Law&Crime Sidebar - Ruby Franke’s Partner Wants Bombshell Lawsuit Tossed Out

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

From behind bars, Jodi Hildebrandt is firing back at a Utah man who claims her life-coaching business, Classroom ConneXions, is actually a racketeering operation. The convicted child abuser says Michael Tilleman doesn’t have a leg to stand on. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber breaks it all down.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: If you’ve ever been injured in an accident, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. You can submit a claim in 8 clicks or less without having to leave your couch. To start your claim, visit: https://www.forthepeople.com/YouTubeTakeoverHOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger, Christina O'Shea & Jay CruzScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wonderly Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wonderly Plus in the Wondery app Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. views shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller that

will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. Convicted child abuser Jody Hildebrandt claims that a Utah father who's now suing her doesn't have a leg to stand on. She has filed a response to his lengthy complaint pointing out all the ways she thinks he's wrong. And as she sits in prison, potentially for years, for forcing two young children to endure torture-like tactics, she is now looking for this lawsuit to just go away. We are going to take a deep dive into her response, her legal arguments to see, do they hold up? Welcome to Sidebar, presented by law and crime. I'm Jesse Weber.

Jody Hildebrand, the eventual business partner of YouTube family vlogger Ruby Frankie, turned convicted felon after she pled guilty to abusing two of Frankie's youngest children, she's fighting back, at least in the civil arena. Let me provide you a little bit of context about what we're talking about here. So Jody Hildebrand, she hit the ground running with Connections Classroom back in 2012, this self-help life coaching program reportedly aimed to help people improve their lives, their relationships, through one-on-one and group therapy, classes, workshops, all that. Now, these sessions and materials sometimes apparently cost thousands of dollars.

And Jody, by the way, didn't appear to be hurting for money, as is evidenced by her reportedly multi-million dollar home in Ivan's Utah. But then, a lawsuit was filed back in January, and in this suit, it is alleged that Connections was actually a criminal enterprise, a racketeering operation that used the promise of counseling and therapy to lure people into what has been referred to as a cult. that's the main allegation. This complaint claims that Jody's teachings corrupted individuals leading to the ruin of marriages and families. Now, a man named Michael Tillman is behind this lawsuit, and he names multiple defendants, including Jody Hildebrand, Ruby Frankie, Connections

Classroom LLC, his ex-wife, who's referred to in the complaint as Michael Savage, though she's remarried and goes by Michael Washburn right now. Yes, it appears they're both named Michael, but Tillman is seeking more than five million dollars in damages, and he claims that connections is essentially a money-making scheme and that Jody used her influence over people to corrupt his ex, Michael Savage, and convince her to abuse their daughter, referred to in the court filings by her initials EJT. But Jody's legal team has now filed a response to that lawsuit this week, asking that the court grant a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. So first things first, what exactly is Tillman claiming as far as causes of action, right? Claims. Well, we'll get a little more

specific into these in just a minute, but here's the gist. Violation of federal RICO statute, conspiracy to violate the federal RICO statute, fraudulent nondisclosure, fraudulent concealment under Utah law and negligent nondisclosure. So we're going to dive into the main arguments made in the filing and it can get a bit complicated legally, but you're in the right place. We'll try to simplify it as much as possible because here's the deal. This gives us an idea of how Jody might be held accountable in civil court and what arguments may not fly. By the way, let me just tell you a little bit later on. We also have a response from Ruby Frankie behind bars. We're going to get to that. The filing begins. Come now, the defendant's Jody Hildebrand,

an individual and connections classroom LLC, a Utah limited liability company by and through their attorneys of record, Adam C. Dunn of the Dunn law firm. And hereby submit this motion to dismiss. So the filing lays out several arguments for why they are saying Tillman's complaint doesn't hold water. But here is the main crux. Quote, his allegations under non-disclosure are that defendants did not disclose their fraudulent enterprise. Regardless of the plaintiff's characterizations at the core of the complaint, the plaintiff basically asserts that one, the plaintiff's ex-wife abused his child and caused him difficulty. Two, Hildebrandt abused two children unrelated to plaintiff. Three, therefore, Hildebrandt should be liable to plaintiff for

his ex-wife's actions. In spite of the plaintiff admitting in the complaint that Hildebrandt never met plaintiff or spoke to him, and in spite of him feeling in 2016 that his wife was leading him into a cult, the plaintiff does not show a proximate cause of his damage that is due to a predicate act. And thus, his RICO claims fail as a matter of law. When we talk about proximate cause, This comes up a lot in these kinds of cases. It means what is the actual direct cause of an injury? There can't be a superseding cause, something that breaks up the chain of causation. I want to give a quick shout out and thanks to Morgan and Morgan for sponsoring today's

Law and Crime YouTube Takeover. So Morgan and Morgan is a firm with over a thousand attorneys. You know why? Because they win a lot. In the past few months, Morgan and Morgan secured a $9.3 million verdict for a car crash victim in Florida, a 5.6 million dollar verdict for another car accident victim in Atlanta, and not to mention $1.8 million in Kentucky after insurance offered them a mere $5,000 in that case. And even if you think your case isn't worth millions of dollars, why not start a claim and fight for what you

deserve? You can start a claim from your phone in just eight clicks. So if you're hurt, if you're injured, visit for the people.com slash YouTube takeover or click the link below or scan the QR code on screen. So let's talk about RICO for a second. Now we have talked about it a lot in relation to the Sean Combs case in New York, remember the Young Thug case out in Atlanta. And in those cases, criminal cases, prosecutors allege that the defendants committed certain overt acts like robbery, bribery, trafficking to further their criminal enterprise. Basically, they and others were allegedly committing crimes to support their organization, whether that be a business or a gang or what have you.

And that is what Tillman is accusing Jody of doing essentially, running a criminal organization and committing underlying overt acts like wire fraud to make money or improve her status among her followers, right? But Jody's response says, look, the arguments that are offered up in Tillman's lawsuit, they're not enough to prove RICO. And she says, actually, he's just upset about the results of his contentious divorce and custody battle and is trying to use his lawsuit to further his own questionable goals. Going back to the response, it reads, the injuries specifically enumerated by plaintiff under the complaint arise from the purported,

domestic marital and parental abuses by his former wife Michael Washburn, referred to by plaintiff as Savage, which transpired between 2016 to 2020. Furthermore, the large number of allegations in the complaint of wire fraud are mere generalizations and do not contain any factual enhancement or specificity showing the alleged fraud is the actual proximate damage of the plaintiff. Moreover, even assuming that plaintiff's injuries were approximately caused by a RICO predicate offense, the complaint taken as true and disregarding conclusory statements show that plaintiff's injuries took place outside the relevant statute of limitations, meaning it's too old, it's time barred. So Jody is basically saying, look, you haven't provided

any sort of concrete evidence or pledged with specificity that I committed wire fraud, especially in furtherance of a criminal organization. And even if you did, it wouldn't matter because the statute of limitations has run out. And there's also a footnote in this. section of the lawsuit that points to one of Tillman's alleged motivations for filing the suit, his loss in divorce court, which we're going to get into later, but it reads, In the appellate court opinion, a copy of which is attached here to as Exhibit A, the Utah Court of Appeals found that the trial court's findings were sufficiently supported by evidence that his reports of abuse were vextatious and were calculated and designed

to harm mother is supported by the sheer number of reports father made that never resulted in criminal charges being filed against mother or in DCFS taking enforcement. action against her. Several different agencies all investigated mother in each investigation produced the same result. Although his father points out they could not conclusively rule out the possibility that mother abused child, the many investigations did not produce sufficient evidence of abuse to cause intervention by the authorities. After multiple reports of such injuries to various authorities and medical professionals did not produce the desired intervention, it was not unreasonable for the court to find that father's primary motivation in continuing to file such

reports was his desire to harm mother. Okay, that's significant. Now let's dive into this just a little bit more because here is the first argument that Jody makes in her filing. Number one, the Supreme Court has established that in order to survive a motion to dismiss under Rule 12b-6, a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face. By the way, just a little inside baseball here when I went to law school, it's like the first thing you learn is rule 12b6 motions, and basically under the standard, and this is what it says, facial plausibility is achieved when a plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged. The factual allegations must be

enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative level. Okay, in other words, if we take everything you assert in this complaint as true, is there even a viable legal claim here? Did you plead enough specificity for a claim? Have you pled the elements of the cause of action properly? That is a very, very important hurdle to get over at the start of any litigation. So her basic argument is that Tillman's claims of abuse, coercion, all of this, that it doesn't meet the legal standard for this to continue. And I'm going to get into why. So her second argument is plaintiff's civil RICO claim should be dismissed because the complaint does not show the defendants committed a RICO predicate offense against plaintiff or that his purported injuries were directly

caused by said RICO predicate offense. In other words, again, failure to state a claim. When a court evaluates a RICO claim for proximate causation, the central question it must ask is whether the alleged violation led directly to the plaintiff's injuries. So in other words, that predicate offense wasn't even connected to the injuries that were allegedly suffered by the plaintiff and that there were a result of it. So Jody's lawyers are saying that even if Jody did commit wire fraud, that alleged crime wasn't really connected to Tillman at all. So he wouldn't have a claim for damages.

The filing continues because the purported injury suffered by plaintiff do not arise out of a predicate offense specifically defined by law, plaintiff's civil RICO claims should be dismissed. And this filing cites a lot of different case law purportedly in support of that, but one example puts it pretty simply. A complaint stating the who, what, where, when, and how. of the alleged fraud gives a defendant the requisite level of notice required under Rule 9b. But Jody's team argues Tillman didn't do that. Quote, the complaint comprises 654 paragraphs in Exhibit 1 and yet no paragraphs satisfy the requirement

that a pleading must contain a short and plain statement of how the actual alleged wire fraud directly led to plaintiff's damage. The allegations of wire fraud and the complaint are mere generalizations and bald conclusions. the response includes a footnote here, explaining that while Tillman claims his wife spent thousands of dollars on Jody's services, there's no proof that that caused direct damage to him. The one exception could be the argument that his wife spent $5,000 on connections. Because the plaintiff never alleges that his wife didn't have his permission or otherwise spent those funds without his knowledge, which is not plausible based on other allegations in the

complaint, it is believed that even this allegation cannot withstand dismissal. Further, it is presumed that the $5,000 was resolved in the divorce decree, and thus that damage is no longer a viable claim. Regardless, however, the funds were spent in 2016, and the plaintiff believed that the funds were being spent on a cult at the time. Therefore, any claim regarding those funds has long since expired under the relevant statute of limitations. We're going to get to that in a minute. It's about knowledge. It's about the knowledge, and if you have knowledge of what's going on, you should have filed this sooner. Now, let me say this is actually a good argument, really going to the bare bones, basics of how you have to plead a complaint. So it's interesting, and I will see which way this will progress, but the filing continues. The plaintiff appears to hope this court simply accepts

that because Hildebrandt was convicted of abuse, somehow she must have directed Savage to commit abuse years ago. Such a logical leap is not supported by specific factual allegations that could rise to a determination that the alleged predicate acts of wire fraud somehow directly damaged the plaintiff, and that's right. Just because Jody admitted to abusing Ruby Frankie's two youngest children for months inside of her Ivan's home entered a guilty plea to four counts of aggravated child abuse. That doesn't prove that she ever encouraged or committed abuse against any other children prior to that. You can't just take that and then say, oh, there you go, evidence that she did this against somebody else. You need to prove more. You need to assert more.

So now that brings us to the third argument. Quote, the plaintiff appears to be attempting to relitigate his divorce in federal court. The Utah Court of Appeals has already upheld the Utah trial court's findings as it related to plaintiff's numerous assertions of abuse by Savage. Now the fourth argument. Let's get to this. This takes a closer look at the statute of limitations issue and whether Tillman's claim should be dismissed solely because of that. So it reads, quote, even assuming that plaintiff's injuries were approximately caused by a RICO predicate offense, the factual allegations in the complaint show that plaintiff's injuries took place outside the relevant statutes of limitations. The statute of limitations for civil RICO claims,

claims is four years from either the discovery of the injury or the date the injury occurred, meaning that is the time frame by which you have to file a lawsuit. And by the way, there's a whole legal reasoning on why you have statute of limitations. A part of its fairness, right? You want to give people the opportunity to properly defend themselves against these claims. It's better if they're brought immediately. They don't want to hanging over their heads for the rest of their lives. There's a reason that you have this. But here's what it says here. Plaintiff filed the instant case in January of 2025. Plaintiff's claims against defendants are entirely predicated on injuries or harm that he or EJT purportedly suffered at the hands of Savage that transpired between 2015 to

2020. Savage was involved with defendants since 2015. In 2016, plaintiff already objected to the amount of the couple's money Savage was spending on defendant services. The alleged marital abuses transpired between 2016 to 2018. In fact, plaintiff and Savage divorced in 2018, because of such marital issues. Tillman's lawsuit claims that his ex-wife started abusing EJT at the direction of Jody Hildebrand after the divorce was finalized. But Jody's response basically points out that the complaint doesn't mention any alleged abuse after February of 2020.

So five years ago. So according to Jody's argument, this is all outside the statute of limitations anyway. It should be time barred. If he had a complaint against Jody Hildebrand or connections, he had the time to bring it and failed to do so. But this is very important. Whenever we talk about statute of limitations, there was another term that comes up. It is called tolling, and the document talks about that. So that is a legal doctrine that basically allows a plaintiff to pause the time running. Pause the amount of time that has passed between an alleged offense or an alleged cause of action

committed against them and when they file their lawsuit. Okay? It pauses the clock. Now, the reasons can vary. One of the most common is that the plaintiffs, was a minor at the time of the alleged action, or it could be you didn't know what happened to you, you didn't discover this injury until later on. But Jody claims that Tillman's arguments don't meet the legal threshold for tolling. Quote, because of the expiration of the applicable statute of limitations, the only way that the plaintiff could maintain the present action is through the tolling of the statute of limitations. The plaintiff asserts that he was unaware of the illegitimate, fraudulent, and harmful nature of the enterprise until the arrest and subsequent

sentencing of Hildebrandt and Frankie in August 2023 and February 24, respectively. However, that conclusory assertion does not toll the running of the statute's limitations. As outlined above, plaintiffs alleged injuries or harm transpired in 2016 to 2020, even assuming that he did not become aware of the illegitimacy or fraudulent nature of the enterprise until August 2023 and February 2024, the statute of limitations ran from the date of the injuries as outlined above, and not from the time he. became aware of the purported illegitimacy or fraudulent nature of defendants. It's an interesting argument, although you have to wonder if Tillman will counter that and say, the whole point of

tolling is how can I be forced to sue someone? I didn't even know was allegedly a part of this until I found out. Now we go to the fifth argument, and this specifically looks at Utah law. Quote, plaintiff also raises claims against defendants for fraudulent nondisclosure, fraudulent concealment, and negligent nondisclosure under Utah common law as his fifth and six causes of action respectively. To prevail on a claim of fraudulent non-disclosure, a plaintiff must prove by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant had a legal duty to communicate information. The defendant knew of the information he failed to disclose,

and the non-disclosed information was material. Without any direct relationship with Hildebrand, there is no duty on the part of her to plaintiff. Indeed, a fiduciary relationship is not presumed in Utah. As such, plaintiff does not present any basis to claim. that there exists a duty to disclose on the part of defendants. Even if he obtained some instruction from connections, receiving instruction without meeting Hildebrand,

cannot give rise to any legal duty to disclose anything to the plaintiff. And that's a really important point, and again, I think that might be one of the stronger arguments. But the filing concludes by saying that Tillman is not entitled to any sort of exemplary or punitive damages because he doesn't meet the minimum for filing this claim and accompanying Jody's official response was another document attached as Exhibit A. And it's an opinion from the Utah Court of Appeals filed in 2024 in response to Tillman's

push to have his divorce judgment overturned. We talked about it a little bit before. In her filing, Jody claims that Tillman is filing this lawsuit against her and his ex in retaliation for not getting his way when it came to the divorce proceedings and a custody dispute over EJT, which evidently went on for years. So I kind of want to read you parts of that appellate court opinion because it gives you a better idea of what might have been, at least part of the motivation behind such a big lawsuit and potentially could hurt Michael Tillman's claims. At the very least, it provides perspective on this. So the opinion reads, quote, mother and father married in 2013 and child was born a little over a year later.

In 2016, following a separation, father filed a petition for divorce. This was soon followed by mother's counter petition for divorce. The trial court characterized the ensuing litigation as contentious at the parties as unusually accusatory, intransigent, and uncooperative. Now, as part of these divorce proceedings, the court said that Savage had requested that Tillman get a psychological examination, claiming he may have been suffering from mental health conditions that could impact his ability to parent. And Tillman filed his own request for Savage to get an exam too. Quote, the court found that although each parent has shown that they have the capacity and willingness to function as a parent to child, the difficulty lies in their inability to

co-parent and properly interact with the other parent, particularly during drop-off and pickup, as well as when communicating about child. And the opinion talks about how nasty things could get between the two parents, with both of them being accused of bad-mouthing the other in front of their daughter. Quote, due to the high level of conflict, the court ordered mother and father to communicate through a third-party service that reviewed and, if necessary, edited and revised the messages they sent each other. The third-party service had to make substantial edits to many of father's messages and advised him that it would not send emails that are threatening. Because father also became adversarial with third party service, it withdrew and the parties

had to find another communication intermediary. Really, really sad situation there. Now, one of the things that Tillman talked about in his lawsuit was alleged abuse committed against his daughter by his ex-wife. According to the suit in May of 2016 at the direction of Hildebrand, Savage demanded that the couple separate. At this time, Savage also unilaterally an unlawfully dictated plaintiff's visitation with EJT, who at the time was around 18 months old. And Tillman claims he was getting to spend very little time with his daughter and says there was a period when he didn't see her for weeks, so he officially filed for divorce. And Tillman says that Jody was teaching his ex-wife that she has to abuse their daughter

in order to, quote, teach her or to help her come into the light, again, very similar to the Ruby Frankie case. And then he started documenting the girl's injuries or alleged injuries, which over time included an apparent laceration down her entire hamstring, large bruises on her thighs and hips, cuts on her chin and neck, even a bruise around her eye. And Tillman claims that Savage had an excuse every time, saying that EJT had hurt herself when she was unsupervised. Again, very eerily similar to the Ruby Frankie situation where Ruby brought into the idea that one has to abuse their children to help them be pure. But again, these are just allegations in this civil suit. But the court apparently found signs that Tillman's repeated concerns about possible abuse may well have been harming EJT, too.

It's part of what the footnote we talked about earlier was referencing. The opinion reads, the court next expressed concern regarding father's emotional and sometimes indirect physical abuse of child through his repeated claims without a sufficient justification that mother was physically abusive toward child. Specifically, between 2017 and 2020, father made multiple reports of abuse to various police departments, the division of child and family services and medical. providers. This exposed child to unnecessary emotional trauma and invasive physical examinations and never resulted in criminal charges being filed against mother or in DCFS taking enforcement action against her. When the agencies did not confirm his opinion, father became overly focused, argumentative, and belligerent and was unwilling to accept the many conclusions of DCFS. The court found that father's reports of abuse were vectatious and were calculated and designed to harm

mother and he either was not aware of or did not care about the emotional harm he was causing child through the condition filing of unsupported claims of abuse. Wow. So what happens next in this lawsuit between Michael Tillman and the defendants were earlier this month. Michael Savage or Washburn, as well as Ruby Frankie filed motions requesting an extension of time to file a reply. And the judge granted Savage's request giving her until March 28th a week from today to answer. And that request from Ruby Frankie looked a lot different than the legal filings we're used to seeing. She's, of course, behind bars in a Utah prison for her role in abusing her children and seemingly representing herself in this civil action for now.

She's requested multiple requests for time extensions due to her being locked up. In a letter filed with the court on March 12th, Ruby writes, in very clear handwriting, I, Ruby Frankie, am asking for a continuance until I can find proper representation. I reached out to the contract attorneys provided by the prison and was told this matter is beyond the scope of their work. Family on the outside is actively reaching out for possible attorneys. I'm involved and eager to move ahead, but months, not days are needed to secure counsel, give him or her time to review the complaint and plan a course of action.

To give an idea of the slow pace I'm confined to, it takes about three weeks for the prison to approve me, calling a new phone number. It took two days to secure this white paper. If the court were not to grant me additional time to answer specifically, I hereby generally deny the allegations of the complaint. Thank you for the court's consideration. And to her point, her letter is dated February 22nd, but wasn't filed on the federal court website until March 11th, more than 10 business days later. So the judge has not yet responded to Ruby's request, but we'll keep a careful eye on what happens next.

It's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcast, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time. You can binge all episodes of this long crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.