Sunday, October 24, 2010

An Update on the Situation Involving the Impostor

Hey Moonies, Sailordees here with a major update, which we are posting to you all since there’s been some buzz that we are neglecting the site. There is a VERY big reason why I and The Me have not been able to do much – and that is, the infamous impostor. Earlier this summer, we received a tip from someone who knew of the impostor. This person could not believe what the impostor did, and they passed on an important contact to someone who they thought might be able to help us. We got this contact last June while we were still speaking with the impostor, who at the time had told us several times that he had told the woman in the photo what had happened, but came up with every excuse in the book as a reason for why he could not tell her how to remove the images. In July, he ran away from the situation once again leaving his mess for us to clean up. We must have gotten those images removed from 6-7 different sites over the summer. They were not our images, we didn’t own them, but once we presented that we had evidence to some of these sites of Jamie’s ownership and his pleas to get them down, they were removed. This tired us out (and we are pretty sure it tired out the representative of Linda Ballantyne as well).

In the beginning of September, the impostor struck again with fake profiles on both Facebook and Windows Live, and strained for time, we were forced to take action again. Once again, we worked hard with her representative to get these images removed, and we tried again and again to contact the impostor to take ownership since it should have been his responsibility to clean up his mess. Again, he refused to get back to us. We got the profiles removed, but there were still two images of the blonde in question available on the internet. The Me and I have been working together as a team on this – he has been writing the letters to the hosts etc. to get the images removed and I have been in contact with all the other important people in this matter.

We had decided a month ago to act on this tip from someone who knew of the impostor and sent several emails to the contact. On October 4th, we finally got an email back from this contact saying that he had spoken to the impostor about what he had done, and that that we were to contact him with all the places that needed to contacted and that he would ensure that the action would be taken. We also feel that we (as well as the fans, and everyone else involved) were lied to. The blonde woman in his photos was (as we guessed) his mother, and this was the first she was hearing of this. Nearly a year after all of this began. We cannot imagine her grief at this time, having only learned small glimpses of the situation. The tone of the email emphasized with our situation, and feeling for his mother, I spent a few hours one night writing a personal ten page letter to her outlining everything that her son had done, how we found him, details on our dealings with the representatives of both actresses implicated by this scandal, and how this had affected our site. I also included excerpts of emails where he lied claiming he had spoken to her about the images, but had refused to pass on any contacts to get them removed. We knew that he was lying then, because what sort of person in this day and age wouldn’t want their personal images removed from the internet? While I didn’t suggest what happened to him, I ended the letter hoping that those around him would ensure that he had learned his lesson, so he would not do something like this again (or if he did, that he would take responsibility to clean up his own mess).

Well, now we feel duped. We must have worked to get rid of content related to this little prank on around ten websites. We had started fraud requests on one of the two images, and we had passed on the relevant ticket numbers to the impostor to write a simple message saying that he owned the image and it needed to be taken down. He never did, because we never saw his messages added to our service ticket. Fortunately, our records of everything that happened as well as relevant emails from the impostor taking ownership of what had happened were enough to remove this image. But, there is still one left and they will probably want the real owner to come forward. We will try to get this image removed this week, but once again we feel that we have failed everyone involved by not getting this taken care of fast enough. Again, we would really appreciate some sort of sign from anyone involved with the impostor that he has sent a message to the very last host of the image.

It is because we consider Linda Ballantyne and every other voice actor that we have dealt with an extended member of our Moon Chase “family”, as well as how heartfelt we felt for the woman in the photos, that we continued to fight to get these images removed so that Linda could be identified with the correct face, and not that of another woman. We don’t like to see our friends get hurt, and we will do everything we can for them. While we have not heard back from the woman in the photos, we can only imagine that she would really appreciate it if anyone who has either posted or saved an image of her to their machines or websites would delete them and destroy all copies of her image. Remember this little rhyme:

If Linda is Blonde,
you’ve been conned!
But no one can forget,
that the real Linda is a brunette!


as a general rule when trying to decide if an image you see associated with her name is legitimate or not. One of the reasons that we are trying to remove every image is so that people don’t see them and spread them around even more – then we can directly point any new ones that show up back to the source of the images (the impostor).

We would also like to thank the reader (who chooses not to be identified) for getting us this contact, which we hesitated to act on until the situation got desperate. We were worried that we would be turned down like we had been so many times before in trying to resolve this situation. Without your help, this woman might have never known that her image had been spread on the internet without her consent. We thank you for being brave enough to contact us and help us in our time of need.

To our colleagues, the representatives of the actress, and especially the fans, we sincerely appreciate you sticking by us every ugly moment of this scandal, and we once again promise that we will never, ever, let this happen to our site ever again. There are times that we feel our reputation has suffered as a result of this prank that was played, but reading your words of support and kindness have always meant the world to us.

To the impostor – what you have done was very cowardly and despicable. You lied to everyone around you about contacting the woman in these photos, and we only hope that you felt ashamed when she found out about your pranks months later. You have forced us to waste precious time to clean up your mess, while you continue to go on with your life happily. Have you learned your lesson, finally? Or will you do this again in another couple of years?

9 comments:

Fred Francis said...

I know this won't get the impostor's attention, so it's best to warn people about it.
It's better than taking actions against a troll, claiming to be somebody else. In the words of the wise, Don't Feed The Trolls.
Trust me, I dealt with people who claim to be someone from the company, when the real person told me that it was a fake. It happens to alot of us.

But, if you want to continue ranting about a faker, go ahead. But if you want to take my advice, ignore the matter and the imposter and just warn people about it. Don't take it out on that troll.

Anonymous said...

guys i come to this site to hear about sailor moon. we all know it wasn't real. you did your best to get word out and take down the pictures. There's nothing else that can be done about some teenager who likes to troll. it's ridiculous to keep bringing it up, and dragging it on and on.

when did i make this said...

in the name of the moon, we will punish you, prankster!

Unknown said...

We know this has been a long, drawn out issue and at least some people are tired of hearing about it.

But at the same time, we wanted to answer everyone's questions about why we haven't been able to keep up with our usual volume of news.

This was a serious case of identity theft and unfortunately, we did not receive as much support in resolving it as we had hoped, so much of the work fell to us.

The good news is that the last of the images are finally gone, and everyone certainly knows about the situation now. With any luck, we won't have to make any more posts about this sad issue.

Anonymous said...

I honestly don't understand what is going on here?

Imposter? Who was the imposter? Who was he impersonating? What did he do? What was depicted in these pictures? Why was it a scandal? Why did you spend so much time on this? would Linda Ballantyne even care? Why would anyone care what Linda Ballantyne looked like? Seriously..

All I understand is a boy created a profile somewhere with a picture of his mum and said it was Linda Ballantyne and spread it around. Why are you so angry about this? Why feed a troll?

This has been taken way out of proportion. You make it sound like an emergency or something when it fact it was nothing.

Move on.

sailordees said...

This has been going on for months. The representatives of the actresses were involved. We couldn't ignore it, especially what happened in September. To the last anonymous poster, she did care, and she was offended by what had happened, especially since someone else's face was being associated with her name (which poses some challenges to her career). It was not just a profile. It was a fake interview, a fake twitter account, a fake blog, and other fake profiles.

Dominic M. said...

I'm pretty sure the Staff is tired of dealing with this issue as much as you are hearing about it but they have to put this issue to rest.

The People this person impersonated were most likely hurt and angered because they had their names dragged through the mud so someone could have their 15 minutes of fame. Its bad enough when these starlets do it to themselves but its a different story when someone drags an innocent person through the mud.

I know I'd be enraged if someone thought it was funny to drag my name in the mud and I was innocent of such things but they did it to cover their trail. In fact I'd have a few choice words which none can be said in this medium.

This low life tricked other websites other than Moon Chase and other people (Including some cast members if my memory serves me correctly; feel free to counter this if I am wrong). This goes beyond trolling and crosses into borderline legal issues. If this is illegal then he could be due some repercussions soon by Linda's Representatives.

sailordees said...

Hi Dominic: yes you are right, other sites were affected but unfortunately we were the only ones who took action to figure out who it was and (tried) to keep him accountable. We'd have appreciated at least some help from these other sites, but we didn't get as much as we had hoped. In the beginning it wasn't so much a burden as we had all worked really fast to take care of what we could, but when things began to spread and the impostor ran away, we were left between a rock and a hard place, between fighting to get images and content removed since we knew where they were more than the actress or her reps, or letting it go and allowing it to spread and spread and spread. While it is easy for someone to say they could have just ignored it, we are sure they would have done the opposite if they were in our situation. Everyone needs to remember that this person was behind not only the impersonation, but the rumor from 2 years ago about the show coming back on the air in the UK. He continued to label us liars after we had been on the phone with official sources as well as a phone call that was completed live with a friend of mine at that show's airtime. We let it go then because we had enough official proof on the site debunking the rumor (and most of the fans had started to call him out on it as well). But this one was much more severe and since we were under pressure not to ruin our reputation with officials involved so we can continue to bring you exclusive content, we had to keep going. We don't think that a lot of the fans understand what we have had to go through which is why we have posted our progress in the matter. What you see here is only the surface of what we have had to deal with in resolving this issue.

SailorMusic said...

Oh wow. I wouldn't be surprised if his mom sent him to military school or something! If my child did that, I'd have them arrested.

And people, a bunch of us care about this because it's very rude and it could ruin someone's life. Like, a terrorist hacked some teenager in South Carolina's IP address and the kid got arrested, where he will end up spending the rest of his life because of identity theft.

An I'm really glad all the images have been removed! I did a Google image search and I can't find the pics at all!