Johnny Somali’s Appeal is ALREADY in Trouble

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]Ramsay Khaled Ismile aka Johnny Somali is already in trouble on his appeal as he has been dumped by his lawyer in the face of an important new filing that may end up getting him even more jail time.

[00:00:13]We'll get to that today on the legal mindset where we teach you to be your own judge. I'm Andrew Esquire, American Attorney.

[00:00:22]So for some background here, an important factor as he's moved off to the detention center. He's currently sitting in Seoul Namboo detention center after that trial where he walked in so confidently. Yeah, he's now sitting in there in that jail cell not enjoying himself, coping in prison letters. But an important thing is he's cut his link with Hank. And that's very, very important because Hank was a source of all of his support. And you can see that in this video. I have sacrificed my my finances, you know, like I've act like Johnny ran out of money because they they refused Johnny refused Johnny to work.

[00:01:03]So, I've been actually providing for him.

[00:01:05]>> He's been helping me a lot. He's been helping me with uh not only like legal fees and stuff like this, you know what I mean?

[00:01:10]>> Yeah. And and once again, Hank paid for the entire bill there. Johnny did not put a single dime towards that. There were IUs we exposed on this channel that Johnny wrote to Hank, but that was fully funded by Hank to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars.

[00:01:26]>> He's helped me pay for a lawyer and stuff like that. And he's he's a great friend. Like honestly, I respect him for that. And when I get out of here, a lot of it I do owe to Hank. Now, despite saying he owes things to Hank, he's absolutely stabbed him in the back, taking tens of thousands of additional dollars from Johnny Somali, according to all reports. And because of that, Hank has pulled back his support. And perhaps one of the most important things that he's pulled back on is the lawyer. Now, Johnny Somali's lawyer, as seen here, was likely provided through a family connection of Hanks. Hanks is from a silver spoon family in Korea. a very high brow, highconnected family, you know, with his grandfather being a high prosecutor in Korea. So, because of that, they knew people and they likely had this family attorney that they offered up and had a connection to, typically does different types of cases, typically works in civil law, although he had some criminal experience in the past, and had him work on this case for Johnny Somali, which was fully funded by Hank's money. Now, it's no surprise that Johnny Somali would have trouble finding a lawyer in Korea. Most advertisements are not in English. It's very difficult to find lawyers that are bilingual and also handle cases at a high level and at a level of precision uh unless you have a good amount of funds, right? They're going to require a large amount. They're going to require large retainers in order to engage them. But Johnny Somali was able to get this lawyer at a discount price relative to what you'd normally have to pay for an attorney.

[00:03:03]Now, we can comment a lot about the decisions of the attorney. Certainly, he made statements during the trial like the fact that Johnny Somali was never going to jail.

[00:03:13]>> Does he think that this charge will have any jail time? This charge, people are saying, "I'm going to go to jail for this." Is that true?

[00:03:20]>> What do you say? She's saying then um >> and while that was definitely a mistake and something that he shouldn't have said, there aren't many things that he did during the trial that he could have done radically different to get a radically different result. This is a case where probably he did the best he could at that trial and it was the best outcome that Johnny Somali could probably hope for given his behavior, his lack of remorse, his failing to submit an apology, all of these factors which were within his control. Johnny Somali had the ability to do better in his case to fight in a different way, but he chose to go with the strategy and go with general PR that was damaging to him in the long run. But now we have just found out in a new development just yesterday that Johnny Somali's previous trial lawyer, the one provided by Hank, has now dumped him. Now that one, once again fully funded by Hank, is now gone.

[00:04:13]That is a big deal because that attorney had gone through mountains of evidence, was very familiar with Johnny's case, was familiar with all of the incidents, the bus, the ramen, L world, the fish, everything, the deep fakes, everything he was doing in Seoul and everything he was charged with, all of those eight counts. You've now got to get a new lawyer up to speed that has no idea about the details of this. Yes, maybe a lawyer has heard of Johnny Somali, but they probably haven't gone into the case or gone into the details in a very deep fashion. And because of that, and because he lost this private attorney and because it's very unlikely that Johnny Somali will be able to have someone like Hank to get him a new attorney, he is going to be assigned and has been assigned a public defender.

[00:05:01]Now, public defenders are free for appeals. They're given to anybody that wants to appeal. That's something that is no cost to Somali. But public defenders, much in Korea, much the same as public defenders in the United States, are overworked. They're very, very overworked. They have a huge burden, and they often can't put the same time and focus that a private attorney can do. That doesn't mean they're incompetent. That doesn't mean they might not do a good job. It just means that it's perhaps not as good as if he still had those connections with Hank or somebody else in Korea that was helping him out. And that's a big loss for him because it came just at the exact same day as a new petition was filed by a victim. Yes, we have a new filing and that is a petition for severe punishment. Now, some of you may be familiar with this because this is actually the second one in this case, but just as an overview, a petition for severe punishment is something that can be filed for a victim, but it requires some factual statements. It requires the the victim to explain the damage to them. It requires all the documentation of any attempt that Somali would have made to reconcile or to settle the case with them. It also requires that Somali shows a lack of remorse or reflection, which we absolutely have seen in this case. In fact, he said, "I never feel remorse. I'm not sorry for anything."

[00:06:22]>> Why are you bullying people in other countries? For money, like for a cloud.

[00:06:28]>> I've said it many times.

[00:06:30]>> I care about nobody but my self. So that's been very very easy to prove there. But the last one you have to add in there are facts for the reason that you're submitting the petition. So the incident involved. It could have been someone at L World. It could have been someone on the bus in the subway with the ramen, the fish, anywhere. Any of those charges involved. So that is something that is all required as a fact. This is not an emotional appeal.

[00:06:56]This is not something that you at home can write the judge or write the court and just get a extra petition thrown in.

[00:07:01]No, it's got to be an actual victim who's stating the facts of the case. But once this is submitted, it is evidence for aggravating, i.e. extending his sentence, making his sentence worse, making his punishment more severe. So, we now have, as I've said, two petitions. Remember, if you've been tracking this case and following my channel, which by the way, take the time to like and subscribe if you haven't yet. Uh, the first petition was filed about 10 months ago during the case. But this one was just filed this week and it is by a different victim. So we now have not one but two separate victims that are coming up asking for severe punishment. And this is not just going to be reviewed by that single judge. We now on appeal are going to have a panel of three judges. So we're going to have a broader swath of expertise opinions that are going to be looking at this and saying okay is this sentence 6 months really appropriate given that we now have even more petitions coming in. We have more that that is being dropped in this case. How is that going to look for the panel? I do think the panel will not take that kindly. So, let's go to my judgment. So, in judgment, losing Hank has been a massive L for Somali. Hank had a lot of flaws and Hank had a lot of problems and defects. But despite all those flaws, he was a huge help to Somali financially, connection-wise.

[00:08:23]Korea is not an easy country to navigate without Korean allies. And I say that as someone who lived there for 3 years and relied on many, many Koreans to just get by in daily life, dealing with bureaucracy, everything else. Having people that are Korean friends, fluent in Korean, is an extraordinary bonus in Korea. And he's now lost that.

[00:08:42]Furthermore, this public defender is going to need to review this case and get on top of all this evidence, which is horrible for Somali rushing his case.

[00:08:51]As we've talked about, his six-month sentence is looking more like a year because the length of this appeal. And with this switch to a public defender, the appeal is going to take even longer.

[00:09:01]You could say, and it you could think that if it was the same attorney, reasonably, you could imagine that they might get ready quicker because they're already familiar with the facts. They're already familiar with, you know, the circumstances. They're familiar with what happened in the trial. Well, now this public defender's got to catch up on all of this, the relevant law, and that is a big disadvantage. And, you know, for the debatable flaws that Johnny's first attorney may have had, he actually was passionate about wanting to fight the appeal of the deep fake charges. It's not to be said whether or not the public defender, we don't know, whether this public defender will actually care to fight this on the merits of the law. We'll have to see.

[00:09:42]And lastly, this new petition is vastly increasing the odds for a larger sentence, and we are hoping for the maximum possible punishment. But it's very clear at this stage that Somali's appeal is already in danger. I want to know what you guys think in the comments below, and I will catch you on the next one.