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| -Lurid Crime Tales- |
| Silicon Valley exec denies posing as woman, making up sex harassment claim |
| 2017-07-29 |
| [MERCURYNEWS] A San Francisco businessman says he has been falsely accused of using an anonymous blog post to accuse a competitor of sexual harassment. Brandon Katayama Hill, founder and CEO of consulting business btrax, denied the allegations that were brought against him last week in a defamation lawsuit in San Mateo County Superior Court. “I am falsely alleged for things I have never done,” he wrote in an email to this news organization Thursday. “I am working with my attorney to make things clear.” The lawsuit centers on an anonymous blog post titled “Happenings in Silicon Valley — I was sexually taken advantage of by a Silicon Valley VC.” While the post, originally written in Japanese, did not name the venture capitalist, Anis Uzzaman, CEO of San Jose-based Fenox Venture Capital, claims it’s obvious that the accusations were written about him. The post appeared to have been penned by a female entrepreneur. But Uzzaman’s lawyers say in a court filing they traced the publisher’s IP address back to Hill, and now are suing him for defamation. On Wednesday, after this news organization published a story about the lawsuit, San Francisco-based btrax tweeted a reply. “Yesterday, a U.S. web media outlet put out information about our company’s CEO. This report was completely unwarranted,” the company wrote in Japanese. “At the moment we are putting together our response.” Neither Hill nor btrax had responded to requests for comment for the original story. Uzzaman’s lawsuit claims Hill and Uzzaman work in the same ecosystem, both specializing in connecting Asian companies to Silicon Valley resources, though Uzzaman is an investor and Hill runs a consulting company that helps U.S. companies expand in Asia. The lawsuit suggests tension flared between the two last year, when Fenox launched a startup competition called Startup World Cup. That competition directly competed with btrax’s own Japan Night event, Fenox’s lawyers wrote. And in the face of what they called the “huge success” of Startup World Cup, btrax ended its involvement with Japan Night last year, according to the complaint. But in an email quoted by DailyMail.com, Hill rejected the idea that Fenox and btrax are rivals — btrax is a design company, while Fenox is a VC, he wrote. And Japan Night never competed with Startup World Cup, Hill wrote. Hill also denied writing the blog post. “Though it could be through the IP which I own,” Hill told DailyMail.com, “I am not the person who wrote or published the article.” |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 No fantasy here. |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2017-07-29 22:49 |