Brewdog Owner Conned Out Of £100k By Ex-GF He Hired To Take Down ‘Relentless’ Trolls

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Brewdog boss James Watt isn’t the most popular entrepreneur around (for good reason some might say), so it’s pretty funny (and ironic) to find he was scammed out of £100k by someone he paid to track down his online trolls.

As per the BBC, Watt paid ex-girlfriend Emili Ziem £100k (£25k for each troll), believing she could help identity “people spreading lies” about him on social media. Not only did Emili fail to deliver on the goss, she also allegedly set up set up fake social media pages herself to talk sh*t about him, as he paid her to do her amateur detective work.

Watt eventually became suspicious and hired a cyber private detective (a proper one this time) who exposed Ziem as being behind the accounts.

 

Like him or not, that’s some seriously f*cked up fraud in action, so it’s only right Edinburgh’s Court of Session ruled in Watt’s favour, ordering Ziem to repay him the cash plus a whopping £500,000 in expenses.

Watt says:

“For the past two years I have been the subject of a vicious and relentless campaign of abuse, primarily by troll accounts using Instagram to post and share appalling lies about me (often direct to family and friends) – lies that were then amplified all over the internet.

It has taken a significant personal toll and been a massive distraction. I needed to do all I could to bring the campaign to an end. Today, I can say I have taken a huge step towards doing just that.

At the outset I want to say I didn’t go to court lightly, but I have been harassed, defrauded and defamed, and it has deeply affected me, my family and my business. I had no choice.”

On hiring Ziem to investigate the trolling:

“Ms Ziem said she could help me identify the people responsible for spreading false and malicious lies about me on social media and asked for payment to do so.

I was desperate to stop this horrific abuse, so I paid up.”

This whole nightmare – paying Ziem, then paying someone to investigate her, then the court costs that followed – resulted in astronomical charges to Watt, hence the court ruling that Ziem must pay him £600k in total.

I have no idea how he’s going to recover that money but it must be a huge relief all the same to have got to the bottom of all this (despite still not knowing who the original trolls were). Don’t feel too bad about that though – the guy’s worth £262 million! I’ve got a feeling he’ll be OK.

To meet the Brewdog competition winner who discovered his solid gold prize was actually just gold-plated, click HERE. Come on, James!

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