Brandi Passante wants the world to know that she won’t get naked and give anybody a virus. And she’s willing to go to court to prove it.
Passante, a buyer on the A&E reality show “Storage Wars,” filed suit in U.S. District Court in Central California last week against Hunter Moore, former operator of the website Is Anyone Up, claiming that he published fake photos and video purporting to depict Passante in pornographic situations.
And, perhaps worse, the suit alleges, the video placed a virus on viewers’ computers.
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According to the suit, Passante first became aware that there were fake porn images of her floating around on the web earlier this month, when she received a tweet reading, “Love the pics” from Is Anyone Up’s Twitter account.
“Passante looked at the referenced website and was horrified, hurt and ashamed to see images of someone portraying her in pornographic video and associated images,” the suit reads. “Passante never made any such video, has never had any contact with Mr. Moore and did not send him sexual images. Moore fabricated the video for the purpose of trading on Passante’s fame and celebrity to draw traffic to his site.”
Moore later posted the video to porn-friendly website Fleshbot.com, the suit claims, adding that when users clicked on the video, a virus immediately began to download onto their computers.
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The suit goes on to claim that Moore is capitalizing on Passante’s name and likeness by selling merchandise.
Passante has “experienced anxiety, loss of sleep and physical illness” due to the experience, the suit says, adding that her professional reputation has been damaged by the fake video.
Alleging false designation of origin, dilution by tarnishment, defamation, commercial disparagement, commercial fraud and other offenses, Passante is seeking all available damages, plus attorney’s fees, and a judgment to impound and destroy and computers, servers or other equipment owned by Moore that contains the pictures and videos.
On Friday, a U.S. District Judge issued a temporary restraining order demanding that the video and pictures be removed from any of Moore’s sites, and barring Moore or anyone associated with him from publishing them.
Pamela Chelin contributed to this report.