Ironclad Media Email harvesting and spam ripoff Belmar New Jersey

Gary Niederhelman is one of the most unethical businessmen I have ever encountered on the internet. His company, Ironclad Media, owns gay male cruising sites by the names of: leatherjeep.com, leathermensdungeon.com, copsnskins.com, and gayroughnecks.com.

In the past I have created an account on leatherjeep.com (sometime around 1998 or so) and it took me three years to stop receiving spam from Mr Niederhelman. I have a file full of pretty nasty communications with the man.

He has a history of logging into competitors sites and harvesting customer email addresses. These customers then receive email advertizing one of Gary's own web businesses. The folks over at Leathernavigator no doubt still remember this. And now the folks over at topbear.com have learned his name as well.

According to the gayroughnecks.com ad I received in email, " You are receiving this email because you have an account at one of our websites." The address it was sent to doesn't have an account at any website except topbear.com. It's a "forward only" type address that simply isn't used and is listed in only one place. So where did Mr Niederhelman get that address?

At the very least, he's lying to me in the email. At the worst, it's fraud.

This is not the first, second, third, or fourth time an email address of mine has been harvested and spammed by Mr Niederhelman. And again, to be very clear, clicking on the "unsubscribe" link never works; it is never honored.

Shawn
TAMPA, Florida
U.S.A.