a service provider who is injured by such misrepresentation. This provision deters false claims by imposing financial consequences on those who abuse the notice-and-takedown system.

The Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act established this remedy to balance the interests of copyright holders against the potential for censorship through fraudulent takedown notices. Courts have applied Section 512(f) in cases such as Online Policy Group v. Diebold, where an electronic voting technology firm was sanctioned for knowingly issuing meritless notices of infringement to ISPs.

However, the practical reality is that Section 512(f) liability requires proving the sender knowingly made material misrepresentations, a high standard that many targets of abusive notices struggle to meet. Legal fees and damages must be proven, and defendants often have the resources to litigate extensively. The statute does not provide for statutory damages, meaning plaintiffs must document actual harm.

 

Industry Impact

 

Workers' compensation fraud costs an estimated $30 billion annually nationwide. The Massachusetts Department of Industrial Accidents reported 1,482 fraud cases in fiscal year 2023, resulting in $8.7 million in restitution. When contractors skip mandatory insurance requirements, they gain unfair competitive advantages while putting injured workers at risk of financial devastation if workplace accidents occur.

The alleged scheme would have saved money by denying construction workers the safety net they are legally entitled to receive. Contractors who properly carry workers' compensation insurance bear higher costs than those who allegedly avoid coverage through shell company arrangements, creating market distortion that penalizes honest businesses.

 

Conclusion

 

Chris Rapczynski faced a twelve-count indictment in 2017 for allegedly operating a shell company scheme that defrauded the workers' compensation system of $66,747 while employing construction workers on luxury projects without insurance coverage. The case outcome remains unclear in public records eight years later, with no accessible information about conviction, dismissal, or settlement. Meanwhile, Rapczynski and Sleeping Dog Properties continue operating in the Boston construction market.

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Between 2018 and 2025, at least ten DMCA complaints targeted websites reporting the indictment, with major law firms filing notices claiming copyright infringement of AI-generated images, photographs, and interview content. The systematic pattern suggests an effort to suppress court record reporting through copyright claims rather than to remedy genuine infringement.

 

This approach risks Section 512(f) liability for material misrepresentation, which exposes those who knowingly file false DMCA notices to damages including costs and attorneys' fees. The absence of transparency about the criminal case combined with aggressive attempts to remove references to it from search results raises questions about accountability in an industry where workers' compensation fraud endangers employees and distorts market competition.