An ELI reader has submitted to me and Greg a copy of the newest Higbee Demand Letter. Higbee's newest client? Adlife Marketing & Communications! It is a small world after all.
Up to now, the Higbee demand letters generated a lot of controversy because they were sending $5,000 demands for using Nick Youngson's (from the UK) $10 (or free with attribution) photos. On top of that, both Higbee and Youngson seemed to be trying to profit from the "honeypot effect" of Youngson's generic "creative commons" websites where people would help themselves to images without necessarily paying attention to the fine print of atribution, "the gotcha effect". Until recently, Youngson did not disclose his involvement in some of the websites.
Higbee has been criticized by ELI, in part, because of his misleading "national law firm" self-promotion which we mostly believe is a sham because most of the locations Higbee advertises appear to be virtual addresses or rented mailing addresses. I tend to believe he is primarily a California operation but he appears to want to convey to the world at large he has this huge presence throughout the U.S.
On a separate front, we have Adlife Marketing & Communications which was first reported on Robert Krausankas' (who is part of the ELI team) Copyright-Trolls.com website. The Adlife Marketing letters were noteworthy for sending out $8,000 demand letters for food images.
Many letter recipients were angry and outraged because many acquired the images through Getty Images' low-end agency, iStock Photos before the working relationship between iStock and Adlife Marketing ended. Based on Robert's reporting, iStock Photo (to their credit) has tried to assist their customers who received demand letters from Adlife Marketing.
Although ELI has covered Adlife Marketing demand letters, most of the information surfaced and was reported directly to Robert and copyright-trolls.com. (Oftentimes, ELI, Oscar, or I will get first wind of new demand letters). But in Adlife's case, people kept contacting Robert and copyright-trolls.com in a similar way that people who get Linda Ellis' Dash Poem extortion letters contact April Brown of AprilBrown.com. (The Internet works in mysterious ways.) And because Robert is also part of ELI, he shared his information with the ELI Community.
During that journey, Robert uncovered quite a bit of information about Adlife Marketing's CEO, Joel Albrizio, and the many legal skirmishes in his and the company's past and reported on them. A few outspoken and angry victims also voiced their unhappiness on copyright-trolls.com.
This led to more people connected to Joel's past coming out of the woodwork who provided Robert quite a bit of interesting information, some of it was published, much of it was not as the information could not be corroborated. Some of it might have been truthful but it seemed to fall into the gossip category.
Robert took a snarky, sarcastic, and satirical perspective in his coverage of Adlife Marketing and its CEO, Joel Albrizio on copyright-trolls.com. Joel reached out to Robert to discuss the criticisms. Joel even offered some comments to Robert's early blog posts. There were some disagreement in their phone conversations and it eventually lead to unhappy verbal threats against Robert to "destroy and ruin his life".
This eventually lead to Oscar Michelen stepping into represent Robert and copyright-trolls.com. Oscar issued notification letters twice to Joel. One was to explain what copyright-trolls.com was all about and that Robert was well within his rights to his self-styled reporting. The other letter was to warn Joel to refrain from communicating and threatening Robert.
Ultimately, the dispute and animosity by Adlife Marketing CEO, Joel, reached a peak and he and/or a close associate of his, launched VoicesofJupiterFlorida (VOJF) to smear and disparage Robert, Copyright-Trolls.com and Robert's family, friends, and associates in Jupiter. One of VOJF's stated goals early on was to force the takedown of copyright-trolls.com. However, because Robert did not capitulate, VOJF wanted the content of Dash Poet Linda Ellis, one of her ex-assistants, Adlife Marketing, and Joel's removed.
This was done through an alias "Jessica Langston" where "she" was emailing Robert's family members, clients, friends, and associates to draw attention to VOJF. A lot of emails came back to Robert wondering what VOJF was all about. They were confused and mostly thought that this "Jessica Langston" seemed creepy. Robert had to take the time to explain the dispute Joel had against Robert.
Over time, a great deal of evidence was uncovered and gathered which pointed towards Joel himself as being the responsible party behind VOJF. VOJF was a source of personal drama here on ELI because of the personal smears against Robert's family members, friends, and associates because they were innocents who really have no knowledge of the world of extortion letters as ELI readers do.
Part of the VOJF drama can be found here on ELI:
http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/getty-images-letter-forum/'voices-of-jupiter-florida'-discussion-thread/Long-time readers of ELI know about the ugly underbelly that have been uncovered over the years and the seedy tactics used by nearly every company/law firm we have covered. Not everything is all it appears to be. What is written on the demand letters cannot be trusted and must be scrutinized.
GET TO THE DAMN POINT ALREADY!Now that I have gone through this LONG explanation and narrative of all the various characters and their stories, this all culminates that Higbee (with his own history and controversy) appears to have taken on Adlife Marketing (and by association, its CEO, Joel Albrizio, his history, drama, controversy) as their newest client!
The one Higbee letter on behalf of Adlife Marketing I have seen so far uses a nearly identical template to many other Higbee letters I have seen. What is notable is the "lower" $2,500 demand. It is still outrageous, but compared to Higbee's "normal" $5,000 letters and Adlife's $8,000 letters, it is less egregious than we have seen.
None of us know if this new Higbee demand letter on behalf of Adlife Marketing is just a one-off, an experiment, or the beginning of a new ongoing working relationship.
My gut-feeling is that we will see more of these letters. It would seem that Joel wanted to outsource the collection effort. Reports were that Joel himself "negotiated" with people receiving the $8,000 letters. I think he probably had very limited success in collections given how outrageous the amounts being asked were. It probably also generated a lot of negative energy and negative PR for himself and the company.
By outsourcing these demand letters to Higbee, most of the initial arrows and animosity will be directed at Higbee, not Adlife Marketing. However, there is an inescapable past and history by each party. The once separate stories of Higbee and Adlife Marketing has now suddenly crashed together.
What a small world we live in.
Topic: New Higbee & Associates Letter on Behalf of Adlife Marketing (food images)! (Read 26859 times)