Joseph Neibich Nybyk – Founder’s Statement

--- An Open Letter to Our Community ---

An Open Letter to Our Valued Community Regarding MisInformation and Manufactured Harassment on Reddit 

To our loyal patrons, filmmakers, and community:

We are writing to address an unfortunate and ongoing situation that has affected not just us, but several people in our wider community that we feel compelled to clarify publicly.

Shortly after we made the decision to discontinue marketing services with a former vendor and competitor, that competitor began an aggressive smear campaign of retaliation. Rather than moving on professionally, this person chose instead to spread false and defamatory claims—first directly to several of our most trusted vendors, and later, both anonymously and through an associate, on Reddit and other online platforms. Fortunately, all of our vendors ignored this ineffective human being. Sadly, our competitor was still able to continue his attacks online via anonymous platforms that lack professional supervision like reddit and strange email providers that don’t require proof of identification.

We took legal action in response to our competitors defamation and are pleased to report that we won every single motion in the lawsuit. The court found no merit in any of his claims. We proved beyond doubt that the accusations made against us were completely false. Our competitor even testified to this effect in court. He also freely admitted to accepting several thousand dollars in marketing money from us over the course of five years before we ended our relationship with our competitor and his company.

Unfortunately, this individual and his associate continue to spread misinformation and slander online—still hiding behind anonymous usernames in addition to naming his accounts after various serial killers. He is also actively harassing various Reddit users (pretending to be me) in an apparent effort to get them to continue posting about us. We are obviously not harassing anyone. We are, however, aware of this coordinated attempt, and it deeply saddens us that someone would resort to such tactics simply because we stopped paying to advertise with his company.

Let us be transparent: the individual behind these attacks, the one who refuses to stop harassing me and my loved ones as well as various experienced reddit users, is a convicted felon with a long-standing criminal history, including internet fraud, grand theft, and breaking and entering. His current behavior—harassing not only us but unrelated individuals—is consistent with his past. We have no need to publicly identify this man, however, please note that he is a convicted felon and was arrested for internet fraud and breaking and entering -into a single woman’s place of business. His conviction can be supported by articles in the Roanoke Times, the great state of Virginia, the Rockbridge Regional Correctional facility, and various local television stations. His arrest made national headlines. As if his criminal record isn’t enough, he claims to have been a member of US Special Forces without presenting any proof or photographic evidence. Our competitor seems to be delusional. He claims to be represented as a writer by one of the most powerful agents at UTA, (one of the three most prestigious agencies in Beverly Hills). UTA denies this claim, both the agent he claims to be associated with and the UTA reception desk are happy to verify this for you. Our competitor also claims to be collaborating on a studio feature film with the creator of Deadpool. Again, there is no proof of this anywhere online.

He has falsely claimed that we committed fraud. We did not. That accusation was completely disproven in court. I repeat, every single defamatory statement he ever made about us was disproven in court. The owners of various respected organizations testified to this effect, including the CEOs of MovieBytes and the ScriptWriters Community. Even our competitor, the counterparty to our lawsuit testified to this effect. In fact not one of his false claims has ever been corroborated. Every single thing our competitor has ever stated about us has been proven false. Sadly, as we all know, Reddit is a big proponent of allowing people to post hate speech and lies on their “anything goes” platform. Ellen Pau, Reddit CEO, has publicly stated that Reddit is a platform that actively amplifies hate and violence.

Our competitor has also claimed that we tried to obtain identifying information on 40 separate Reddit users. This, too, is untrue. What we did—through legal channels—was subpoena Reddit for information on 40 sock puppet accounts linked to him, as part of our effort to demonstrate his involvement in the harassment. It was never about targeting individuals—it was about proving a coordinated attack against us all staged and organized by one sad individual. Furthermore, for unknown reasons, our competitor actually screenshotted and emailed us identifying information on close to 20 active users and moderators on the subreddit in question. We are still not sure why he would do this.

Our competitor then accused us of harassing Reddit users. In reality, he was the one who used odd anonymous and covert email accounts to send everyone involved strange messages. He even attempted to breach the personal accounts of others—just as he has attempted to do to us and members of our own families. He did this by attempting to jailbreak or guess the passwords of virtually every online account I own. So I would wake up to over 50 attempts to log into my accounts -both personal, professional, and financial. Again, our competitor went so far as to send us the home addresses and telephone numbers of multiple established reddit users all while ostensibly fighting for his right to anonymous speech. Again, he was actively outing all other members of his reddit community while simultaneously ostensibly fighting to protect his own personal right to privacy and anonymous speech. All he really wanted to do was drag more and more people into his drama and delusional quest for a career in the entertainment industry. He thought he was untouchable and simply wanted to expand his harassment. These are serious actions, and we are continuing to pursue them through every proper legal avenue.

We do not know why this person is obsessed with us. But we want to be absolutely clear: we will not be intimidated. We will continue to stand firm in the truth, and we will continue to operate with integrity.

Sadly. This person not only harassed me He also harassed my family. He then harassed my business associates in addition to various chat group leaders while pretending to be me. He sent threatening messages like “delete this or else” and “do this or else.” This led to those people thinking they were being harassed by me and then contributing to his harassment of me by then attacking me in response. In reality, they were being harassed by our competitor.

To those who may have been harassed or misled by this individual: you have our deepest apologies. You were dragged into something no one should have to deal with.

In summary, not one of our competitor’s accusations has ever been corroborated by a single credible source. In fact, each and every single one was proven to be false in court. Furthermore, everyone single person who testified, testified to the fact that we were doing nothing wrong. Every single person. We just run several screenwriting competitions just like our competitor who actively runs ten times as many competitions as us.

Moving forward, our focus remains on serving our clients and festival attendees with the excellence and transparency you’ve come to expect from us. We are grateful for your continued trust and support.

If you have any concerns, questions, or have been contacted inappropriately regarding this matter, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Also, please note that if you would like copies of his arrest record and or mugshots we are happy to provide them to you and your legal team.

With appreciation,

The Festival Team