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The Amazon/Statsaholic dispute that got a lot of blogger attention, with many bloggers siding with Ron Hornbaker (Statsaholic founder), has now got even more ugly. The new twist in the plot is introduced with Amazon digging into Hornbacker’s past and coming up with some new (well its quiet old) information. It has become public that Hornbaker, was convicted of extortion in 1996 for attempting to blackmail AOL users into giving him money. According to the 11 year old story on CNet:

Hornbaker frequented an AOL chat room called “Married but Looking,” posing as the flirtatious “Rita.” When Rita’s online admirers started talking dirty, Hornbaker then pretended to be her jealous policeman husband and threatened the men with bodily harm unless they paid up. None of the ten men that Hornbaker threatened gave him any money.

A Rockford, Illinois, man eventually turned Hornbaker in to the FBI.

To carry out his blackmail scheme, Hornbaker as the ribald Rita would troll chat rooms. Once he hooked his prey, Hornbaker would offer to show erotic photos of his Rita alter-ego in private rooms. But instead, the men would get threatening messages from the husband alter-ego saying he would track them down and hurt them unless they paid–usually between $500 and $2,000.

Hornbaker on his part is saying that he had an infant daughter who suffered from multiple heart defects, and three major surgeries led him and his wife on the brink of bankruptcy. The acts he committed were out of desperation. Hornbaker got caught by FBI, the first time he went to P.O. box to pick up checks from these men.

Rumors are afloat that Hornbaker threatened Amazon with a PR smear campaign if they refused to increase their acquisition offer to something above $100,000. Hornbaker is flatly denying these rumors and instead is claiming that Amazon is using his conviction as a leverage in this case, and threatened to make it public if he refused to transfer all Statsaholic assets to Amazon for $25,000. Hornbaker is further saying that he can not disclose the actual letter containing the demands sent to him by Amazon due to the NDA, he signed with them, but is offering to disclose all written communication between himself and Amazon ever since the dispute erupted if Amazon does the same.

In my previous post on this matter I was under the impression that Statsaholic was using Alexa API, access to which was blocked once Alexa copied the relevant features from Statsaholic. That was certainly not the case and Statsaholic was actually using a browser hack to circumvent the API, in order to avoid paying API usage fee.

Although the new facts will weaken Hornbaker’s position in this case, they won’t make Amazon a winner either. Amazon web services users’ now know the levels to which Amazon can go, in case a legal matter ensues between them and the $16 billion corporation. See the 1996 U.S. v. Hornbaker document below