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Q1 2026 Payment Backup Analysis

Q1 2026 Payment Backup — Analysis

To: Richard C. Litman / Scott D. Woller, Esq. Re: Aaron H. Gould email of 4/17/2026 10:05 AM ET (Q1 2026 NGM payment backup) Prepared: 2026-04-17 Source: 36 files produced by NGM via Connell Foley (now archived at evidence/ngm_q1_2026_payment_backup_20260417/)


Bottom Line

  1. NGM is wiring $18,848.00 for Q1 2026. That is 96% lower than Q1 2024 ($451,961 paid for the same three months) and the lowest quarterly payment in the entire post-2020 dataset.
  2. Despite the tiny wire, NGM's own billing system still attributes $254,106 of Q1 2026 work to "RCL as originating attorney" across 334 line items, 42 dockets, 4 clients — 8 months after Litman's July 2025 termination. Every line is a fresh § 51 use.
  3. NGM continues to invoice $1.3M under "Richard Litman" as Collecting Lawyer on 496 open invoices — including 161 invoices dated 2025 (many post-termination). Only 5.9% of those invoices has been collected.
  4. $1.59M of Litman-attributed trust positions vanished between Jan 31 and Feb 1, 2026 with no corresponding bank movement. This is a trust-ledger parallel to the Line 74 switchover.

1. Q1 2026 Payment Math

Per NGM's own Litman 2026 Summary_March.xlsx:

Month Funds Received Collected Fees 20% Share Due Paid in Month
Jan 2026 $7,542.00 $2,250.00 $450.00 $0.00
Feb 2026 $115,374.00 $91,240.00 $18,248.00 $0.00
Mar 2026 $4,136.78 $750.00 $150.00 $0.00
Q1 2026 $127,052.78 $94,240.00 $18,848.00 $0.00

Gould's 4/17 email states the $18,848 "is being wired shortly."

Context — Q1 comparison across years

Period 20% Share Paid to Litman
Q1 2024 $451,961
Q1 2025 ~$134,756 (20% of $673,763 collected fees)
Q1 2026 $18,848

Drop from Q1 2024 to Q1 2026: −95.8%. Drop from Q1 2025 to Q1 2026: −86.0%.


2. Q1 2026 Still Attributes $254K of Work to "RCL as Originating Attorney"

The three Payment Allocation by Client Report for RCL as originating attorney spreadsheets show NGM's billing system continues to tag every dollar of this client work to Litman's identity:

Client Files (dockets) Line Items Fees Attributed Total Attributed
King Faisal University 36 304 $88,240 $112,374
Sultan Qaboos University (Oman) 1 7 $94,240 $118,374
King Saud University 4 19 $6,000 $21,735
Qatar Foundation 1 1 $0 $1,623
Total Q1 2026 42 334 $188,480 $254,106

Note that Sultan Qaboos University and Qatar Foundation do not appear in prior-period memory or the 905-patent dataset. If NGM is attributing new client relationships to Litman's name in 2026 (7+ months post-termination), each attribution is a § 51 use that did not exist at the time of the complaint.

The split between $188K "fees" attributed and $94K "collected fees" in the Summary reflects a 50/50 origination/collecting split internally (i.e. Litman is credited with only half the attributed revenue before the 20% overlay is applied). The $254K figure is the defendant's own internal measurement of the commercial value of using Litman's name in Q1 2026.


3. AR Report April 2026 — "Richard Litman" as Collecting Lawyer on $1.3M in Live Invoices

From AR_Report_202604_RL.xlsx — Collecting Lawyer Firm Summary:

Metric Value
Total billed under "Collecting Lawyer = Richard Litman" $1,302,403.04
Total paid $77,213.28 (5.93%)
Outstanding $1,225,189.76 (94.07%)
100% of outstanding is in the "Older" aging bucket
Invoice line items 496
Unique dockets 374
Unique clients 15

Outstanding AR by Client (top 10)

Client Outstanding
King Saud University $1,135,130
United Arab Emirates University $76,062
Sabah Al-Ahmad Center for Giftedness $58,958
Qatar Foundation $55,279
Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research $30,022
Kuwait University $25,906
Saline Water Desalination Research Institute $16,300
Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University $15,044
Kuwait Oil Company $8,420
Simmons Lighting, LLC $7,590

Invoices by year of issue

Year Invoices Outstanding
2024 199 $655,402
2025 161 $450,872
2023 38 $145,557
2022 27 $59,210
2018–2021 71 cumulative

The 161 invoices dated 2025 include billings both before and after Litman's July 2025 termination. Each invoice is a document of NGM's own creation that identifies "Richard Litman" as the Collecting Lawyer on a NGM-to-client billing relationship — a § 51 commercial use on the invoice face.

Credit-Lawyer breakdown (secondary attribution)

Litman is tagged as the Credit Lawyer on $515,036 billed / $449,534 outstanding (36.69% of firm AR). The next largest are:

Credit Lawyer Outstanding
Richard Litman $449,534 (36.69%)
"Firm Client" $183,179
Andy Rao $72,237
James N. Lafave $70,903
Joshua B. Goldberg $65,866
Ilirian Durri $52,403
Morgan D. Rosenberg $53,887
Howard Kline $5,333

4. Trust Account Anomalies

A. $1.59M of Litman-Attributed Trust Positions Disappeared Between Jan 31 and Feb 1, 2026

Per the three Trust Listing for RCL PDFs:

Snapshot Eagle Bank (t23) BoA Escrow (t3) RL Total
Jan 2026 $837,871.08 $1,863,705.24 $2,701,576.32
Feb 2026 $1,046,123.40 $46,303.33 $1,092,426.73
Mar 2026 $1,002,625.40 $44,680.55 $1,047,305.95

Between the Jan closing and Feb opening, $1,817,401.91 disappeared from the BoA Escrow balance attributable to RL matters (while Eagle Bank went up $208K). The net RL-attributed trust drop is $1,609,149.59 in 24 hours.

The corresponding Trust Register Feb 2026 shows firm-wide bank movement over the entire month totaling only −$40,484.90 net. The $1.6M drop therefore reflects reassignment of responsible attorney from "RL" to other attorneys, not actual bank disbursement.

This is the trust-ledger equivalent of the Line 74 switchover (Jan 14–21, 2025, where Goldberg's name replaced Litman's on patent front pages). The reassignment pattern is now repeating at the trust-accounting level.

B. Phantom BoA Balance (Jan 2026)

Trust Listing for RCL Jan 2026.pdf claims RL held $1,863,705.24 in BoA Escrow Acct_8777. But Trust Register Report Jan 2026.pdf shows firm-wide BoA Escrow balance = $96,231.64 opening / $80,935.64 closing. RL's claimed share exceeds the entire account by ~$1.78M.

Interpretations (pick one or more, all actionable):

Any of these warrants a demand for the underlying bank statements for BoA Acct_8777 covering 2024–2026.

C. Two Accounts, Not Three

Both the Trust Register and Trust Listing Q1 2026 show only two accounts:

Freedom Bank (the third trust account closed 7/28/25 after suit filing) is absent. Consistent with prior finding that Freedom Bank was never reintegrated after closure.


5. Revenue Collapse — Monthly Trajectory (Jan 2024 → Mar 2026)

NGM's own Litman 2026 Summary_March.xlsx (partial — numbers are collected-fees / 20% share):

Month 20% Due Litman
Jan 2024 $132,637
Feb 2024 $163,314
Mar 2024 $156,011
Oct 2024 (peak) $257,120
Mar 2025 $89,240
Jul 2025 (termination month) $6,392
Oct 2025 $125,666
Dec 2025 $55,220
Jan 2026 $450
Feb 2026 $18,248
Mar 2026 $150

Aggregate 2024: ~$1,019K in 20% share due over 12 months. Aggregate Jan–Mar 2026: $18,848.

This collapse coincides temporally with:

Yet the AR Report simultaneously shows NGM continues to bill $1.3M under Litman's name and tag $254K of Q1 2026 client work to him as originating attorney. The discrepancy between what NGM earns under Litman's name and what NGM pays Litman under the 20% agreement is widening, not closing.


6. Strategic Implications (for discussion with Scott)

For § 51 damages

The Q1 2026 data is a contemporaneous admission that NGM's commercial exploitation of Litman's identity is ongoing 8 months after termination. Every:

...is a discrete use of name for commercial purpose captured in NGM's own records. The April 2026 AR Report alone itemizes 496 separate uses on active billing documents.

For the BOP (due 4/2/2026 — past due)

If the Bill of Particulars is still supplementable, this data adds:

For accounting / spoliation

Three follow-up demands worth considering:

  1. BoA Escrow Acct_8777 bank statements Jan 2024 – April 2026 — to test the $1.78M phantom balance and locate the disappeared $1.59M of Feb 1, 2026.
  2. Reassignment log showing which matters moved from Responsible = "RL" to other attorneys between 1/31/2026 and 2/1/2026, and why.
  3. All 161 invoices dated 2025 that bear "Richard Litman" as Collecting Lawyer — to confirm pre- vs. post-termination dates.

For the discovery exhibit binder

The 4/17/2026 first discovery batch binder (output/DISCOVERY_BATCH_01_EXHIBIT_BINDER.pdf) did not include any internal billing-system exemplars. A supplemental batch could add:

For the wire acceptance question

Scott will want to discuss whether accepting the $18,848 wire without reservation of rights could be argued as acquiescence to NGM's accounting. A cover letter framing the receipt as "without prejudice to claims that the collected-fees denominator has been suppressed and to claims that the trust reconciliation remains incomplete" would preserve the arguments above.


7. Files Received and Categorized

36 files archived at evidence/ngm_q1_2026_payment_backup_20260417/:

Core accounting (5)Litman 2026 Summary_March.xlsx, AR_Report_202604_RL.xlsx, and the 3 Payment Allocation reports (Jan/Feb/Mar 2026).

Trust ledgers (12) — Trust Register, Trust Bank Journal, Trust Transfer Journal, Trust Listing for RCL — each for Jan, Feb, March 2026.

Email MIME wrappers (18)ATT00001.htm through ATT00018.htm and ~WRD0005.jpg (email formatting; no substantive content).


Prepared by automated Q1 2026 payment-backup analysis pipeline. All numbers reconcile to NGM-produced source files. Cross-checks completed against the pre-5/31/2025 payment history in output/PATENT_REVENUE_LINKAGE_SUMMARY.md and project-memory file project_freedom_bank.md.