James McGibney

James McGibney is an American entrepreneur and former Marine. He is the CEO and founder of Las Vegas, Nevada based ViaView, Inc., which owns and operates the web sites BullyVille.com, CheaterVille.com, CupidVille.com, KarmaVille.com, and SlingerVille.com.[1][2][3]

Background

McGibney received a master's degree in criminal justice degree from Boston University.[4]

Career

McGibney served in the United States Marine Corps, serving tours of duty with Third Surveillance Reconnaissance Intelligence Group and Marine Security Guard Battalion. He was awarded the Navy Achievement Medal for his service in the US Marines.[5]

After leaving the Marine Corps, McGibney founded SecuraTrak, a satellite-based asset tracking system.[6] McGibney was involved with the first deployment of Cisco UCS blade technology in 2009, while employed as data center lead at general contractor Tutor Perini.[7][8]

In February 2011, McGibney announced the website Cheaterville.com, where anonymous users could post claims of infidelity, alongside names and pictures of those accused.[2][9] He started websites based on similar user participation later in the year, as well as a matchmaking website.[2]

In June 2012 he announced he would host his own radio show, VocalVille, on CBS radio station KXNT-FM in Las Vegas.[10]

Is Anyone Up? purchase

In April 2012, McGibney purchased controversial revenge porn[11][12] site Is Anyone Up? from Hunter Moore for less than US$15,000.[3] Web traffic for the site was redirected to BullyVille.com. This effectively shut down the previous site, and was the stated intent of McGibney.[13][14] Three days after the transaction, Moore used his Twitter account to accuse McGibney of being a pedophile, of possessing child pornography[15] and threatening to rape McGibney's wife.[16]

McGibney sued Moore for defamation in Nevada's Clark County District Court in February 2013.[17] The court entered a default judgment against Moore in the sum of $250,000 plus court costs and attorney fees.[18]

SLAPP sanction

In December 2015, McGibney was ordered to pay a $1 million Anti-SLAPP court sanction and $300,000 in attorney's fees to Neal Rauhauser for filing a series of baseless lawsuits against him.[19] The ruling was temporarily reversed when the presiding judge granted McGibney's request for a new trial in February 2016, but reinstated in favor of Rauhasuer on 14 April 2016 with the SLAPP sanction against McGibney reduced from $1 million to $150,000.[20][21] The judge ruled that McGibney had filed the suits to willfully and maliciously injure Rauhauser and to deter him from exercising his constitutional right to criticize McGibney.[19] On April 19, 2018 a three judge panel in the Texas 2nd District Court of Appeals vacated the monetary and non-monetary sanctions findings, and reversed and remanded the amount of attorney's fees awarded in ruling that the trial court had abused its discretion.[22] The court of appeals further reversed the finding of "willfully and maliciously" and noted that Rauhauser's attorney had engaged in a "troublesome pattern of heavy front-end loading of legal work" in an affidavit justifying the attorney's fees he sought.[23]

References

  1. "James McGibney, Founder Of Cheaterville.Com, Talks Outing Cheaters (VIDEO)". HuffPost Live. 18 December 2012.
  2. "An Interview with James McGibney, Mayor of Cheaterville". Las Vegas Weekly. 10 June 2011.
  3. Karlinsky; et al. (22 May 2012). "FBI Investigates 'Revenge Porn' Website Founder". ABC News/Nightline.
  4. "B.C. resident earns master's degree". Las Vegas Sun. 6 November 2008.
  5. "Executive Profile for James McGibney". Bloomberg Businessweek.
  6. Forster, David (16 July 2000). "Burning smell could be reputation going up in smoke". Sacramento Business Journal.
  7. "Tutor Perini Changes DC Economics (video)" (Press release). Cisco Systems, Inc. 2009.
  8. "Tutor Perini Deploys Cisco's Unified Computing System for Data Center Consolidation" (Press release). Cisco Systems, Inc. 1 September 2009. Archived from the original on 25 June 2012.
  9. Cheaterville (Radio broadcast). KPNR, Nevada. 6 June 2011.
  10. "Founder Of "The Villes" Launching VocalVille Radio Program On CBS 100.5 FM In Las Vegas" (Press release). VocalVille. 4 June 2012.
  11. Dodero, Camille (4 April 2012). "Hunter Moore Makes a Living Screwing You". Runnin' Scared (newsblog). The Village Voice.
  12. Hess, Amanda (5 December 2012). "Hunter Moore's Biggest Fan". The XX Factor. Slate.
  13. Dodero, Camille (19 April 2012). "Bullyville Has Taken Over Hunter Moore's Is Anyone Up? (Updated)". Runnin' Scared (newsblog). Village Voice.
  14. Karlinsky; et al. (19 April 2012). "Anti-Bullying Website Takes Over, Shuts Down 'Revenge Porn' Website". ABC News/Nightline.
  15. Alfonso III, Fernando (11 March 2013). "Revenge porn king Hunter Moore fined $250,000 in defamation suit". Daily Dot.
  16. Matisse, Nathan (10 March 2013). "Revenge porn site founder loses $250k defamation suit". Ars Technica.
  17. Poeter, Damon (11 March 2013). "Revenge Porn King Hunter Moore Ordered to Pay $250K for Defamation". pcmag.com.
  18. Lee, Dave (11 March 2013). "'Revenge porn' site owner Hunter Moore sued for defamation". BBC.
  19. Lee, David. "$1.3 Million in Anti-SLAPP Sanctions". Courthouse News Service. Retrieved 9 October 2017.
  20. Lee, David (29 February 2016). "$1.3 Million Anti-SLAPP Award Rescinded". Courthousenews.com. Retrieved 9 October 2017.
  21. "Hanszen Laporte Wins $450,000 Against Plaintiffs Who Filed Baseless Defamation Suits" (PDF). Hanszen LaPorte. Retrieved 9 October 2017.
  22. "Counsel Fees, Sanctions Nixed in Anti-SLAPP Action Against Website Operator | Texas Lawyer". Texas Lawyer. Retrieved 2018-05-08.
  23. "Texas Court Axes Online Harassment Case $300K Fee Award - Law360". www.law360.com. Retrieved 2018-05-08.
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