Litigation

Word is getting out about ShopToEarn lawyer Gerald Nehra?s threats to bloggers

By Tracy Coenen

Blatant acts of consumerism are occurring all over the internet. Far and wide, bloggers are banding together to spread the word about multi-level marketing attorney Gerald Nehra threatening bloggers on behalf of his client, Shop To Earn.

It all started a few weeks ago when blogger Everyday Finance wrote a post about the ShopToEarn and ShopToEarth program. He highlighted both positives and negatives that he found with their MLM program. It wasn’t long before he got a cease and desist email from Gerry Nehra (former attorney for mlm giant Amway), threatening legal action if he didn’t take down his negative comments about the company.

I then wrote my own critique of the mlm program, and got my own cease and desist email. The original blogger modified the posts on his blog that made Shop To Earn so mad, but that wasn’t good enough. Gerald Nehra then demanded he take down his site within 24 hours.

And the blogosphere is rallying to stop this kind of bullying. Bloggers are entitled to express their opinions, whether or not MLMs like ShopToEarn want them to or not. Here are the sites who have already posted about the issue:

Sam Antar - Shop To Earn Tries to Bully Bloggers with Litigation

Gary Weiss - ‘Shop to Lose’ (a/k/a ShoptoEarn) Bloviates Against Blogger

Tech Dirt - Multi-Level Marketing Company Threatens Blogger Who Writes Critical Post (Thanks to a tip from Davis Freeberg.)

Lee Distad - MLM Sics Lawyer on Bloggers

Karin Malchow @ Examiner - Multi-level marketing line of defense

If you’ve posted on this topic, please email me so that I can include you in an update on the support for Everyday Finance and bloggers just like him who have been bullied and intimidated by lawyers who don’t respect the right to free speech afforded to us by the Constitution of the United States.

Full post as published by The FRAUDfiles Blog on July 16, 2008 (boomark / email).