Ellie The Empress

Nick McCandless and Gerard P. Fox Can’t Win Without Cheating

Julia Burch

Ellie The Empress

Bree Cheyenne

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.

Nick McCandless admits to knocking down our Reddit account using false DMCAs
Nick McCandless tacitly admitting to abusing the DMCA process

 

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 Bogorad is no longer associated with Gerard Fox Law

 

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/

Nick McCandless uses false DMCA takedowns to shape Google search results
Nick McCandless uses false DMCA takedowns to shape Google search results

 

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.

Someone related to McCandless Group sure seems to act like they know the law

UPDATE July 2023: The earliest evidence of Nick McCandless targeting our company with malicious and false DMCA takedowns.

 

Reddit Legal Support (Support) copyrightquestions@reddit.zendesk.com

3:08 PM (20 minutes ago)

to me

 

##- Please type your reply above this line -##

Your request (8844266) has been updated. To add additional comments, reply to this email.

Reddit Legal Support (Reddit Support)

Jul 27, 2023, 14:08 PDT

Below you will find a copy of the DMCA notice we received and processed regarding this content.

If you would like to resolve your copyright strike and have the content reinstated to Reddit, you have a few options:
– You can submit a counter notice, or
– You can contact the reporter directly to request that they withdraw their claim of copyright infringement. If they notify Reddit that they are withdrawing their claim, we may reinstate the content and remove the strike.

Otherwise, your copyright strike will remain, and the removed content will remain inaccessible.

If you’d like more information about these options, please let us know.


Submitted
October 21, 2020 at 10:22

Received via
Web Form

Requester
Nick nick@nickmccandless.com

Copyright – Additional information that may assist us with evaluating your claim
This content is copyright protected as it’s exclusive to only paying subscribers of TheJuliaBurch.com which we own the Copyright to as you can verify in the footer of the site with “Powered by McCandless Group”. We request that this subreddit community be shut down so that we don’t have to keep submitting these every day like we have been.

Copyright – Where does the infringing content appear on Reddit
In a Reddit comment

Copyright – What is your copyrighted work
Other – please provide additional information below

Copyright – Title of copyrighted work
TheJuliaBurch.com Exclusive Content

Copyright – Good faith belief statement
Yes

Copyright – Public record disclaimer
Yes

Copyright – Accuracy statement / authorized statement
Yes

Copyright – Electronic signature
Nicholas McCandless

Copyright – Copyright owner’s full name
Nicholas McCandless

Legal Policy – Country
United States of America

Nick October 21, 2020 at 10:22
This content is copyright protected as it’s exclusive to only paying subscribers of TheJuliaBurch.com which we own the Copyright to as you can verify in the footer of the site with “Powered by McCandless Group”. We request that this subreddit community be shut down so that we don’t have to keep submitting these every day like we have been.

Reddit Legal Support

This email is a service from Reddit Support.
UPDATE August 15 2023:
In a motion to oppose my former attorney Chris Zhen from leaving McCandless criminal effort to harm my company, Gerard Fox included a confidential private communicate, completely out of context for the sole purposes of abusing the legal process and further harming my company.
Below is an excerpt from the motion to oppose, signed by Gerard Fox himself, as well as the full text of my original email.
Nicholas McCandless, Gerard Fox
Posted in Legal