I also disagree with the "nothing of value to sell" claim because he had a ton of junk that could have been liquidated: The Wall of DVDs could have sold for $100 even if they sold 3 for $5 or some other really cheap arrangement, the downstairs couch was probably worth hundreds of dollars, then there's the much larger unknown of all the stuff Phil has bought since he stopped doing house tours. Even if Kat hated those tours and told him to stop he'd have still done them more discreetly like he did with his Instaspam..... unless there was something incriminating like all kinds of junk he bought while crying poor.
Forgive me, what I meant is that he had nothing of value within the context of the situation. As in, nothing he sold off would've allowed him to cover his debts. I think even Phil would've considered that route, if it had been a viable option. He may have been willing to try scamming his way into getting his debts wiped away, but at no point was he doing anything other than sweating until it finally worked. He's not a brave person, he'll gladly take an easier avenue than this if there is one. Telling people to click on ads, uploading to recordings of his streams to a competing site immediately afterward, and treating members like he doesn't owe them anything, is all immoral, but comparatively safe in his head.
There's a reason he tells his tax guy to keep getting him a payment plan with the IRS instead of trying to fudge his numbers so he owes less to them. He just doesn't know that that isn't a good idea either. He would probably be frightened into stopping that shit if he did. Salty over it, but sufficiently scared into knocking it the fuck off.
The fraudulent business expenses were probably what saved him from Chapter 13 too: Under Chapter 13, the debtor in conjunction with his/her creditors (this is different from Chapter 7 where creditors have to proactively raise objections, in Chapter 13 they have to explicitly sign off on the repayment plan) proposes a repayment plan for the judge's approval. This plan can only touch disposable income, not basic costs of living or business expenses, which made Chapter 13 impossible for Phil to meet unless she challenged the business expenses because he claimed negative net monthly income after necessities + business expenses. It's a lie but she either bought it or didn't care enough to challenge it.
Rekieta has a long and mostly unsuccessful history of predicting lolsuit outcomes: He was confidently predicting Vic would win his defamation suit until the day the judge dismissed it, described Landau (Maddox's attorney in the "cuck" lolsuit) as wildly unethical only for the judge there to dismiss all sanctions motions. Even if the guy knows the law and represents his clients well he really oversells his ability to predict how judges will behave.
Though that goes to show that there's, potentially, more to this than how much of a textbook Chapter 13 this was. But we'll never know for certain, because Nancy wasn't about to let everyone know in plain English what her thinking was. Especially if her motivation was what I suspect it was. I mean when someone is gaming the system to get their debts wiped, and none of the debt-holders are pressing the issue, it may not be just in the least to let them skate on it, but it can still be preferable, for how obvious it is that the scammer isn't just going to give up when you convert them to Chapter 13. Nancy is human, so she could've made a mistake or been lazy like you say, but she also could've just not cared about some banks, that didn't seem to care about their own money either.
Also, it's worth noting that, apparently, Chapter 7 to Chapter 13 conversion isn't commonplace, and has to be consented to by the debtor. It's going the OTHER way, that's common, and can be forced. That, I did not previously know, and could've been quite a factor. It would seem that a lot of debtors go for Chapter 13, to get on a payment plan like Phil does with his taxes. This is important, because Phil is quite an exception, he was lying about what he could afford to do, and it seems to me that the system just doesn't have the adequate means of dealing with that. It's not used to the likes of him.
And if there's anything that proves Phil's grifting of his retards is purely out of personality, it's how much that same bullshit happens everywhere else in his life. With the same combination of incompetence and illogical result. He fell out of another universe, and this one isn't equipped to handle him.
Also, and this is less informative and more amusing, Phil's discharge is really the thing that seemingly cannot be repeated until eight years after his previous one. He can file for bankruptcy, he just won't, according to what I'm reading, get a discharge. Probably doesn't matter, though, because it would seem the one thing he can learn is to not rack up credit card debt again.
