BULLETIN: Los Angeles Superior Court, June 18: The alleged cyber terrorists* Ian Leicht and Sayyed Bashir were handed a resounding defeat from Judge Emilie Elias this morning as she ruled against Leichts SLAPP motion to quash the lawsuit against them by Wellington Burke. Judge Elias, in rebuking Leichts attorney S. Christopher Winter, pointed out that the name of the website itselfjobscamsis defamatory. She went further and said that when they say on their websites that the industry is rife with fraudulent companies while referencing Wellington Burke, this also is defamatory. When the cyber terrorists posted jobs on their website claiming they were stolen by Wellington Burke is not only defamatory, but is libelous on its face, if it is not true.
The effect of the SLAPP motion by Leicht was to force Wellington Burke to prove their prima facie case, with less than 30 days and without discovery and depositions of Leicht and Bashir, or have the case dismissed. However, it was a challenge Wellington Burke overcame as Judge Elias denied the SLAPP motion and scheduled the case for trial on January 12.
*Cyber terrorist is the proper term for these individuals who seek to do financial harm to others without the motivation of gaining financial gain for themselves, and by doing it through the Internet in a way that leaves the object of the terrorism little recourse to respond to the attacks.
Background
This page has been built to advise potential visitors to the website entitled CAVEAT EMPTOR, that Ian Leicht, alleged co-conspirator and cyber terrorist, and the author of that website and other websites, has been sued for libel and defamation by Wellington Burke, Ltd. (wbl). Neither Leicht nor his co-conspirator Sayyed Bashir have ever been clients of WBL, yet they have caused significant financial harm to our business by their libelous and unfounded accusations published on the website noted above on the Internet. Leicht and Bashir are both computer and Internet specialists who have used their unique knowledge to consistently publicize their false accusations on the Internet in a way to gain maximum exposure and maximum damage to our company, while mostly hiding their identity, their involvement and motivations.
They say that they have spoken to people who said they were taken advantage of by JobFinders, the forerunner company WBL bought out in but they do not identify who these persons are, how many of them there were, or what was supposedly done to take advantage of them.
Nobody at WBL has ever had any dealings with either Leicht or Bashir, yet to gain personal notoriety and publicity unto themselves, they have freely defamed and libeled our company. Leicht has held himself out to be an expert in the field of executive career marketing and has gotten himself quoted making disparaging comments about virtually every company in the industry.
Leicht has set up his own personal website entitled. The Wellington Burke website may be viewed at. It might be worthwhile to visit these websites first to get a quick perspective on the Parties involved in this legal dispute. Leicht, on his website entitled jobscams, has been adding a running update to the actions that have brought him and Wellington Burke to this current point. Below is our most current update:
JUNE 18 UPDATE: Ian Leicht Loses in Court Again...
Today is a good day for decency and justice. Mr. Ian Leicht of Los Angeles, and his co-conspirator Sayyed Bashir, lost in court again this morning. Judge Emilie Elias of the Los Angeles Superior Court, Central District, completely saw through the sham petition to the Court that they be protected by the application of the SLAPP Act to protect his freedom of speech. Judge Elias clearly sees the difference between what is free and protected speech, and what is libel and defamatory unsupported accusations.
The highlight of the entire hearing was when Mr. Winters, attorney for Leicht, began fumbling with words to describe what the real meaning of the word stolen was. Wellington Burkes attorney Mr. Schadrack had evidently proven sufficiently to Judge Elias that the job postings they falsely proclaimed Wellington Burke had stolen were in fact not stolen. As Mr. Winters was attempting to explain to the Judge that the word stolen may not really mean stolen, but simply borrowed, or something of the like, Judge Elias interrupted him to proclaim that she knew what the meaning of IS IS! In reference to the famous answer provided by former President Bill Clinton to the question about whether the acts between him and Monica Lewinsky is sex or not.
JUNE 1 UPDATE: Leicht Seeks SLAPP Act Protection
Leicht petitions the Court to stop our lawsuit against him by filing a Petition with the Court for the Implementation of the SLAPP Act. This law was passed by the California Legislature to protect employees who were whistleblowers against their employers for wrong doing by disallowing the employer to sue the employee as punishment for speaking out. This law has been the subject of heated discussion lately in the courts and legislature because it is being used for all sorts of purposes for which it was not intended. One of those unintended uses is the protection of the supermarket tabloids to say anything they want to say about someone to ruin their reputation and careers, and then claim SLAPP Act protection. Another prime user is the Better Business Bureau who hides behind the law to publish statements harmful to businesses to punish them for not belonging and paying their increasingly high BBB dues. And then there are individuals like Leicht who want to interpret the law to mean he can say about anything he chooses without substantiation of truthfulness, and hide behind the law and claim he has a freedom of speech that protects him. The old adage about yelling Fire in a crowded theatre is not free speech; and calling a reputable business a scam that is known to be fraudulent and thieves of job postings without any proof or backup is also not protected speech.
MAY 8 UPDATE: Amended Complaint Filed Now $400K
On May 8, Mark Schadrack, attorney for JobFinders International, Inc. Who filed the initial lawsuit, filed an amendment to the complaint, adding Wellington Burke to the suit, and increasing the financial damages portion to $400,000 from $200,000.
MAY 7 UPDATE: Default Judgment Overturned
Leicht did not respond to the initial lawsuit by JFI, and the Court handed down a Default Judgment in favor of JFI on February 28. On May 7, the Court heard a petition from Leichts current lawyer saying his former lawyer, and not Leicht himself, had been at fault in not filing a response to our lawsuit. A California statute protects litigants from incompetent lawyers by requiring the judge set aside any such default judgments.in this case, Leichts first lawyer fell on his sword in order to protect his client, Leicht. It is very common lawyer trick in such instances, Judge Elias evidently saw through the ruse, and awarded JFI their attorney costs related to the default, which is extremely unusual unless the Court suspects chicanery, which it obviously did.
MAY 2 UPDATE: Leicht Websites Shut Down by Hosts
Because of the substantiation of his libelous and defamatory statements made on Leichts websites, WBL has been successful in having his website hosts shut down the sites at least six times within the last few months. WBL had a judgment against him for libel from the Superior Court of California, and in most instances, the websites themselves have Terms of Service rules against libel and defamatory comments being published through them. He has, however, continued to move the sites to other hosts overnight in order to disseminate his statements.
On 03/17/03, his website jobscams was being hosted in The Netherlands in hopes that that country would not enforce the laws of the United States and close him down again. However, that did not work. They did close him down.in the last few months he has been closed down by eSmart, 0catch, DSLExtreme, Lycos/France, donhost. UK in England, and Geocities/Yahoo for breaking their published Terms of Service against making libelous and defamatory statements. There must be a reason?
APRIL 22 UPDATE: Leicht Explains Default Judgment
On the Leicht website, he states the award of the default judgment was made because of the incompetency of his attorney in not responding to the lawsuit by the deadline to respond. This is only partly truth. JFI was required to prove up their case to Judge Elias, which means showing the case has merit. California Superior Court Judges are not in the habit of handing down judgments of $200,000 against anyone without proper substantiationeven in default.
FEBRUARY 28 UPDATE: Default Judgment Awarded
JobFinders receives a default judgment in the case against Mr. Leicht for the sum of $200,000 on 02/28/03.
JANUARY 14 UPDATE: Leicht Denies Authorship of Execcareer
Mr. Leicht denies authorship of the website entitled execcareer.com. We have been able to authenticate through a private investigator that the name Alan Smith given as the owner of the execcareer website is bogus; the address of the owner of the website is bogus; the telephone number for the owner of the website is bogus; the website is registered through a small, inconsequential company in Paris, France, (which incidentally makes a subpoena for payment records of the owner of the site extremely difficulthow convenient!); if you get suckered into making a monetary donation to Alan Smith on that site, the money ends up in the bank account of Sayyed Bashir; Leicht is the admitted author of the programming script for execcareer; Leicht admits receiving continuous downloads of statistical information on who visits execcareer into his web server; Leicht has a hyperlink on his website jobscams to execcareer; Leicht at one point indicated he was not the owner of execcareer, but he thought the owner was Bashir; he later admits loaning Bashir the programming script for execcareer; he later admits sending the statistical information he gathers from execcareer to Bashir. You get the picture. Leicht also denies he is the author of negative statements made about our company on the Internet Supermarket Tabloid website usacomplaints. Comwhich only identifies the authors by first name and last name initial to hide the identity of the person making the negative statements there. He could have used Alan Smith.
JANUARY 09 UPDATE: Defamation Lawsuit Filed Against Leicht
Leicht acknowledges the defamation lawsuit against him, but states that he believes it is without merit.
P.S.: There is an excellent story in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday, June 15, in Section B, Page 1, about cyberterrorism, reprinted here as it has an interesting parallel to the websites set up by Mr. Leicht and his co-conspirator Sayyed Bashir.
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