rickcarufel

Press Release 

Dateline Minnesota: A local Minnesotan has filed a civil suit in 3rd District Court naming celebrity author Anne Rice in the complaint. Rice has long been a harsh critic of negative reviews, even going so far as to place full page newspaper ads to attack her critics.

It would seem she has stepped over the line with her new campaign against her critics in the Amazon Forums. She has become affiliated with a website that professes to be a pro-author, anti-bully site, but their actions speak otherwise. The reality is they are a stalker, hate site that uses I.P. trackers to stalk and dox people who don't agree with them. Every post on the site is a personal attack on someone. (Doxxing is when the confidential details of a person are published in a personal attack such as home address, phone, employer, etc.)

The website we do not name, has personal attacks on targeted authors on every page of the website. Author Rick Carufel has had enough and has filed a civil suit for defamation and libel against the site and their celebrity sponsor Anne Rice. The website was relatively obscure until Rice catapulted it into the spotlight.

In early 2014 Mr. Carufel contacted Ms. Rice and requested she stop promoting the website because of the defamation and libel against him on the site. She refused. 
Since then she has begun openly promoting and recommending the hate site using her Facebook account and the Amazon Forums.
Amazon would have none of it and promptly deleted her discussion promoting the site. A week later she deleted every one of her posts on those forums, an attempt at damage control and to try to conceal her very questionable activities as soon as word got out she was being named in the defamation case.

The Plaintiff in the case has added Ms. Rice to the lawsuit because her promotion of the site to her millions of fans on social media has greatly added traffic to the website and therefore greatly increased the number of people exposed to the defamation. She being fully aware of the vicious personal attack on authors Rick Carufel and Carroll Bryant on every page of the site since early 2014.

Therefore Mr. Carufel has requested cease and desist orders to have the libelous content and/or the website removed, silence Rice's endorsement of the hate site and has requested $10,000 personal damages for every time Ms. Rice endorses/d the hate website publicly since the email exchange between she and the plaintiff in May of 2014.

"I'm only interested in making the defamation stop," said Mr. Carufel, "Rice believes that anyone who disagrees with her are bullies and has repeatedly attacked the Amazon forum members. Recently she used a list from the hate website to target the Amazon forum members, specifically the Top Reviewers Forum, to her million fans using Facebook. Now she's campaigning to have her fans dox anyone who disagrees with her, dubbing them notorious gangster bully thugs who need to have their personal lives exposed, attacked and damaged because they don't agree with her. She has become a direct threat to my personal safety and that of others who use their own names. I no longer feel safe in my own home and dread every knock on the door."

"She is clearly trying to influence the review process for Amazon Books and has personally greatly diminished the number of reviews on Amazon with intimidation through celebrity. She uses her fame and fan base as a weapon to attack her opponents. This has to stop, Rice has to be stopped."

"As a forum member who uses their real name online this behavior by Rice poses a real physical threat to me. I know it's a million to one chance that some crazed Rice fan shows up at my door wearing plastic fangs, but then Rice has a million fans doesn't she?"

"She seems to think she can harass, bully, threaten and terrorize people who disagree with her. I see her recent activity as being very close to domestic cyber-terrorism and illegal. She uses every possible device to harass and intimidate anyone with whom she disagrees. She professes to be a champion against online bullying but is the biggest bully of them all."

Looks like a lot of the people who used be against me when I would complain about fake reviews and ratings on Gramazon seem to be on the same page with me now.  

Linda Hilton seems to actually be on a crusade against Fiverr reviews on Gramazon and seems to be getting some response from GR but as usual Amazon is still in denial and unresponsive.

Good work Linda.  

I have discovered that the Amazon vine voice reviews are also paid. In direct violation of Amazon's own policy.

Yet the hypocrisy over at Gramazon still prevails.  They will delete reviews by reviewers who have been paid to do a review and have actually read the book while they continue with the corrupt policy to allow member who have not bought or read a book to post a review. 

One has to wonder how many complaints to the FTC it's gonna take before they take action against GR for policies that encourage members to defraud consumers with false testimonials for products they have neither bought or used.