OfflineThere is a person systematically harassing a number of other people by posting allegations of tax evasion, improper business operations and other nonsense. The person is claiming to be an investigative organization, but it's really all one, single person. (A)
The back story to this is that, roughly a year ago this same person (A) was discovered to be buying other people's artworks (handmade art glass beads) and re-selling them but claiming them to be of her own making. After this was discovered by multiple artists and their customers, she was progressively removed from several websites for said fraudulent sales. This current activity is clearly a vendetta against the people who spoke out against her and put her out of business. She has actively placed calls to various tax and licensing agencies to make false claims against her victims.
Instead of being redundant, I'm presenting three links. The first is a carefully presented explanation of the above back story. It is obviously one person's opinion, and should be construed as such.
Next is this "fraud exposing" website, the subject of my questions.
http://www.handmadeartisanfraud.blogspot.com/
And finally, here is the same person's (A) Twitter page. This is her third (and counting) page. The first two were shut down for TOS violations. By the time someone reads this, the link may also be inoperative. (Twitter has been reasonably quick to react.)
http://twitter.com/Kendrasshop
My questions are:
1) Are her actions and accusations illegal in terms of defamation, violation of privacy and 'bad light' law?
2)It is my understanding that the IRS also doesn't appreciate vendetta accusations. Should that be allowed to play out on its own or is there something the victims can do to 'assist?'
3) Presumably this person's actions are a civil matter, not a criminal one. (Or is something here criminal?) If so, how can the victims best defend themselves and make this stop?
Thank you so much for any insight you can give. It's deeply appreciated.
I'm posting this anonymously because I simply do not want to have to deal with her and be her next victim in this childish vendetta.
Print Me!
My un-lawerly guesses:
1) The second link looks it to me. Whether it's illegal is for a court to decide.
2) Probably not. However, are you sure that you or the accused parties are actually under investigation by the IRS? Of course one doesn't want to wait for an audit to begin to find out, and the IRS probably does have an obligation to investigate such complaints, but I wouldn't necessarily say there's any harm done unless a formal investigation is opened.
3) I would hazard a guess that in some instances, making intentionally false statements to a government office/official can be a criminal matter.
Again, in my un-lawerly, humble opinion you could file a John Doe suit and subpoena the IP address of this person. From there you could go any number of routes, from simply asking the court to prevent this person from posting such things to asking for damages.