Anyone Recieved Letter In The Mail From Flavaworks Studios?
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Hey so I've recently got a settlement demand and cease and desist letter in the mail from the flava works studios. So my question is has anyone else received this type of letter in their mail too? Is this a scam? lemme know asap.
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See I figured that the settlement I received was suspicious. They even sent me printed out black and white photos of what was happening in the scenes of the videos they accused me of illegally using. Hhh I'm glad I reached out to the people up here first before taking any actions financially. Thanks.
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@arago44 I'm surprised FlavaWorks can even afford the postage to send you a letter. That firm has been in trouble for years: The civil action mentioned in the link from @geobear40 was dismissed; see https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/22240353/John_Doe_v_Flava_Works,_Inc_et_al for a chronology, although you'll need a subscription to read the actual court documents.
More recently, FlavaWorks tried suing Adam4Adam for copyright infringement, claiming that A4A used/uses, without permission, copyrighted FlavaWorks images in advertising third-party products. (Disclaimer: I have a subscription to Adam4Adam, and I see and delete their third-party advertisements. I am not familiar with FlavaWorks' material and have no opinion on the merits of FlavaWorks' claim.)
To make a long story shorter, FlavaWorks apparently lost this action (although I haven't found documentation of that). A4A then pursued--and prevailed over--FlavaWorks for reimbursement of legal costs, but FlavaWorks did not respond. Last summer a Florida court ordered the seizure and sale of much of FlavaWorks intellectual property (i.e., their porn catalog) in order to pay A4A's legal costs. There's a popularized story about this at https://bananaguide.com/article/112977/flava-works-takes-hit-in-lawsuit-against-adam4adam. Philip Bleicher, principal of FlavaWorks, had the following amusing comment regarding this:
"We unfortunately hired some attorneys who turned out to be of the same caliber as Rudy Giuliani — and two of them are currently under investigation by the bar disciplinary commission and one was recently disbarred...We are cleaning up this mess, not going out of business and have filed Chapter 11 to reorganize these debits [sic]"
The Giuliani reference seems to fit, because Bleicher apparently doesn't like to pay his counsel. There's a carefully thought-through rant by an attorney retained (but not paid) by FlavaWorks at https://gulisanolaw.com/phillip-bleicher-criminial-conman-liar/. I especially enjoyed the following line from the attorney who was stiffed,
I made the following counter-offer to Mr. Bleicher: “go fuck yourself and pay me for the work I did.”
I think the bottom line is that FlavaWorks is in its death throes and cannot be taken seriously at this point. I'm not going to offer legal advice in a forum like this, but I will say that if I received a letter from FlavaWorks, I would ignore it.
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@eobox91103 Thanks a lot for this information you guys. I really appreciate it. I'm throwing those papers away right now. Thanks again.
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I got one too in the mail and threw that crap right into the trash where it belongs.
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Can I ask a significant question here:
How did Flavaworks get your address (since you say you received a paper mail item)?
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@bi4smooth said in Anyone Recieved Letter In The Mail From Flavaworks Studios?:
Can I ask a significant question here:
How did Flavaworks get your address (since you say you received a paper mail item)?
Various sources I researched said that FlavaWorks sent these threats to current or former paying subscribers, ostensibly to recover damages for sharing their IP, but mostly intended to "out" their customers as gay porn consumers unless they paid a ransom. The term "extortion" comes to mind.
One of the early cases here involved a customer who was a "prominent Hollywood figure" who seemed an ideal target for this kind of scam. A strategic error on the part of FlavaWorks is that such "prominent figures" also have good attorneys to smash the bits out of such a scheme, as opposed to the C-team that FlavaWorks retained (and apparently didn't pay).
A side note here is that FlavaWorks was also sued successfully by the cities of Miami and Chicago for their production locations: In Miami, the issue was running a "business" in a residential area, and in Chicago, it was filming CocoDorm material in a residence with lights on and windows open so people on the street got a free show. It wouldn't have surprised me to hear that the FlavaWorks people were on the sidewalk trying to sell tickets to the passers-by.
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@bi4smooth They got my IP address. But I got that changed.
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@promega Exactly.
