Paris Hilton Sues to Shut Down Web Site
Paris Hilton on Monday slapped a federal lawsuit on the Web site that’s displaying private photos, videos, diaries and other possessions she had kept in storage, the Associated Press reports.
Parisexposed.com, which the 25-year-old Simple Life star hopes to shut down, launched Jan. 23.
It lets visitors paying $39.97 view Hilton’s passport, bank statements, medical records and other legal documents that the site claims were auctioned off after Hilton failed to pay the rent on a Los Angeles-area storage facility.
In her legal papers, Hilton says the items went into a 6,000-sq.-ft. storage unit two years ago when she and her sister, Nicky, 23, moved out of a house that had been burglarized.
Hilton claims a moving company was to pay the storage fees.
“I was appalled to learn that people are exploiting my and my sisters’ (sic) private personal belongings for commercial gain,” Hilton said in a statement accompanying the lawsuit, according to the AP. She said she feared the information – which includes credit card receipts and her passport – could be used “to steal my identity, or even worse, to harass or stalk me.”
The lawsuit alleges that defendants Nabil and Nabila Haniss of Culver City, Calif., paid $2,775 for Hilton’s items and then sold them for $10 million to entrepreneur Bardia Persa, creator of ParisExposed.com.
Reads the text on the Web site: “Believe it or not, this supermodel, from one of the wealthiest families in the world, failed to pay her $208 bill. … As you probably guessed by now, the storage unit was auctioned off … the heiress lost all rights to her goods.”
The Hanisses could not be located for comment, according to the AP. Persa did not respond to a request for comment.
Hilton’s publicist Elliott Mintz told AP that she would like the site shut down and “all of these items returned to her.”
January 30th, 2007 at 7:58 am
Maybe if she paid her bill in the first place, she wouldn’t be in this predicament. Regular shmoes who don’t pay their storage bills have their stuff auctioned off all the time and no judge on earth would give it back.
March 18th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
Its her new job….