Bad News for Gollin: Internet Impersonating Illegal

[Armando Ramos]

Bad news for internet stalker George Gollin (George D. Gollin, George Dana Gollin). No longer can he go around impersonating innocent people on the internet in an attempt to intimidate, threaten or harass them into silence.

Gollin has made a practice of impersonating others he guesses may have posted articles containing true facts about him and his nefarious conduct on the internet. A new California law now makes it a misdemeanor to impersonate someone on a website to "harm, intimidate, threaten or defraud another person." It also provides for a civil remedy in addition to the criminal sanction (a fine and up to a year in jail).

Such activities are already a third degree felony in Texas. Something for George Gollin to think about when he uses that Texas-based proxy server.

George Gollin is a public figure who--by his own admission in court documents--has been acting on behalf of the government of the State of Illinois. The people he impersonates, on the other hand, are neither. The negative public commentary about Gollin and his sordid (and well-documented) conduct is well within the ambit of constitutionally protected speech. Gollin’s impersonations, on the other hand, serve no legitimate government purpose and very clearly demonstrate his intention is to force his detractors to quit telling the truth about him under threat of even more of his vicious, hateful lies.

In addition to threatening and intimidating others, in engaging in this conduct government-agent Gollin is also attempting to deny people protesting his vile behavior their constitutionally protected civil right of free speech, in violation of 42 USC 1983. If one is looking for the required “harm” under the new statute it doesn’t get any clearer than this.

Let’s hope that anyone who resides in California that finds themselves victims of the psycho-stalking piece of malicious cyber-crud George Gollin will pursue their legal remedies against him and the State of Illinois to the fullest.

[Albert Hidel]

Wait until they make it illegal to impersonate a human being. Then Gollum will be in real trouble.

[Don Dresden]

Here's some more bad news for internet stalker George Gollin. A $404,000 jury verdict for telling lies on the internet about someone she barely knew.

Sounds a lot like what happens when people dare to exercise their constitutional rights by posting the truth about George Gollin. Using multiple aliases, Gollum then starts posting complete falsehoods about those he guesses might be responsible. It's easy to tell what Gollum is up to, because it's usually the very same things he falsely accuses others of doing.

The drumbeats of even more defamation lawsuits to be filed against Gollin and his apparently oblivious employer, the unfortunate taxpayers of the State of Illinois, keep getting louder.

"Mean and dumb is a bad combination." Sounds like George Gollin's epitaph.

Ga. man awarded $404,000 for libelous Internet postings
By Rhonda Cook
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

In just a few days, Gene Cooley lost his fiancee, his job, his future in-laws and his home.

It started with the murder of Cooley's fiancee by the woman's ex-husband. While still reeling from that loss, he became a target of Internet postings from someone he barely knew. The anonymous poster went on a community website for Blairsville, where Cooley lived at the time, and accused him of being a pedophile with a criminal record and a drug addict. None of it was true.

A Union County jury last week said the damage those postings did to Cooley was worth $404,000, the largest award ever handed down in this North Georgia county. The poster was identified through her computer's numeric IP address.

"She absolutely ax-murdered this boy's life," said Russell Stookey, Cooley's lawyer.

Cooley barely knew his web attacker, a woman who worked at a Blairsville store where he sometimes shopped. Had it not been for the willingness by the website, Topix.com, to out Sybil Denise Ballew, her identity may never have been known.

Stookey took an infrequently used route to find Ballew's identity. He used a subpoena to get the IP address, which is something unique to every computer, behind the libelous postings on Topix.com. The website, which acts as a news aggregator for local communities, readily complied.

"She [the poster] might have said these things in the past, but you write it down and it can be traced back to your computer," said Topix.com CEO Chris Tolles. "People are going to find it's hard to have complete anonymity."

Cooley's saga began with the murder of his fiancee, Paulette Harper, at the hands of her ex-husband in September of 2008. A few days later, the postings on the Blairsville page of Topix.com started showing up.

The poster wrote Cooley was a "pervert" and drug addict with a lengthy criminal record, a man who had been in prison and rehab. Harper’s daughter, who was 9 at the time, must be protected from Cooley, the poster wrote.

“I didn’t really even know the woman. I knew her in passing,” Cooley, 44, told the AJC. “She worked at two places [where] I was a customer.”

Cooley had a criminal background check run on himself showing that he had no such past, but people didn’t seem to care. Eventually he had to leave Blairsville, where his mother, sister and two sons lived, to find another job. He now lives in Augusta and works as a hairdresser.

Ballew is the woman who wrote the posts under the pseudonyms Mouth, Calvin, Bugs, Yuck, Rebel and Slim. She admitted in court that she also had conversations with herself, posting her concerns on the site under one name and then agreeing with the posts under another persona.

When asked in court why she wrote those things about Cooley, Ballew answered, “I watched him and I can tell a pervert. Every time a pretty girl walked by, he would look at them. I get a feeling.”

Even after the jury of five men and a woman ruled in Cooley's favor, he knows he's unlikely to collect much of the $404,000. Stookey, the lawyer, says he is now researching Ballew's assets in hopes of getting some of the money for Cooley.

Ballew could not be reached for this story. Calls to phone numbers that public records have connected to her name were unsuccessful.

Ballew never hired a lawyer, according to records, even though Stookey and the judge in the case, Union County Superior Court Judge David Barrett, urged her several times to hire one.

“This young man was getting his life ruined because this woman didn’t like him. She went out of her way,” Stookey said.

It began Sept. 11, 2008, when Harper and her ex-husband were found shot to death in her home on Marie Way in Union County. Police ruled that Steven Harper had first shot his ex-wife, firing a gun under her chin, and then himself.

Days later, Cooley took Paulette Harper's body to South Florida so she could be buried near her parents’ home.

The first night he was there, Cooley said, Harper’s father asked him about a drug addiction.

“I’ve never had a drug addiction. I’ve never been in rehab,” Cooley said. “Then he was wanting a [criminal] background check. So I … got a background check and it came back with a clean bill of health.”

Cooley said he has never owned a computer, so he was unaware of the Topix site. Then his sister called with news of the postings, and only then did he know why Harper’s parents were asking such questions.

They asked him to leave their house and to come to the funeral only at the end of the service. They also wanted him to sit in the back of the church.

Cooley said he slept in his rental car for two nights before returning to Georgia.

Once home, the owner of the hair salon where Cooley worked fired him because “all this stuff had come into the salon. A woman that fit the description of Denise Ballew came in and said if ‘Gene Cooley’s here, I’ll never come back in here again.’ "

He got a similar reception around town.

"I wasn’t able to find anywhere to work in Blairsville,” he said. “What little shred of anything I had left she [Ballew] took.”

A Sept. 18, 2008, exchange on Topix.com started with “Calvin” asking if anyone knew Gene’s last name because he wanted to warn Harper’s family of his past.

“Keep that creep away from the children,” wrote “Mouth,” who was Ballew.

Ballew responds as “Calvin,” -- Thank you very much!!! I cant thank you enough. I will notify the family as soon as possible. If you know or have any more information, please let me know… Mouth -- If you don't mind me asking, how do you know all this about Gene???”

Moments later, “Yuck,” also Ballew, writes, “keep gene away from that little girl!! hes not even qualified to have the children hes got. yes, he is a boozer and a pot user, and a nutcase. he has gotten fired from every salon hes worked at...he is so gross!!”

Others tried to defend Cooley but then another Ballew persona, “Slim,” posted, “sometimes the truth hurts. … I am not one to sugar coat anything. If people get mad at me [for] what I think , then they certainly have that right. .. Everyone on this earth has a decision how they're going to live their life. If it 's not right then they will pay for what they done as we all will when we stand at judgement.”

And the posters who defended Cooley were insulted.

“you stupid a$$...you are a few bricks shy of load… GROW UP YOU LITTLE TWIT,” Mouth wrote.

Cooley said after last week's verdict, he got calls from others who feel they have been targeted. “She has trash-talked them,” he said.

Stookey, the lawyer, said he and the local district attorney and a legislator were drafting a bill to make this kind of libel a crime and not just a civil matter. In the meantime, he will look for others who anonymously post false allegations.

“We’ll find them, we’ll get them,” Stookey said. “Mean and dumb is a bad combination. I will catch them and I will put them into bankruptcy.”

[ham]

When asked in court why she wrote those things about Cooley, Ballew answered, “I watched him and I can tell a pervert. Every time a pretty girl walked by, he would look at them. I get a feeling.”

Eh?
You mean he ogled pretty girls AND that makes him a pedophile?

Ballew is the woman who wrote the posts under the pseudonyms Mouth, Calvin, Bugs, Yuck, Rebel and Slim. She admitted in court that she also had conversations with herself, posting her concerns on the site under one name and then agreeing with the posts under another persona.

Sounds like dr. Fifteenschwein, Cogito and Bellona...

[Armando Ramos]

Stookey, the lawyer, says he is now researching Ballew's assets in hopes of getting some of the money for Cooley.
...
Ballew never hired a lawyer, according to records, even though Stookey and the judge in the case, Union County Superior Court Judge David Barrett, urged her several times to hire one.

..."I will catch them and I will put them into bankruptcy.”

I'm trying to figure out who is the bigger idiot here. A decent defense lawyer likely would have gotten this case tossed in the pleading stage.

On the other hand, a decent plaintiff's lawyer might have checked to see if the defendant had any assets before filing the case, let alone going to the trouble and expense of a jury trial.

Yeah, put them into bankruptcy; good chance you'll collect there. These people deserve each other.

You mean he ogled pretty girls AND that makes him a pedophile?

A hair dresser who likes girls? Come on, you gotta admit that's kind of suspicious. And there was that business about the dead fiancee and her dead ex-husband. Don't you just hate it when that happens?


That Ballew woman used the very same scientific method that Gollum uses to perpetrate most of his slander: connect the dots! Guess, deduce, presume, speculate, postulate, estimate, suppose, conjecture, opine, reckon, imagine, make it up, play a hunch, then run to the press before bothering to verify any of it.

About the only thing she did differently from Gollum was that she just called the guy a pervert, rather than having actual perverts (Tailpipe Chip, Gay Al) publish her lies.

If she had just thought to get 15 other people to write it up for her, there's a school in New Jersey that might have awarded her a PhD instead!

[Albert Hidel]

If she had just thought to get 15 other people to write it up for her, there's a school in New Jersey that might have awarded her a PhD instead!

What is up in NJ? The folks I know there are decent people. Their universities are total diploma mills! Princeton gives a guy a PhD for turning in 15 other guys' work? TESC gives a guy a humanities BA just 110 days after he collects his AA? Too bad there's not a crew of swarming assholes and stalking perverts around to investigate these travesties.