Fraud Allegations, Then Retaliation: How 1847 Holdings—and Its Lawyers Oliver Griffin and Baruch Gottesman—Turned the Courts on Me

How exposing misconduct at 1847 Holdings and its spinoff Polished led to retaliatory litigation, manufactured emergencies, and a campaign to silence a whistleblower

I am not a harasser.

I am not a defamer.

I am not a bad-faith litigant.

I am an investor who lost a substantial amount of money and spoke publicly about what I uncovered using SEC filings, bankruptcy records, evidence of fraudulent conveyance, and other documented fraudulent conduct. What followed was not a rebuttal of my evidence, but a coordinated effort to silence me through litigation.

I am now alleging abuse of process, malicious prosecution, and defamation based on what I contend was the knowing misuse of judicial proceedings and public communications to retaliate against a whistleblower and fraud victim.

This article explains how my exposure of alleged misconduct at 1847 Holdings LLC—and its spinoff Polished.com—was met not with transparency or correction, but with retaliation.

A Business Model Built on Destruction, Not Value

1847 Holdings presents itself as a public holding company. What shareholders experienced instead was a recurring pattern of capital extraction followed by total shareholder destruction.

Across 1847 Holdings and Polished.com, the public markets were tapped for hundreds of millions of dollars through equity issuances, financings, and restructurings. What shareholders received in return were 100% wipeouts.

Each reverse split followed the same script:

Massive dilution

A brief price reset

Eventual collapse to near-zero

The company survived. The shareholders did not.

This was not a one-off failure. It repeated. After each collapse, the capital structure was reset and the cycle restarted. The stock was not merely destroyed—it was recycled.

I Spoke Using Public Records — and No One Objected

After suffering those losses, I began speaking publicly about what I found. Everything I said was grounded in SEC filings, bankruptcy records, evidence of fraudulent conveyance, and other documented fraudulent conduct.

For months, I communicated directly—and through counsel—with the company’s lawyers, including Oliver Griffin of Griffin Partners LLP.

During that entire period:

I was never accused of defamation

I was never accused of harassment

I was never asked to retract anything

I was never sent a cease-and-desist

No injunction was sought

That silence matters. Lawyers do not remain quiet for months if they believe speech is false or actionable. The only reasonable inference is that they understood my statements were fact-based, lawful, and protected.

Everything Changed When I Escalated

The posture changed only after I escalated exposure.

I filed a federal civil RICO action alleging a pattern of misconduct involving securities fraud, fraudulent conveyance, and other financial wrongdoing. I also uncovered evidence that at least one subsidiary publicly represented as operational was, in reality, non-operational—directly contradicting representations made to investors.

That is when retaliation began.

A Settlement Email One Night — A Lawsuit the Next Morning

One fact collapses the credibility of everything that followed.

On the night before 1847 Holdings filed a lawsuit against me, Oliver Griffin emailed my counsel seeking to resolve the lawsuit I had filed against 1847 Holdings. The email was not accusatory. It did not allege harassment, defamation, or wrongdoing by me. It was an attempt to quietly settle my allegations against them.

Less than twenty-four hours later, that posture reversed.

The very next day, 1847 Holdings publicly announced that it was suing me—accusing me of commercial disparagement, harassment, and misconduct—through court filings and investor-facing press releases.

Those two positions cannot coexist in good faith.

A party does not attempt to settle serious allegations of fraud one evening and then publicly accuse the whistleblower of wrongdoing the next morning unless the second step is strategic retaliation. If my claims were frivolous, there would have been no reason to seek settlement. If I posed some imminent threat, there would have been no time for settlement discussions.

The only coherent explanation is this: they knew my allegations were dangerous, attempted to contain them privately, and when that failed, pivoted to litigation to change the narrative.

An Old Voicemail Becomes a Manufactured “Emergency”

Rather than confront the substance of what I exposed, attorney Baruch Gottesman of Gottesman Legal, PLLC sought a Temporary Restraining Order against me.

The alleged emergency relied, in material part, on a voicemail I had left nearly a year earlier.

That voicemail contained:

No threats of violence

No threats of harm

No statements suggesting imminent danger

It had existed for months without complaint. There was no new conduct. No escalation. Nothing had changed—except that I had exposed conduct creating serious legal risk.

Repackaging a stale, non-threatening voicemail as an emergency was not an overreaction. It was a tactic.

Litigation by Press Release

1847 Holdings then issued press releases announcing litigation against me and labeling my conduct false, harassing, and frivolous.

These statements were not required disclosures. They were not neutral descriptions of court filings. They were investor-facing publications designed to damage my credibility—after months of knowing silence while I spoke using public records.

Why Baruch Gottesman’s History Matters

One of the attorneys now accusing me of wrongdoing—Baruch Gottesman—has himself been accused in federal court filings of aiding and abetting a large-scale investment fraud.

According to a civil complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Gottesman was sued for professional malpractice and negligent misrepresentation in connection with a $23 million investment scheme. That complaint alleges that while acting as counsel and investor-relations contact, Gottesman prepared and circulated a false proof-of-funds letter claiming he had independently verified that the scheme’s principal held over $50 million at Wells Fargo—funds that allegedly never existed.

Investors allegedly relied on that letter and on operating agreements Gottesman drafted that falsely stated other sophisticated investors had contributed the majority of capital. The principal actor later pleaded guilty to federal fraud and was sentenced to approximately seven years in prison. Despite these allegations and the undisputed criminal outcome, Gottesman retained his law license and continues to practice.

I raise this history for context—not accusation. An attorney with documented exposure to fraud-related litigation understands exactly what whistleblower risk looks like and how pressure is applied when exposure cannot be contained.

This Was Not About Safety — It Was About Control

The pattern is unmistakable:

I exposed alleged fraud using public records

I filed a RICO action

I uncovered contradictions in investor disclosures

Defense counsel sought settlement

That failed

An old voicemail was rebranded as an emergency

Litigation and press campaigns followed

This was not about protecting anyone.

It was about silencing exposure.

Why I’m Writing This

I am writing this because retaliatory litigation against whistleblowers corrodes market integrity.

1847 Holdings and its spinoff Polished raised vast sums from the public. Shareholders were wiped out—not once, but repeatedly. Reverse splits did not fix the problem; they reset it.

My claims—for abuse of process, malicious prosecution, and defamation—are about accountability for what happens after fraud is exposed: when companies and lawyers decide that suppression is easier than truth.

You cannot seek to settle fraud allegations one night and sue the whistleblower the next—unless the lawsuit was never about merit at all.

That is the question the courts now have to answer.