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In August, cryptocurrency news site Web3 was doing well Posted a job About the arrest of Roman Zemyan, founder of the cryptocurrency trading platform FutureNet, which He allegedly defrauded the victims Out of a total of $21 million.
To the news site’s director, Molly White, a software engineer and One of the world’s harshest critics of the cryptocurrency industryThis was a routine post. For years, White has documented scams, hacks, and fraud committed by influencers, cryptocurrency project founders, and web3 companies on the website.
Then, last week, things got a little less routine.
On October 18, a person who did not identify himself but claimed to run a “reputation management company” that cleans up clients’ “online image,” asked White to remove her X post about FutureNet and Zimeian, “which relates to my client.” “.
The person then offered White a $200 bribe to remove the corresponding post from Web3 Is Going Just Great, according to a copy of the exchange White shared with TechCrunch.
White declined the offer, arguing that there were no errors in her posts. The unnamed person agreed, according to the response seen by TechCrunch, but still raised the price to $500.
White told TechCrunch that this “isn’t the first time someone has tried to intimidate me into taking down my factual reporting, and it wouldn’t be the first time they’ve succeeded,” but, White added, this was the first time someone had offered her money to do so.
The unnamed person did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
A few days later, someone identifying himself as attorney Michael Woods emailed White. Citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which governs U.S. copyright law, Woods claimed White’s post violated copyright because, they claimed, “the content of this page was copied from our website,” according to an email exchange in which White also shared it with TechCrunch.
Jungle included Link to Blogspot It’s called “WP Media News” and shows the exact word-for-word content of White’s post, purportedly from August 18, 2024, a day before White’s post and allegedly written by Woods himself.
At first glance, Blogspot appears to be a content farm filled with dozens of articles on different types of news, such as cryptocurrency fraud, sanctions against the Russians, and Covid-19, dating back to 1995, all authored by Woods. (TechCrunch found that the site was partially up and running sorta service that offers to create “human-like content optimized for SEO” using artificial intelligence.)
“There are penalties for filing false claims under the DMCA,” White told the alleged attorney. Woods responded by offering White $100 to permanently “remove” Ziemian’s same blog post.
White declined the offer.
TechCrunch was unable to confirm whether Woods is a real individual. The address Woods included in his email signature does not appear to exist in the real world, as verified by TechCrunch. Woods listed an address in Los Angeles that appeared to be a completely empty lot. Michael Woods is not registered as an attorney in Los Angeles. According to the California State Bar website.
Woods did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment sent via email and voicemail.
TechCrunch sent a request for comment to the email address used to register FutureNet’s official website, but did not receive a response.
“While I’m always happy to issue corrections if I make a mistake, I don’t remove posts just because the people and companies I write about don’t like what I have to say,” White told TechCrunch.
“If I did that, I guess there wouldn’t be much left on my website,” White said.
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