The e-mailer didn’t use the words “skank” or “ho,” but he might as well have — and now a Queens firm wants to know his identity.
Taking a page from the sensational case in which Google was ordered to help unmask a blogger who had maligned a model with those slurs, a company that creates Christmas displays for the city’s toniest stores is suing to track down an impostor who sent a defamatory e-mail to its biggest client.
Holiday Image filed papers in Queens Supreme Court demanding that Google preserve its records so the Long Island City-based company can find out who posed as its CEO and sent an e-mail to Gap Inc. claiming that the decorating firm was under investigation and that it had cheated Gap out of $100,000.
Holiday Image’s clients include Tiffany, Bergdorf Goodman, Burberry, Barneys, Saks Fifth Avenue and Macy’s.
The papers allege that someone opened an account with Gmail — Google’s e-mail service — under the name of Holiday Image’s CEO, Matthew Schwam, and sent the missive to a Gap employee.
The e-mail claimed that Schwam and the company’s chief operating officer keep a second set of books and that the IRS had found “over $200,000 in overcharge and unreported taxes.”
The e-mail says Schwam badmouthed his contacts at Gap, too, calling them “airhead California people” who are “in they’re [sic] own little world.”
It finishes chirpily: “There are other moral and un-criminal vendors out there. Explore your options! Continued success!”
Holiday Image is asking that a judge issue a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction preventing Google from deleting any records related to the Gmail account so that it can sue the e-mailer for defamation.
Holiday Image and Gap Inc. declined to comment.
Google did not respond to an e-mail requesting comment.
Last month, Google — under a Manhattan court order — turned over the e-mail address of an anonymous blogger to model Liskula Cohen, whom she had called a “skank” and “ho” on the Web site Skanks in NYC.
Justice Joan Madden ruled that Google had to disclose the registration information for blogger Rosemary Port because she was writing defamatory material.