--- 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 that lack professional oversight. 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.
Our competitor has literally sent us and our vendors hundreds of strange emails from these odd anonymous email providers. He would also post things online in various comment sections and then link to it as though it was a reliable source or as though I or someone on my team had posted it for the sole purpose of criticizing us for posting something that he had invented. His actions were so pathetic, even the legal team at Reddit felt the need to remove some of his posts and Reddit never takes down posts.
His big beef seems to be that we ran several film festivals. This is true. We run several reputable film festivals. Our competitor runs far more. He runs dozens of film festivals. We believe he runs between 70 and 80 screenwriting competitions and film festivals combined. He simply runs them under a variety of official sounding corporate names. As such, we find it very odd that someone who runs as many film festivals as him would complain about us running between 7 and 10 smaller film festivals that were all very highly rated, three of which were ranked in the top100 on FilmFreeway. None of his festivals are highly rated.
The reason we were so good at running successful film festivals right out of the gate is we were trained by the best. We received mentorship from the teams at Coverfly, WithoutaBox, InkTip, MovieBytes, and even the manager of business affairs at JSA. The constant support and feedback from the team at FilmFreeway was especially helpful. We were such a well oiled machine we were the only small company to have all of their film festivals available on FilmFreeway and WithoutaBox. No other small festival service can say this.
Eventually, 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. If he had had an issue with our integrity, surely he never would have accepted several thousand dollars a year in marketing monies from us. He certainly never complained as long as we were paying him. Our competitor wound up being so ashamed of his actions he scrubbed the lawsuit from the internet. Our competitor also retracted all of his idiotic negative statements. Twice in writing and twice at his deposition.
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 still 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. The worst of his actions seems to revolve around his harassment of one Redditor in particular. She is very open about her past and current struggles with Serious Mental Illness and bi-polar disorder. He has used this against her while harassing her while pretending to be me and my associates. Sadly she falls for it every time. She’s simply not very savvy and has had several breakdowns due to his harassment. To this day, she complains about it online, but instead of appropriately placing the blame on him, she blames us.
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. Again, all of this behavior is consistent with his criminal past.
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. We have never and will never do anything to compromise our integrity. We simply run several small film festivals.
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. The information he has sent includes their names, home addresses, phone numbers, family member names and addresses, and family photos. We are still not sure why he would do this.
Sadly, Reddit has never allowed us to post a counter argument to his claims. Again, Reddit a platform that supposedly supports free speech would not allow one word of opposition. Every time myself or any of our users would attempt to post something to the odd reddit threads this man created that completely disproved his false accusations the moderators would immediately not only delete our comments they would start sending us threatening messages and then delete our reddit accounts. That is not free speech. It is controlled speech.
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. All of this behavior is again very consistent with his criminal past. 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 -who was pretending to be me.
Our competitor did the same thing to me. He literally pretended to be one of the Reddit Moderators in addition to multiple serial killers for the sole purpose of harassing me and my family. He pretended to be one of the reddit moderators for so long we actually erroneously included that woman in our lawsuit and later had to have her removed. Again, his actions are very consistent with his criminal past and lack of integrity.
Speaking of integrity, our competitor has none. Our firm on the other hand is one of the few contest platforms that offer fair and honest prize presentation. The winners of our contests have always received prizes that can be easily verified both before and after our festivals. And the prizes have always been either cash or prizes that can be easily verified: like consultation packages with top Hollywood development executives or software from the most cutting edge companies. We also screenshot all winner testimonials to further verify our prize presentation and highlight them on the review section of FilmFreeway which cannot be faked. Not our competitor. He generally only produces contests and festivals that occur online and only online. And his prizes are always related to being discovered by the industry. He actually claims to be running what amounts to a “movie star discovery platform.” That is not even possible. What could be shadier? How can anyone look themselves in the eye as they promote themselves as a movie star discovery platform? I don’t know either, but he makes a fortune doing it and then he has the audacity to post hateful lies about other festival platforms that are trying to do business the honest way. If he could turn you into a star, why doesn’t he turn himself into one? Again this is very consistent with the behavior of a convicted felon who was previously arrested for internet fraud.
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 love and appreciation,
The Festival Team
--- 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 that lack professional oversight. 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.
Our competitor has literally sent us and our vendors hundreds of strange emails from these odd anonymous email providers. He would also post things online in various comment sections and then link to it as though it was a reliable source or as though I or someone on my team had posted it for the sole purpose of criticizing us for posting something that he had invented. His actions were so pathetic, even the legal team at Reddit felt the need to remove some of his posts and Reddit never takes down posts.
His big beef seems to be that we ran several film festivals. This is true. We run several reputable film festivals. Our competitor runs far more. He runs dozens of film festivals. We believe he runs between 70 and 80 screenwriting competitions and film festivals combined. He simply runs them under a variety of official sounding corporate names. As such, we find it very odd that someone who runs as many film festivals as him would complain about us running between 7 and 10 smaller film festivals that were all very highly rated, three of which were ranked in the top100 on FilmFreeway. None of his festivals are highly rated.
The reason we were so good at running successful film festivals right out of the gate is we were trained by the best. We received mentorship from the teams at Coverfly, WithoutaBox, InkTip, MovieBytes, and even the manager of business affairs at JSA. The constant support and feedback from the team at FilmFreeway was especially helpful. We were such a well oiled machine we were the only small company to have all of their film festivals available on FilmFreeway and WithoutaBox. No other small festival service can say this.
Eventually, 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. If he had had an issue with our integrity, surely he never would have accepted several thousand dollars a year in marketing monies from us. He certainly never complained as long as we were paying him. Our competitor wound up being so ashamed of his actions he scrubbed the lawsuit from the internet. Our competitor also retracted all of his idiotic negative statements. Twice in writing and twice at his deposition.
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 still 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. The worst of his actions seems to revolve around his harassment of one Redditor in particular. She is very open about her past and current struggles with Serious Mental Illness and bi-polar disorder. He has used this against her while harassing her while pretending to be me and my associates. Sadly she falls for it every time. She’s simply not very savvy and has had several breakdowns due to his harassment. To this day, she complains about it online, but instead of appropriately placing the blame on him, she blames us.
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. Again, all of this behavior is consistent with his criminal past.
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. We have never and will never do anything to compromise our integrity. We simply run several small film festivals.
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. The information he has sent includes their names, home addresses, phone numbers, family member names and addresses, and family photos. We are still not sure why he would do this.
Sadly, Reddit has never allowed us to post a counter argument to his claims. Again, Reddit a platform that supposedly supports free speech would not allow one word of opposition. Every time myself or any of our users would attempt to post something to the odd reddit threads this man created that completely disproved his false accusations the moderators would immediately not only delete our comments they would start sending us threatening messages and then delete our reddit accounts. That is not free speech. It is controlled speech.
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. All of this behavior is again very consistent with his criminal past. 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 -who was pretending to be me.
Our competitor did the same thing to me. He literally pretended to be one of the Reddit Moderators in addition to multiple serial killers for the sole purpose of harassing me and my family. He pretended to be one of the reddit moderators for so long we actually erroneously included that woman in our lawsuit and later had to have her removed. Again, his actions are very consistent with his criminal past and lack of integrity.
Speaking of integrity, our competitor has none. Our firm on the other hand is one of the few contest platforms that offer fair and honest prize presentation. The winners of our contests have always received prizes that can be easily verified both before and after our festivals. And the prizes have always been either cash or prizes that can be easily verified: like consultation packages with top Hollywood development executives or software from the most cutting edge companies. We also screenshot all winner testimonials to further verify our prize presentation and highlight them on the review section of FilmFreeway which cannot be faked. Not our competitor. He generally only produces contests and festivals that occur online and only online. And his prizes are always related to being discovered by the industry. He actually claims to be running what amounts to a “movie star discovery platform.” That is not even possible. What could be shadier? How can anyone look themselves in the eye as they promote themselves as a movie star discovery platform? I don’t know either, but he makes a fortune doing it and then he has the audacity to post hateful lies about other festival platforms that are trying to do business the honest way. If he could turn you into a star, why doesn’t he turn himself into one? Again this is very consistent with the behavior of a convicted felon who was previously arrested for internet fraud.
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 love and appreciation,
The Festival Team
--- Peace ---
--- Peace, Hope, and Love ---
--- Founder Links ---
