Instagram Influencer Ordered To Pay Ex-BF HUGE $$$ For ‘Relentless’ & ‘Extensive’ Online Defamation!

Instagram is all fun and games… until the lawsuit is heard in court and you’ve gotta pay BIG bucks for defamation…

This week, a judge in British Columbia ordered IG influencer Noelle Halcrow to pay more than $230,000 Canadian dollars (about $177,000 US dollars) to ex-boyfriend Brandon Rook. According to the judge’s ruling, the payment stems from a series of defamatory social media posts Halcrow apparently published about Rook.

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Per court documents, the ruling covers more than 85 Instagram posts, as well as a handful of comments and posts on several other websites. The online harassment reportedly began in late summer 2016, approximately one month after Halcrow and Rook apparently broke up, and continued on for more than a year.

The defamatory posts claimed Rook, a Canadian business consultant, was a cheater, an alcoholic, and that he had sexually transmitted diseases, among a series of other negative things. According to People, all of the posts were written under a variety of fake names, which Halcrow allegedly used to claim they’d been produced by “friends and other people,” and not herself.

But British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Elliot Myers saw right through that defense, noting how evidence indicated the IP address uses for Halcrow’s personal emails was the very same one used to create and produce the various defamatory IG accounts. Furthermore, the court logged evidence showing texts sent by Halcrow to Rook, in which she offered up the option of “taking down the posts and threatening to put them up again or to create further posts.”

Noelle Halcrow Instagram court order defamation ruling ex boyfriend
Halcrow, who has more than 17,000 followers on Instagram, has locked her social media accounts. / (c) Noelle Halcrow/Instagram

Myers went all in on Halcrow, the self-described IG influencer who is listed in court docs as unemployed.

At one point in his ruling, the judge wrote:

“[Halcrow] engaged in a campaign against Mr. Rook that was as relentless as it was extensive … and that she was motivated by malice. The courts have recognised that the internet can be used as an exceedingly effective tool to harm reputations. This is one such case.”

No kidding!

Now, as part of her court-ordered punishment, Halcrow must pay off about $30,000 USD worth of money Rook spent on hiring reputation consultants to scrub the posts from the internet in the first place.

The rest of the settlement comes through damages brought on by Halcrow’s evidently relentless online attacks. What a situation!

Reactions, Perezcious readers?! What you do on social media is very real… and the courtroom consequences can be dire for things like defamation!

[Image via WENN/Instar]

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