Litigation

More bullying of bloggers by Shop To Earn attorney Gerald Nehra

By Tracy Coenen

Earlier today I reported that I had been threatened by Gerald Nehra, attorney for multi-level marketing company ShopToEarn for writing about my opinions on the company here. I am not the first blogger that he and Shop To Earn have threatened, and the threats continue.

The blogger writing Everyday Finance has been threatened more than once by Gerry Nehra because he posted his personal review of Shop To Earn and the ShopToEarth program. He had some concerns about the program, the Shop To Earth products, how commissions are paid out, and the MLM structure. I quoted from his analysis here. He found some positives and negatives with the program.

More threats have been issued to this blogger, so he now has this posted on his blog:

Scam? I am not classifying STE a scam, but here’s a review and my personal experience, which may help you in determining if this is a company you want to be involved with.

Legal Threats:

Unfortunately, my original post from several weeks ago, which had a balanced, yet critical review of the business process, had to be taken down due to the threatening emails sent to me by the legal counsel of Shop To Earn. Until I investigate my rights/risks further, I have removed parts of the post as of July 14, 2008 to comply with the uncompromising, bullying (in my opinion) behavior of this company. Readers had benefited from the important information displayed, but I really don’t have the time or energy for a prolonged legal battle to defend my free speech. Fortunately, I have an LLC firewall between this attorney and my personal assets, but I really don’t want to spend the time, nor would I like to lose the blog, over this issue unless I have further assurances from my legal inputs, so for now, here’s the abridged version that, for any reasonable individual, has nothing that could invite legal action for OPINIONS:

I certainly understand the blogger’s concerns. Unfortunately, this is the exact results that companies like Shop To Earn and attorneys like Gerald Nehra want. They know full well that people in the United States have the legal right to voice their opinions. Yet they don’t want the public to hear those opinions or the arguments supporting these negative opinions.

They know that if they make threats, most bloggers will remove the negative comments. Even if a blogger is following the law, the possibility of an expensive legal battle is frightening, so most acquiesce to the unreasonable and unfair demands of the attorneys.

It seems that the more companies like ShopToEarn try to silence critics, the more reason there is to believe that they have something to hide.  Why else would they be so intent on stopping people from voicing negative opinions about the program?

Full post as published by The FRAUDfiles Blog on July 14, 2008 (boomark / email).