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Thursday, March 1, 2012

Victor Cretella's reply to Jan Starks Star Com Media

while this isn't the on-air interview they hoped for it gets their point accross.

PublishAmerica

PO Box 151
230 East Patrick Street
Frederick, MD 21705-0151
Phone: 301-228-2705
E-Mail: vec@publishamerica.com


March 1, 2012
VIA E-MAIL
Jan A. Starks
Star Com Media LLC
14396 J Street
Cowlington, OK 74941
Re: Unlawful Disparagement of PA:


Dear Mr. Starks:
I have received your e-mail, inviting PublishAmerica (“PA”) to defend itself against
some vaguely defined wrongdoing. This e-mail was disingenuous. You demanded “immediate action” yet made that demand at a time when you knew that I would never see it until after the artificial deadline for responding had already passed. Specifically, you sent me your threatening letter on Saturday, February 25, 2012 at 4:45 a.m. and expected a response before Sunday, February 26, 2012 at 8:41 a.m. By sending your demand on a weekend and “requir[ing]” a
response before business resumed on Monday, you betrayed your insidious intention to distort the truth about PA.

You further illustrated a malicious motive by asking PA to respond to your accusations that it was “lying”, “falsif[ying] records” and being “unethical” without first disclosing the underlying facts supporting those claims. By making these allegations cryptically, however, you prevented PA from responding to them in a meaningful way. PA simply cannot tell its “side” of the story when it does not even know what your side is. What is particularly shocking is that a
journalistic organization like Star Com Media would even pick sides rather than remaining objective. Yet that is exactly what you have done: you have drawn” a “line in the sand so you can “intensif[y your] fight against” PA. In would be inappropriate for PA to enter into a debate with a biased entity that is actively distorting the record. Instead, PA will defend itself from your false allegations in a court of law. In that venue, PA can quickly and easily force you to present all of your evidence in discovery. PA can then present that evidence (and the lack thereof) to a jury in support of its defamation claim just like I did against David Kuzminski. We all know what happened there; I ended up with a judgment in
excess of $50,000.

Now you may think my case against Mr. Kuzminski had nothing to do with PA, but that
would be ignorant. Mr. Kuzminski’s defamatory statements specifically concerned my legal representation of PA. He accused me of committing extortion by sending a cease and desist letter to Christine Norris and demanding that she stop calling PA a scam. After I sued him for defamation, Mr. Kuzminski defended his accusations by maintaining throughout the litigation that PA was a scam. I have attached hereto a page from the closing arguments at trial where Mr. Kuzminski went so far as to call PA the Bernie Madoff of the publishing industry. Clearly, Mr. Kuzminski made PA the focus of his defense to the defamation claim. He lost. You will lose too. Once you put your evidence on the table, your claims will evaporate under the heat of even the slightest scrutiny. For example, your claim that PA lied about the
U.S. Consulate’s interest in its books is devoid of all merit. In fact, the e-mail received by you from Teta Moehs proves that the U.S. Consulate did in fact ask PA for its books: “Publish America is one of approximately 100 U.S. publishers contacted annually regarding participation in the Leipzig Book Fair.” At no point did Ms. Moehs notify PA that it could not charge a nominal fee to cover its expenses for sending these books. She can claim to be upset about those fees now but that does not eliminate the fact that she never expressed any restrictions to PA when she invited PA to participate in the event. The U.S. Consulate in Leipzig asked for PA’s books and that is what they got.


You must cease and desist your accusations of fraud immediately. Not only are they
false but you have knowledge of that falsity. PA reserves the right to sue you for damages including punitive damages if you continue spreading these lies.


Sincerely,
Victor Cretella
Victor E. Cretella III
For Publish America, LLLP.


In response,Jan Starks issued this statement

As you all are aware, Star Com Media has finally received a response from PA. Under advice of counsel, until such time as they review the letter, our emails to PA, and all of our files and audio regarding this matter, we will not be able to air the special we had planned to start on Monday.

Thism does not mean that it will not air, it is a mere setback that I had anticipated could occur, but had hoped would happen a week from now, but not at this late of a juncture. We, under advice of counsel, can not release any audio or discuss this matter in more detail until they have gone over every scrap of paper we have on PA.

I appologize for this inconvienience, but as soon as our attorneys release the audio, it will air.

Respectfully;
Jan Starks
CEO/Star Com Media

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