I’m not new to the concept of “legal criminals”, which means those who hide behind legality in the world of business to unethically bully others (like debt collectors or certain landlords for example).
The types who try to manipulate situations in their favour through empty threats, accusations, mental gymnastics, so called legal action, or claims only an uneducated fool could fall for.
That’s how the game works.
If you can instil fear in a fearful and uneducated person, you win and you get to sound like what you’re saying is legitimate and noble.
The comical case of Dominic Nowell Barnes
Back in the day, maybe around 2014 or 2015, this is what Dominic Nowell Barnes looked like. One guy I knew from Leeds in the UK put me in touch with him to set up an interview which I thought would be good for my website.
The website at the time was “justbereal.co.uk” which is now the website you’re reading.
I agreed, I asked the questions, and it got published, happy days.
Then only a few years after that did I see “interesting” comments about how Dominic Nowell Barnes had allegedly run off to Dubai to avoid legal action essentially.
Or comments relating to his OLD business posh flooring, and a similar business that was set up that was allegedly “ripping off” customers and in the commenters’ own words on Trustpilot, it was a scam business that runs off with people’s money.
As you do, you dismiss this at first because I know very well how the internet works sometimes, and how people sometimes troll and accuse people of things that aren’t true out of pure dislike and even jealousy.
But when you get an email from the same guy who’s crying over a few comments, it starts to seem strange.
If this was prevalent on other websites they’ve obviously been presumably deleted based on the alleged comments, rather than my own website with its limited amount of comments that Dominic Nowell Barnes shed a few tears over seeing.
The comments in question:
“He ran off to Dubai with whatever he could salvage! All for show! Champagne lifestyle lemonade budget the house is now up for sale too! Absolute crook”. – Mary Poppins
“Hi Has anyone checked up on this success story. one of his companies LLP just went into liquidation Jan 2018 another flooring republic looks like going the same way. leaving people out of pocket going by trust pilot
company director Dominic NOWELL-BARNES of posh flooring which associates it self with flooring republic (flooring republic is going on the missing list).Dominic NOWELL-BARNES also company director of 2 other companies plus another company LLP. which has just gone into liquidation Jan 2018, Posh flooring is Registered at this recently purchased in dec 2017 for £550k Rudding Barn, 2 Wingate Court, Harrogate, United Kingdom, HG5 8LX. is this where their money is going.” – Marcus
Detailed, right? Quite specific.
The addresses are also legit, which is shown on the PUBLIC page of Gov UK via Dominic’s page.
Make of it what you will.
These are the comments that Mr Dominic was so fragile about when to my surprise, he ended up in my email inbox making empty threats.
He also kept prattling on about “his board” and what they demand, and what will happen, etc.
This reminded me of times in my life when that one guy was in a group and all of a sudden they believed they were Superman despite being absolute whimps on the inside (which is apparent when they’re alone).
I filed it off in my mental cabinet for a future date.
Dominic Nowell Barnes’ attempt at “nice” threats by email
Look at how he prefaces the email:
Thanks for writing the article about my early years success in Posh Flooring.
Already he’s being disingenuous instead of being honest with how he really feels.
He continues:
I wanted to reach out to you as I have seen some defamatory comments on the post from 5-6 years ago that are categorically untrue.
Followed by:
To give you an update:
- Poshflooring.co.uk was a successful ecommerce business in my early 20’s
- I made the decision to move to Dubai and sold the website to flooring republic
- For over a year after the company continued to trade under flooring republic.
- I sold the website for (REDACTED) and my team continued to work their happily
- I was paid (REDACTED) on exiting and was promised the additional payments 12 and 24 months later by Flooring Republic owners
- When the second payment became due, there was no sign of it and I began legal action against them, they then also stopped paying the poshflooring staff.
- Flooring republic then went into insolvency (grew too big too quick) and the founder was no longer contactable and exited the country from what we have been told by our legal team.
- There are defamatory comments around a house that was rented, suggesting I bought or sold it?!
- There was also further comments around taking money long after I had sold the company and so I am sure you can appreciate there are potential legal implications to these suggestions that can easily proven false and defamatory in a court of law.
“Since then, I have a successful business in the UAE & you can find articles about me across Forbes, Entrepreneur, CNN, Vogue, BOF, Cosmopolitan etc. We have also raised over (REDACTED) in funding and donated over (REDACTED) to charity.
Our board recently cited the article you wrote and whilst it was a long time ago they are encouraging me to either have it removed or take legal action for defamation.
I would be grateful if you can remove the article so I can put their request to bed. Please confirm the same so I can de-escalate the situation.”
You can come to your own conclusions based on the above email.
Of course, he never had a leg to stand on, and neither did his board.
His chance of raising a defamation claim closed years ago since if you don’t go to court for defamation claims in less than 12 months, it’s over with (UK).
In DUBAI, the alleged place he “ran off” to, you have 3 months from the statements published date to file a defamation lawsuit.
Plus those comments are by a third party.
Also, those random ego drops about funding, business, etc, don’t change those facts.
I say “ego drops” because it has nothing to do with the point of the email, and feels like he’s trying to cope and project himself to be important and legitimate based on superficiality which I don’t give a fuck about.
Like how he mentions Forbes, CNN, Vogue, etc, all platforms I could buy my way into being featured on making it a very silly way to project so called authority.
The same for the charity claim. None of this makes a person ethical or trustworthy, it’s all political drivel pretending to be authentic when used in this context.
The ONE thing I find most strange is why he feels the need to send that email? The obvious answer is it was motivated by fear.
But why when it’s only a few comments? Is Dominic Nowell Barnes this insecure?
More importantly, if he emailed me with his empty threats, who else received a similar email over the years?
I’m not arrogant enough to believe those comments were ONLY on my website and no other website or platform.
It’s true that my site gets a lot of traffic considering I did pretty much nothing for years, but it’s silly to believe these comments that ended up here didn’t come from somewhere else.
Hence, I’m obviously not the only person who has received these comedic threats, or where these comments have been left, but I may be the only (or one of) who sees through the bullshit.
The lesson here is clear:
- Know how shit works (the law, legalities, etc).
- Don’t let your ego take the steering wheel.
- Don’t let anyone try to pressure you on the basis of threats (it means nothing without actions).
- Defamation laws follow a procedure. Anyone claiming 10+ years later to take you to court is full of it.
- Educate yourself so you can’t be fooled by empty threats and fearmongering.
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