from the i’m-from-the-supreme-court dept
Getting threatened with defamation lawsuits seems to go with the territory of reporting on data breaches. Even when reporting is accurate, some folks seem to think that if they threaten a defamation lawsuit, little sites like this one will just cave in to their demands.
As background to this week’s installment of “All My Lawsuit Threats:” in 2009 and 2010, DataBreaches.net covered a case that was prosecuted in federal court in Maine. A Nigerian enrolled as a medical student at St. Joseph’s College, had been charged with bank fraud and aggravated identity theft affecting dozens of victims. In March 2010, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced that following a plea agreement in November, 2009, he had been sentenced to a total of 60 months in prison for convictions on one count of bank fraud and two counts of aggravated identity theft. DataBreaches.net reported the sentencing, as did the Portland Press Herald.
As far as this site was concerned, then, there was no new reporting on the individual after March, 2010, but in March, 2015, he or someone claiming to be him, emailed DataBreaches.net:
Dear sir,
I, [name redacted], hereby request you to remove below mentioned story from your website. This link hurting my online reputation and professional careers. As I have already completed my 60 months sentence last year.
www.databreaches.net/nigerian-man-sentenced-to-60-months-for-fraud/
Currently this link is coming next to my name search in popular search engine like Google.
Immediate response will be solicited.
Regards,
[name redacted]
Note that he did not claim that there was anything inaccurate in the reporting that required a correction. I responded that the policy was not to remove news stories and wished him luck going forward.
That was apparently not satisfactory to him, and he replied that I could/should prevent Google from indexing the file by robots.txt. When I didn’t respond to his email, he followed up with the L-word and D-word:
I am looking for an update, Immediate response will be solicited. If you are not stopping Google to search this story. I have to take legal route and sue you in court for defamation.
Responding with the obvious rejoinder that truth was a defense to any defamation claim, I reiterated that the site was not going to delete the post or no-index it, and cautioned him that if he persisted, his legal threat would be published. In response, he offered me money:
I can pay you up to USD 400 to take this off either from Google or from website. If you are interested let me know. I can pay via bit coin with full anonymity.
DataBreaches.net wasn’t interested, but because he appeared to drop the matter, this site did not publish his threat of litigation.
And that’s where things remained until this week, when this email showed up in my inbox:
From: “Innis Behl” <[email protected]>
Subject: Legal Issue
Date: Fri, September 18, 2015 08:02
To: “[email protected]” <[email protected]>,”[email protected]” <[email protected]>,”[email protected]” <[email protected]>,”[email protected]” <[email protected]>,”[email protected]” <[email protected]>
Hello,
My Name is Innis Behl an Advocate. I want to inform you that a bad content is
being published on your website which is affecting the reputation of my client
who informs me about this. My client is facing lots of difficulties
professionally and publicly by this thing. In other words you are a cause of
defaming his reputation and publishing it on your website. You are not
authorized to do this. So please remove this link as soon as possible.
Otherwise a case files against you in Court. Reply me soon.
Link to be deleted:
http://www.databreaches.net/nigerian-man-sentenced-to-60-months-for-fraud/
Kindly delete it immediately.
Regards,Advocate Innis [email protected]
Curiously, this “Advocate” doesn’t even name the client whom he claims to represent.
I responded to Behl that my reporting was accurate, I don’t need anyone’s “authorization” to report news, that any ill-advised litigation would be met with an anti-SLAPP claim and request for court costs and attorney fees, and that DataBreaches.net would publish a post about the legal threat, which, if he understood the Streisand Effect, might backfire for his client. I gave him 27 hours to retract his threat (I actually intended to give him 72 hours, but was laughing so hard I mistyped it as 27, it seems).
In response — wait for it… Innis Behl doubled down and seemingly claimed to be with SCOTUS:
Hello,
Firstly, The news is not based upon facts and the way you have publicized it
is against U.S. Constitution for which you and your website has to pay.
Secondly, it was not a threat although a warning to take down this website as
it is hampering my client’s reputation publically.
Now, I am giving you 24 hours time if you will not take down this content then
this matter will be forwarded to court and you will be charged heavily for
showing such fake content online and degrading my client’s reputation
publically.
Regards,Advocate Innis BehlSupreme Court of United States
“Fake content?” Did this self-proclaimed “Advocate” read the court records? I’m guessing he didn’t.
And “Supreme Court of United States?” Does @SCOTUSblog know about this? 🙂
I can’t wait to see the court filings. I’ve put a few extra bags of popcorn on the food-shopping list.
Updated June 28, 2021 to redact the individual’s name, as explained in the update to another post on this individual.
Funny stuff.
You have solicited my chuckles.
TY, I enjoyed it.
More pls.
BTW, can you make a claim for harassment as well when you counter with an anti-SLAPP claim?
I don’t know the answer to your question about harassment as a counter-claim with anti-SLAPP. I’ll ask when I get a chance.
Its extremely difficult to prove the word “harassment” in the court of law. I think if they say they are from the supreme court of the united states, they are further engaging in fraud, supposedly disguising themselves as a member of the court and government official. Instead of it letting the story die on the vine, they seem to have nothing better to do than sit and nitpick news articles. With the continued ignorance of this/these individuals, the story now becomes a higher SEO score since more links are provided in the post.
I am not going to add any info thats going to make the guilty party any smarter, but in this case, i think they/he needs all the help they can get. Its quite simple, nice try there convict, move on to something other than quoting an old post from a variety of news sources.
There’s actually nothing to nitpick in this case. If somebody really wants to claim “fake content,” hell, I’ll just upload all the court filings that I didn’t upload at the time. DataBreaches.net stands by the accuracy of the reporting on that case.
Heyyyy My finger was point at the convict in all regards – never at you. I understand that this can be a hoax, or some other means to get you to give “special treatment” to a request. Then if that happens, when the next request comes along, how is that handled? I think your doing the right thing….Offering all potential documentation to keep it in one easy to find location. = )
Its a news article, provided by a news agency. He pleaded guilty and served his time. Again he sits there and says he did his time, and somehow thinks, even after doing all this potentially bad stuff, he is immediately cleared and should be allowed to lead life with a clean slate? I think his ability to find a good paying job – one that he may be trying to apply for – will do a check to see his name and fingerprints DO exist on a security check….If he applies for work in the US. Other countries may simply sift through their favorite web crawler to see what kind of info they can find on this Ex-Convict.
It’s good to get a chuckle fro this. Its almost like a Ive got money for you spear phishing email that comes with no way for people to get taken.
I know you weren’t pointing any fingers at me. I was just stating, for the record, that the site stands by the accuract of the reporting that was moronically described as “fake content.”