A letter was sent to us by Pitts-Tucker & Co, dated 26th July 2002, received at VIP Internet two days later, on behalf of their clients Mr Antony Boada and British Feudal Investments, making all sorts of threats of legal action if we did not remove what they considered to be the many defamatory remarks about their clients, and also cease the use of their copyrighted logo.
The logo has been changed, but as far as the rest is concerned, I responded: ?Regarding - British Feudal Investments and Mr Antony Boada: My office in England seems to have received a rather strange letter from you, alleging that we are defaming your client. How can the truth be defamatory? Would your client kindly provide proof that the titles that he is selling, including the many on eBay, are genuine, and obviously I will change my opinion?
Best wishes, Richard, Earl of Bradford - a genuine title?
We also received a further letter, dated the 29th of July, referring to other sections of the site in a similar vein, but specifically about the involvement of Pitts-Tucker & Co, and requesting me to remove any reference to them. I replied by e-mail:
Thank you for your second letter, the receipt of it has been noted. Before I respond further though, could you explain why Pitts-Tucker & Co are misusing the apostille from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office to persuade your client's (Mr Boada?s) victims that his bogus titles are recognised by the Crown?
If you have not already viewed the information about British Feudal Investments, I would suggest that you might enjoy reading about their exploits.
Then September the 16th was a red letter day in the history of the Fake Titles website as I was faxed missives from both Pitts-Tucker & Co and Mario Lamar, Boada?s lawyer in Miami. Not too surprisingly Mr Lamar will not allow me to reproduce his varied threats, but I replied as follows: ?The British Feudal Investments logo has been removed from the banner for the British Feudal Investments page on Fake Titles, and also from the Mudslinging page, now it only contains words; surely you cannot object to that. The Hyperlinks have been removed, and we have merely included directions on how to find the British Feudal Investments site.
We would be delighted to received proof that the titles your client sells are genuine, and would then be happy to remove any reference to him and British Feudal Investments from the Fake Titles site, however, given the huge quantity of letters and e-mails of complaint about him that we have in our possession, without having received any that have praised his services, I think that you may find the task a rather difficult one. I also feel that you should examine very carefully the allegations made on your client's site, see Bradford Scam on British Feudal Investments site, as there are several serious accusations against me, most of which are actionable; it would be very easy to prove, for instance, that I am not involved in a Scam to sell a title for GBP 250,000, and there are no 'Cookies' on my site, whereas there are plenty on his.
I should warn you that I have kept a copy of the Bradford Scam page from his website, and would suggest that you stop making any continuing threats of action against me, before I decide to do something about your client's strange and libellous allegations.?
Also if you want to learn more about Antony Boada and Pitts-Tucker & Co and how they operate to part unsuspecting title seekers from their money, do visit the excellently compiled Noble Scams, prepare to be amazed by the depths to which they will sink.
Strangely, having complained vociferously about the actions of eBay in selling not only the spurious Scottish Lairdships, but also more recently the manufactured titles of Boada, I got the following e-mail from eBay on the 31st of July. ?We regret to inform you that your eBay account has been suspended due to the violation of our site policy below: False or missing contact information - Falsifying or omitting your name, address, and/or telephone number (including use of fax machines, pager numbers, modems or disconnected numbers). Due to the suspension of this account, please be advised you are prohibited from using eBay in any way. This prohibition includes the registering of a new account.? Was this a total coincidence? After two days of complaining about it, my registration was re-confirmed.
And on the 21st of August, another one joined the fray, as I received this e-mail from the owner of Noble Titles: ?I hereby give you 7 days due service. Failure to remove all slanderous reference to Noble Titles from your web site will be immediately followed with joint action against you and your Web Host. Furthermore you have infringed international copyright law in using some of our materials in particular our organisations Logo. Finally I expect a full and personal apology for your disgraceful behaviour.?
Finally, a fortnight later, his solicitor Leonard Warner did write a letter threatening action on numerous grounds, to which I replied: ?If your client can prove to our complete satisfaction that he is actually selling genuine Lordships of the Manor, and describing, in the correct fashion, what you can call yourself if you have purchased a Lordship from his company, then we would be very happy to remove any reference to him and his company from the Fake Titles website.? Since that time, the owner of Noble Titles has continually bombarded me with e-mails of complaint; however, he consistently fails to answer the one very simple question of whether he is selling genuine Lordships of the Manor or not.
Leonard Warner produced a final warning letter on the 4th March 2003, giving us one week to change what we said about Noble Titles, stating that they would sue everybody from my solicitor to Cable & Wireless; this got everybody jumping up and down but proved to be as empty a threat as every previous one.
They continue to offer completely made up Lordships of the Manor through eBay on a regular basis, amassing many ten of thousands of pounds a year; apparently the legitimacy of the sale is supported by the Law Society?s Unlimited Liability Insurance - strangely according to the Law Society this does not exist.
On September 10th 2002 Sovereign Classics also joined in the hunt for Bradford with the following illiterate offering:
?We in the process to check your allegations by our law firm and lawyer of peerage law. As a matter of fact you cannot do any allegations without any proof or evidences. That means what you are mentioning on your site that we are offering fake titles is illegal because you have no evidences about what and your partners are doing. You have to understand that you have not the right to say that this person is guilty with any evidences. That's what the law say and if you do so you will get a fine for that. Again that's what the law say. We do a lot of nobility affairs in the Germanic area legally and you give the impression we are doing those things illegal or with fake titles. As I mentioned in a previous email that we are working with a very high ranked German nobility who is very close related to the royal family and that person is more than up set about your wrong allegations. He will discuss with lawyers too and will go after that legally too. Furthermore, we or our lawyers have got evidences about your very close relationship to those companies what you mention as good guys. One of those company is selling titles like the other companies are doing. The other company have the proof of authentic titles. Why you are saying they selling fake titles? We have the very strong feeling that you are doing a not so honest competition battle in the title business. There are some not so nice things what was happened on that end. We have to proof of dealing with original titles at our law firm. We treat all those things in privacy, but we will disclose all those things at court. Further we will sue all those people are trying to attack and doing allegations like you do without evidences. As a matter of fact we will sue for 1 Million GBP. You have your very last chance to clean that mess. If you ignore our message or going further on illegal steps than we will see definitely at court.?
As usual nothing happened. However, they continued to further threaten me; the last offering was in February 2004, this accused me of everything from fraud in Spain to being a well-known drunk, it might be amusing if it weren?t so puerile. Apparently though they have now gone out of business, and have been removed from Fake Titles as a result, somehow I do not feel that they will be missed.
Earl of Bradford
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