Oct

Samuel Leeds kicks off another video attacking critic despite police warning in January

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Self-styled property guru Samuel Leeds is once again on our radar after restarting his campaign against Property Tribes community manager, Vanessa Warwick.

Leeds published a video on his YouTube channel on Friday seeking to discredit her and accusing her of “fraud” and “spreading hate”.

As many landlords will be aware, Vanessa and Property Tribes have been targeted by Leeds and his supporters in the past, largely because many of its forums include less than flattering but substantiated commentary about his courses and sales techniques.

This came to a head in May last year when Property Tribes co-founder Vanessa Warwick was the victim of an on-line malicious communications and harassment campaign using fake profiles, which resulted in a seven-month investigation by Surrey Police.

This activity, which included the placement of an advert for Vanessa as a sex worker on Gumtree with her name and phone number, went on for two months along with emails of a threatening nature sent to her husband, Nick, demanding that threads must be deleted.

Vanessa tells LandlordZONE that, when he refused to delete the threads, the activity ramped up.

This ran for two months and included the creation of four websites against Vanessa which were taken down one by one with the assistance of the police.

Police investigation

After an exhaustive police investigation into the malicious activity, including use of the police cybercrime lab to trace the digital footprints, it was found that all roads led to Samuel Leeds’ home address.

Leeds was interviewed under caution at Guildford police station in January this year.

Despite this, Leeds has not been put off. His new video accuses her of hiding several aspects of her career and business dealings and of setting out to put people off investing in property in the style promoted by his academy – i.e. with little experience or money.

These have all been strongly rebutted by Warwick, including that she is a jealous of Samuel’s success, that she has hidden her ‘back story”, that she doesn’t own any investment property, and that threads critical of Leeds are deliberately started by her on Property Tribes.

Warwick says she has now reported Leeds to the police for the second time for harassment and recording telephone calls the two had without telling her.

“The first phone call published was an excerpt of the conversation when Nick and I rang Samuel Leeds in May 2019 to let him know about the campaign and to ask for his assistance to shut it down, as we did not believe he would want his brand associated with such malicious activity.

“If Leeds had played the entire phone call, you would have heard how he said: “I’m actually quite happy with what’s being said about you so you should just delete the threads if you want it to stop.”

Out of the blue

The second phone call published was from July 2020, over a year later, when Samuel called her out of the blue.

“Naturally, I hung up on him. I have no desire to speak to someone who harassed me for two months, put an advert for me as a sex worker on Gumtree, and also created a TrustPilot site in my name to post fake reviews for me as a sex worker,” she says.

“Samuel has used this to spin the narrative that I used the police to bully him at the start of the campaign but, in reality, I reported the malicious activity to the police, not Samuel Leeds, and there was a seven month police investigation before he was identified as the perpetrator and interviewed under caution.

“Samuel used my refusal to speak to him on the July phone call as an act of cowardice when in fact I am the victim of a serious crime and naturally have no wish to speak to the perpetrator.

“That he would think I would ever wish to speak to him after what he has done and continues to do is quite beyond me”.

Call recorded

Recording and publishing private phone calls can be a criminal offence and may form part of the new investigation by Surrey Police. It also has serious GDPR implications.

“Anyone who wants to cut to the chase and get to the heart of this matter only needs to understand that Leeds wants the threads about him deleted off Property Tribes as they rank very high on Google organic search results.

“As they are all substantiated, he cannot use legal means, and therefore he resorted to alternative methods which failed the first time around.”

Read Vanessa’s rebuttal of Leeds’ video on Property Tribes where she has provided screen-shotted evidence of the entire campaign.

Read her rebuttal of Leeds’ video on PropertyTribes.

Samuel Leeds has been contacted by LandlordZONE via his Property Investment academy for comment.

View Full Article: Samuel Leeds kicks off another video attacking critic despite police warning in January