I'm a 30-something male in Ontario, Canada. I met a fellow from California in 2005 who said he was a 20-year old down-on-his-luck student. We became friends and in 2006 and 2007, I gave him money and computer equipment for school (he said that he was taking a computer program). This totaled about $2,000.
We continued being friends (we did not have a romantic or sexual relationship, and never met in person), but I started to see many holes in his story. I decided to end our cyber friendship in mid 2007. In mid 2008, he found me on an social networking site. He got banned a few months later and assumed that I was behind it. in Jan, 2009, he published a blog about me. In this blog, he posted all of our private chats and everything that I ever gave him, including g-rated photos of myself, videos of my family, and naked photos that he obtained from a mutual online friend.
I did what my lawyer advised me and ignored him, not giving him the attention he was craving. Meanwhile, my online business flopped because the high-profile blog scared off most of my clients away (if you googled my name or my business' name, the first results page showed several links to his blog). I had to end my business, since I didn't have enough clients to sustain it. I have had to change professions, and I'm not going back to school to study a non-IT program.
Since then, I found out that he was not the person who he claimed to be. He was 20 years older and not in school.
My question is: what do I sue for? I can't afford a lawyer, so I suppose that I'll have to go to small claims court. The limit of the court in his area is around $7,000. He has defrauded me out of $2000, cost me at least $3000 in business at the time, and ruined any future earning potential, he harassed me with that embarassing blog, he defamed me in the blog (he wrote in it every day), he slandered me (calling me all kinds of names in the blog), he caused me much pain and suffering and emotional distress over this whole ordeal.
Yesterday, I got an email from him because he wanted answers to questions regarding mutual friends. He said that if I didn't answer them, he'll put the blog back up.
I am at my wit's end. I want a court order for him to stop him from doing this, but I also want to sue for damages. He ruined my life. I think that harassment is obvious, but should I also sue for pain and suffering and fraud? Or anything else?
We continued being friends (we did not have a romantic or sexual relationship, and never met in person), but I started to see many holes in his story. I decided to end our cyber friendship in mid 2007. In mid 2008, he found me on an social networking site. He got banned a few months later and assumed that I was behind it. in Jan, 2009, he published a blog about me. In this blog, he posted all of our private chats and everything that I ever gave him, including g-rated photos of myself, videos of my family, and naked photos that he obtained from a mutual online friend.
I did what my lawyer advised me and ignored him, not giving him the attention he was craving. Meanwhile, my online business flopped because the high-profile blog scared off most of my clients away (if you googled my name or my business' name, the first results page showed several links to his blog). I had to end my business, since I didn't have enough clients to sustain it. I have had to change professions, and I'm not going back to school to study a non-IT program.
Since then, I found out that he was not the person who he claimed to be. He was 20 years older and not in school.
My question is: what do I sue for? I can't afford a lawyer, so I suppose that I'll have to go to small claims court. The limit of the court in his area is around $7,000. He has defrauded me out of $2000, cost me at least $3000 in business at the time, and ruined any future earning potential, he harassed me with that embarassing blog, he defamed me in the blog (he wrote in it every day), he slandered me (calling me all kinds of names in the blog), he caused me much pain and suffering and emotional distress over this whole ordeal.
Yesterday, I got an email from him because he wanted answers to questions regarding mutual friends. He said that if I didn't answer them, he'll put the blog back up.
I am at my wit's end. I want a court order for him to stop him from doing this, but I also want to sue for damages. He ruined my life. I think that harassment is obvious, but should I also sue for pain and suffering and fraud? Or anything else?