And likely more models who were discovered by Shore Thang founder Zachary Elliot and later mysteriously ended up working with McCandless Group.
On September 10, 2020, I had a roughly 20 minute phone call with Nick McCandless, a competitor of my model management company, Shore Thang. We discussed our respective businesses, my boutique model management company, his software platform, and a few other details during the course of cordial conversation.
Since then, for the last 2+ years, Nick has gone to extraordinary lengths to poach clients, buy himself fake social media clout, issue false copyright takedowns, plants fake positive stories about himself, and enlist the help of third parties to attempt to harm Shore Thang, my business, and unfairly enrich himself at our expense by stealing our clients.
My instinct suggests this is the tip of the iceberg and that additional surreptitious efforts might also have been undertaken by Nick and his quasi-legal support team. I have provided the evidence below to a Special Agent at the FBI’s Cyber Crime Task Force and published this article w/ evidence to expose Nick’s deliberately harmful business tactics.
SCREENSHOTS: Over a hundred false DMCA takedowns filed on behalf of Ellie The Empress, The Coffey Sisters, and more clients of McCandless Group. Those false DMCA takedowns results in a company-owned Reddit account being disabled.
Why the FBI? Nick’s behavior reasonably matched a similar criminal named Alexander Wegescheidt, a German national who’s been sued in California and remains under investigation for stalking and defamation per se in Germany. Wegescheidt was fond of torpedoing our social media community with false community guidelines reports — similar tactics to false DMCA takedowns.
In December 2020, three models under contract w/ Shore Thang were aggressively recruited by representatives of McCandless to leave the exclusive contracts they were signed to. At that time, Nick was sent a polite email to discuss his extreme outreach tactics.
SCREENSHOTS: Operative of McCandless Group approaching our clients under exclusive agreements.
Rather than accepting a call between friendly competitors, Nick hid behind a legal defense team at Gerard Fox, including Marina Vladimir Bogorad, who has since left the firm.
Marina was one of several main architects of a legal defense strategy that includes overkilling opposing counsel with excessive case law and motions to dismiss (even in venues where these tactics are not allowed — like small claims court). In Santa Monica Small Claims Court, Nick was initially found liable for tortious interference (interfering with Shore Thang clients’ contracts) and ordered to pay the modest sum of $5,000 per contract.
In addition to Ellie The Empress and Bree Cheyenne, who left my company after being aggressively recruited by McCandless, Julia Burch was also recruited after completing her agreement w/ Shore Thang.
As a rule, Shore Thang does not pursue clients who have worked with other agencies or management companies. We pride ourselves in discovering new talent and teaching them the Shore Thang style of exclusive content. We also do not issue blanket DMCA takedown notices across the internet, unless our clients request extremely pointed and specific DMCA takedowns.
DMCA stands for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which provides a mechanism for removing content. Nick has used this process hundreds of times against my company, in bad faith, by constantly asserting rights over our exclusive content since January 2021.
He’s also used the DMCA to take down an article that was previously published at https://www.letmeexpose.is/founder-nick-mccandless/
Let Me Expose is a publication that reveals business owners and other questionable individuals like Nick who use fake public relations content to boost their presence in Google Search Results. These news stories are also used to obtain unearned verifications badges on social media platforms (like Twitter and Instagram where — you guessed it — Nick’s profiles are verified).
The links below are all spammy “news” stories (aka puff pieces) offered by various websites to make a person appear more notable than they actually are.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sponsor-story/mccandless-group/2022/02/09/mccandless-group-founder-nick-mccandless-shares-his-success-story/6691729001/
https://www.jpost.com/special-content/nick-mccandless-on-his-successful-business-with-social-media-influencers-675515
https://www.fabworldtoday.com/nick-mccandless-the-one-man-who-will-never-fail-you-or-your-brand-2/
https://www.timebulletin.com/nick-mccandless-the-man-leading-the-revolution-within-the-social-media-influencer-industry/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/anniebrown/2021/11/14/how-social-media-monetization-is-evolving-in-the-face-of-algorithmic-bias-a-discussion-with-nick-mccandless
How do I know this to be true? Several of the articles disclose “McCandless Group” as paying for these advertorial placements. Also, I hired a PR firm in 2020 and they used similar tactics. I quickly fired them.
Nick and the “legal team” at his company have issued hundreds of false copyright takedown notices against content that was posted on Reddit and at least one website. Nick does not hold any legal right over any of the content he or his representatives have sent DMCA takedown notices
In her own words, Marina Bogorad is no longer associated with Gerard Fox. Rumor has it that Gerard Fox himself is now pursuing my company with additional legal maneuvers for what an independent legal writer finds to be an incredible amount of money. I will never stop defending Shore Thang from shady business practices and will continue to update this blog as developments occurs or any other members of McCandless Group’s legal team step away from this absolute miscarriage of justice.
UPDATE July 2023: The earliest evidence of Nick McCandless targeting our company with malicious and false DMCA takedowns.
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