Wine-Pop + Paul Kimmage Defense Fund: response from Aaron Timmer Brown/ Tim Brown + court doc quotes

I have just received the following responses (see below) from Aaron Timmer Brown in reply to my post Aaron Timmer Brown  – the fraudster involved in Wine.Pop and the questions sent to Brown on Saturday 5th November 2016. 

The complaint filed by Lesli Cohen against 

Aaron Brown and Siroque Holdings Inc

30.4.2013. The disappearance of part of the 

Paul Kimmage Fund formed part of this case

– from para 18 onwards 

 O

The final judgment – document dated 15.1.2015 

My comment:
I hope that Aaron Brown did not spend too much time over the weekend compiling his response (below). 

However Brown chooses to dress/spin this up the salient facts are: 

* The court judgment in the Massachusettes Superior Court
* Evidence from Nova Scotia that Aaron Brown has not paid maintenance (alimony/child support)  

The US court judgment:

In the light of Brown's response tt is worth quoting paras 4 and 5 of the final judgment as well as the Order for Judgment section: 

'4. Ms Cohen's affidavit addressing Counts IV, V, VI establishes that donors contributed a total of $93,099.09 to the Kimmage Defence Fund, which was deposited into the Cyclismas PayPal account. Aaron Brown disbursed $23,164.00 from the Cyclismas account to legitimately pay the legal expenses of Paul Kimmage. The balance that remained in the Kimmage Defense Fund  after deducting those expenses, as of April 30, 2013, should have been $69,935.00. Despite repeated demands and orders of this Court including an order that was issued from the bench on January 16, 2014 and written orders dated January 31 and July 9, 2014, Defendants have refused to return or account for the Kimmage Defense Fund. Mr Hue, as Rule 23 representative of donors to the Kimmage Defense Fund, is therefore entitled to damages in the amount of $69,935.00 plus prejudgment interest from April 30, 2013, which is both the date on which this action commenced and the date of the first formal demand for an accounting of the Kimmage Defense Fund. 

5. In addition, by order dated July 9, 2014, this court adjudged Mr. Brown and Siroque Holdings, Inc, to be in contempt based on failure to provide information relating to the Kimmage Defense Fund and, and it awarded contempt damages in the amount of $11,169.16 to compensate Ms. Cohen for attorney' fees and costs she incurred in securing the Order for Contempt. Therefore, Ms Cohen is entitled to an additional award of $11,169.16, plus prejudgment interest and costs from July 9, 2014.'     

Order for judgment

'Based on the foregoing it is hereby ORDERED that judgment shall enter on Count 1 declaring that: (1) the Cyclismas partnership terminated effective as of April 30, 2013; 2) Plaintiff Lesli Cohen shall recover from the Defendants Aaron Brown and Siroque Holdings, Inc. the sum of $28,802 representing her share of the Cyclismas partnership assets with prejudgment interest from April 30, 2013 in the amount of $5,918.22; 3) Plaintiff Lesli Cohen shall recover from Defendants Aaron Brown and Siroque Holdings, Inc. the additional sum of $11,169.16 with prejudgment interest from July 9, 2014 in the amount of $697.68 based on this Court's Order dated July 9, 2014; and 4) Plaintiff Lesli Cohen shall also recover of Aaron Brown her statutory costs of $275, such that the combined total amount that Lesli Cohen shall recover of Aaron Brown and Siroque Holdings, Inc shall be $46,862.06 with post judgment interest as provided by law from the date of entry of final judgment; and 

It is further ORDERED that a separate judgment shall enter on Counts IV, V, VI in favour of William Hue, in his capacity as Rule 23 representative of that class of persons who contributed to the Kimmage Defense Fund against Aaron Brown and Siroque Holdings, Inc for the sum of $69,935.00 plus prejudgment interest from April 30, 2013 in the amount of $14,370.25 plus statutory costs of 275 such that the combined total amount that William Hue shall recover of Aaron Brown and Siroque Holdings, Inc. shall be $84,580.25 with post judgment interest as provided by law from the date of entry of final judgment.             

Dated 15th January 2015.

•••

I am amused that Brown describes citing the US court judgment and his failure to pay maintenance (alimony/child support) as as 'smear' campaign. I fancy the judicial authorities of Massachusettes and Nova Scotia will find this less amusing.

Brown is the first 'marketing director' I know to claim his work number as 'private' and to object to it being made public.  

I am also amused that Brown has threatened me with the Protection of Harassment Act 1997. The last person to threaten me with this act was my old friend Stephen Cleeve, whose solicitors sent me a legal stiffy. Details see here. I suggest that Brown takes a look at: Court of Appeal – Iqbal v Dean Manson EWCA Civ 123 Section 34 paras 32-35 on page 12 of the judgment. 

Two responses from Aaron Brown: 

Dear Mr. Budd,

1. First and foremost, I expressly forbid you from sharing/discussing details of any personal information including address, phone numbers, email addresses, identification documents or any documents identifying alleged personal transactions or accounts. You have posted my passport photo, and a purported court document, along with private contact information. Please remove all within 24 hours, or I will be filing complaints with Wordpress, and also the authorities in your jurisdiction. These are my rights protected by EU and UK laws. I would also like you to answer where you procured these documents, and also where you procured the confidential information about WinePop’s sales programs.

2. Secondly, my involvement with WinePop is in a marketing capacity. I am not the "figure behind the Wine.Pop app". All management and ownership of WinePop are fully aware of the four year smear campaign orchestrated and conducted by an ex-business associate.

3. On the topic of the ex-business associate, it is unfortunate the campaign conducted for Kimmage concluded so poorly. I will state that your assertion of money being “stolen," is completely false, and unproven. As well, the supposed “missing funds” are not missing and will be dealt with appropriately in due course. The litigation in Massachusetts was a business dissolution action, not a “class action lawsuit”. An elected judge in Wisconsin, part of the smear campaign, injected himself into the proceedings, by attempting to attach a “class action", which in itself is a violation of the Wisconsin Judicial Code of Ethics for involving himself in a lawsuit while a presiding judge. The other peculiarity of the civil filing is the “business” was not an established business, but under Massachusetts law, anyone can say anything is a business and dissolve a “relationship”. This was the primary reason why the lawsuit was filed in that jurisdiction, as opposed to Canada or Spain, my two nations of residence, as neither would have accepted the filing.

4. The reason why there is a judgement of any sort, is due to the fact I withdrew from the case and from my countersuit for defamation because of the plaintiff’s request to provide the names, email addresses, and donation amount of the donors, and also the same information of those who requested refunds via https://kimmagefundrefund.wordpress.com. As the custodian of this campaign, I was obliged to protect this information, otherwise it could have resulted in additional legal battles in multiple jurisdictions worldwide, if I shared this information. As this was a business dissolution case, this information was not pertinent to the proceedings. As it was my responsibility, and it was fully stated in the court proceedings that my ex-business associate did NOT want the legal responsibility of this information, I still needed to protect and maintain this information. I chose to deal with the ramifications of  the US civil lawsuit loss to maintain those legal requirements, as advised by several lawyers, from UK, EU, Australia and Canadian jurisdictions. Based upon the well-known activities of the plaintiff in the case, there was no guarantee of that information remaining safe, nor court censure for any violations. This lawsuit filed was nothing more than a smokescreen to engage in defamatory activity of supposed illegal conduct.

5. As far as Kimmage’s legal costs, he received $20,000 to cover his expenses up until the UCI dropped its lawsuit against him in 2013, which was the entire basis for the campaign. Any other legal challenges Kimmage faced were not part of the campaign launched. This is where the issues arose, what to do once if/when UCI dropped their lawsuit, and the disagreements which ensued. I had already received indications from one candidate for the UCI presidency that he would drop the lawsuit if he won the election. He did win the election, and did drop the lawsuit. However, due to the lawsuit filed by this ex-associate earlier in 2013, it made any attempts to peacefully find a resolution impossible by this point, as her position was further entrenched by defamatory comments shared on every social media platform available to her. 

This defamatory smear campaign included calls for people to “assault” me, stating on social media I was a wanted felon in Canada (untrue), a fraudster (defamatory and untrue), facing criminal charges in variety of changing jurisdictions (untrue) and hundreds of other false statements about me, my personal life, and friends associated with me.  This has led to additional filings against her, police reports against her and her associates, and led to Twitter suspending two of her accounts permanently for gross breaches of Twitter rules, including the publication of personal information and targeted harassment. 

6.The fact that you have a publicly declared friendship with this ex-associate (as tweeted by her on Sunday, November 6th, 2016) and the fact you were also allegedly a donor to the campaign, puts serious doubts as to your true intentions of this publication. Some of your assertions, comments, and opines are of a similar ilk as her smear campaign commentary, surprising behaviour from someone as esteemed in the wine industry.

7. I have chosen to move on to new ventures, including website/social media promotion as catalunyawine.com, also a documentary shot entirely on mobile filming platforms (which did not finish principal filming until April of 2016, and is still in post-production due to some significant changes including the title) and assisting companies and individuals with PR, marketing, and social media, in a consulting capacity. This includes WinePop, one of the supposedly defrauded wineries from the documentary (all of which were harassed for the past two years by my ex-associate and those associated with her), and others in various industries.

8 I have passed on a copy of your blog entry to the management of WinePop. They will get in touch with you if they have any concerns. 

Further to the points above, I politely request your mailing address in order to facilitate additional steps, should it be necessary to do so.

Sincerely 

Aaron Timothy Brown 

aka Tim Brown

aka Timmer Brown

aka Timmer

**

A further response (7.11.16) from Aaron Timmer Brown:

Dear Mr. Budd,

Thank you. However please find your post, with the remaining information can have legal ramifications under these UK Laws.

Protection from Harassment Act 1997

Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994

Malicious Communications Act 1988

Communications Act 2003

Defamation Act 2013

As your assertions and comments are not true in any legal sense whatsoever, and are not protected under freedom of speech legislation, there is jeopardy for you in this post. If you do not comply with all requests, my representation in the UK will follow through with a formal criminal complaint, and will also be lodging a formal complaint to Wordpress, who hosts your domain, as it is in violation of their policies.

Sincerely,

Tim Brown