Cleaning Up the “Chan v. Ellis” Mess (Part 1)

By now, the people who care already know about my team’s victory in the Chan v. Ellis appeal. I haven’t written a formal announcement here. But I did one on ExtortionLetterInfo.com (ELI):

All Justices Concur! ELI Wins Internet Free Speech Appeal in Georgia Supreme Court!

This post begins a mini-series of articles to clean up the factual mess Linda Ellis began two years ago.

My team knew there would be some public commentary and remarks following the court decision but I didn’t expect that TV reporter, Jon Shirek from WXIA, an Atlanta TV station, would contact me that same afternoon and ask me for a recorded interview. I also didn’t know that Linda Ellis would be contacted for her side of the comments. That was my own ignorance and experience with TV news. Honestly, I was tired and unprepared. But I knew that I had to do the TV interview because it was relatively important. I did get through it although so much of what I said never aired. I imagine the same happened with Linda.

From what I can tell, Jon tried to be fair to both sides and he was attentive and good with subsequent follow-ups. There wasn’t much more that I could reasonably ask from him. However, what was extremely disturbing to me and my team was that Linda, once again, was asserting “facts” that were demonstrably untrue.

In that TV interview, she incorrectly and falsely stated that:

1. I posted the photo of her home.

2. I posted her personal financial information.

3. I posted her family member names and the location where they worked.

Additionally, she released to WXIA a heavily-cropped 1-minute excerpt from the 33-minute, 9th Episode of “The ELI Factor” with my co-host Robert Krausankas ostensibly to make me look bad and prop up her claims about me threatening her physical safety.

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The Truth of the 1-minute Video Rant

It goes without saying she selected the most “offensive” rant from that video and claimed that I was making physical threat TO her because of my animated rant into the camera. And yet, for nearly the entire episode I am addressing my comments to Robert or the general view audience, not Linda individually. It was meant for public viewing although it had very limited viewership.

Essentially, I had a lengthy warning and disclaimer that the episode would contain open rants and profanity as well as a concluding statement with a public apology where I said I would likely password-protect the video because of the profanity. In fact, at the beginning of the video, I even instruct people to turn the video off if they felt they might be offended by what I said.

And yet, Linda watched the entire show at least once. In fact, she had to watch over 20-minutes to get to that 1-minute rant that she selectively recorded to convince others that I was making a threat to her physical safety. And yet that episode was NOT for her! I didn’t record that episode for her at all. It was for me, Robert, and my viewers.  She was not the intended audience. Remember, it was the 9th episode of an Internet mini-series. Despite what she might believe, not everything on ELI is about her.

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The Truth of Posting a Photo of Linda’s Home

Next, I want to settle the issue once and for all WHO and WHY the photo of her home was posted on ELI. First, let me say that Google provides the Google Street View and Google Earth services freely to anyone who has access to the Internet. They provide both the photo and hyperlinks to millions of commercial and residential properties (not just personal homes) worldwide.

Secondly, Linda wants to insinuate that the photo of her home was posted with dark, sinister motives. And this is what she and her lawyer Elizabeth W. (Betsy) McBride submitted into evidence:

Compare the court exhibit to the true screenshot since January 13, 2013.

I did not get served until around February 16, 2013. There was NO Google Street PHOTO posted at time I was served. In fact, it was a good month BEFORE I was served with a lawsuit.  In January 2013, the Google Street Photo post was changed to show that underlying Google link to that photo because of her complaint to Eapps (my web hosting provider at that time). We didn’t have to remove the Google Street View Photo but we did in January 2013.

Notice all the WHITE SPACE in the court exhibit. Compare that to the true screenshot that includes the full comments and context of that post. Robert was investigating Linda’s reported business, Kindercare Learning Centers, Inc. which listed the Preakness Ct. address. Robert clearly and plainly lists a link to Cortera.com of where he retrieved that information. It led Robert to identifying a peculiar type of building for a daycare center.

Robert comments:

“and why in the world would a KinderCare center have the same address…is she running a daycare there as well…hmmm pet rescue/rehab, nursing home and daycare center…along with the trolling operation..”

It was known by ELI that Linda had commendable interests in animal rescue and caring for her elderly mother. But Robert (as all of us did) found it peculiar that a Daycare Center would be a residential address.

Please note the topic discussion title: Re: The $100K Bryan Baer / Linda Ellis Lawyer Extortion Letter!

Robert’s post of Linda’s Google Street View photo was clearly part of a much larger discussion of her $100,000 demand letter against a California-based author. But all of that was conveniently and intentionally obscured by Linda where her lawyer, Betsy, did not vet that exhibit at all. I did not have access to my computer and I didn’t get the exhibit in advance to be able to research and refute it publicly until today. (Side comment: Once the hearing was completed, neither side was able to submit new evidence which is why I didn’t bother to post this earlier.)

Nevertheless, even with the court exhibit version, anyone can plainly see it was “BuddhaPi”, not Matthew Chan that made that post.

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The Truth of Posting Linda’s Family Information and Financial Information

Next, I want to show the court exhibit Linda provided.

The court exhibit is largely intact but with drawn emphasis on portions of the exhibit favorable to Linda.

As you can plainly see, no information was given about her family members besides Linda and her husband’s name and age (public information). “Roswell Downs” was not revealed (at that time) to be her subdivision. And “Planters” and “Kipling” has no significance in itself. The “MEE Museum” had no public significance either until Linda herself revealed it in court records. Even if I had posted and revealed everything, it is undisputed that it was all publicly available information gleaned from Google searches, social media searches, and county government databases.

I did write an “open letter” but I never knew if she truly ever saw or read it until the day of our hearing in February 2013. I did “threaten” her in the sense I would publish publicly-available information but there was no threat of physical violence or personal safety.

This all ties back to Linda’s misleading on-air statements (and elsewhere online) that I had posted information on her family members, where “they” worked, and releasing “personal financial information”. At long last, the full context is finally shown and explained here.

As a side comment, Linda has actually forced out into the public eye the very personal information she prefers to stay undisclosed through her own foolish and irresponsible choices, actions, and personal comments against me. I honestly wanted to leave this alone but even after the court decision, she has taken to the court of public opinion. And so, here we are again at it. What a time and energy suck this is.

I was planning on leaving all of this alone until she decided to recklessly post misleading public accusations and complaints about me of things I did not do. Or certainly, not the in the proper context of how and why I did it. She has forced all this information into court records through court testimony, exhibits, transcript, oral argument, and the entire appellate process. It would have been much better if she had just left it all alone.

This ends Part 1 of “Cleaning up the Chan v. Ellis Mess”. Read Part 2.

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