Albanian taxi driver, sued a GNTM model for uploading videos on Tik-Tok and Instagram without his knowledge, resulting in him being vilified, as he complains through his complaint to the Athens Public Prosecutor's Office. In fact, the 58-year-old who has lived in Greece for 25 years, is married and a father of two children, has never bothered the authorities and works through the Taxibeat app, says that he has no contact with social media and was informed about the video uploaded by the model on the Tik Tok platform by a relative, who informed his chef son who lives abroad permanently and so after the driver initially sent a letter of apology, he decided to take legal action against the impressive model.
"I complain as your behaviour is still responsible, since you have used cyberspace to defame me, since anyone can at any time access the page and become a member of the community, thus unleashing a series of slanders against me, insulting me both personally and professionally," he said in his letter of 11th October.5.22, the 58-year-old driver and shortly afterwards adds that "I urge you to proceed immediately, i.e. within three days of receiving this letter to publicly apologize for this inappropriate and criminal act, to delete from social media the offending illegal video material that you uploaded without my knowledge and consent".
The incident
Starting his complaint, the 58-year-old driver describes his life in Greece.
"I come from Albania, I am fifty-eight years old and since 1997 I have been living and working permanently in Greece. I am married and have two children, 28 and 25 years old respectively. My first son works as a hairdresser and my second son as a chef in Norway. I have been working non-stop since I came to Greece, doing mostly manual work. For the last 5 years I have been working as a professional taxi driver.
For 25 consecutive years, i.e. for as long as I have been in Greece, I have never been employed by the Greek authorities, nor has my family. I have always been an exemplary and honest citizen, my only concern was to provide my family with a better future and decent living conditions.
All these years, both in the construction industry, where I was formerly employed, and as a taxi driver, where I work today, I have worked and continue to work diligently and conscientiously, and all because as a person and as a family man I respect the money that someone gives me, as I raised my family with it. Besides, until today, no one has accused me of anything, but, however, some people for reasons of publicity and self-promotion wanted to tarnish the honor and reputation of a man, completely unfairly, completely unprovoked and all this, unfortunately, affects not only me but also my family, "he says.
In the following lines he refers to the incident starring the model who had participated in the realily fashionable GNTM. "On April 20, 2022, I agreed to take a ride through the app "taxibeat" with which I work with. More specifically, the signal for the route was given around 20:27 p.m., and the starting point was to be Chios Street in Daphne, Attica, with a destination in Agios Dimitrios, Attica -only-, with no return.
I picked up the drop-off from the above location and set off for the route described above.
I picked up the drop-off from the above location and set off for the above described route. While I was driving, the drop-off suddenly instructed me to turn left, although the route was different from the one indicated by the drop-off via the "taxibeat" application and drivers should not deviate from the original instruction of the application for the sake of transparency and customer safety.
Once we arrived at the destination, where I was eventually directed by the complainant, she instructed me in a strong and arrogant tone to wait for her to return home. I then replied that: "our destination was elsewhere and I did not say anything to you when you asked me to change the destination, but now I cannot wait for you because you have to declare to the company through the app that the route will be round trip In no way do I want to be wrong with the companyI cannot wait for you and take you home I am sorry".
The Psychoalert video
At this point, according to the lawsuit, an explosive scene began to unfold "The dropout seemed to pay no attention to my words, sitting inside the taxi and talking on her cell phone, completely disregarding anything I said to her. After three minutes she exited the taxi without closing the door, leaving it wide open. I hot-called her and politely asked her to close the door of my vehicle so I could leave. I mentioned to the complainant that I had just finished my shift and that I had been behind the wheel since 06:30 in the morning and wanted to go home to rest. She then stepped in front of the taxi and started screaming, telling me, as I recall, that: "I demand you tell me why you won't take me home, I demand you tell me, I won't close the door if you don't tell me...go away." I then replied "for a piece of bread I'm trying to make why are you doing this to me?" In short, I closed the door myself and left, not wanting to give further exposition
[....]. On 23.04.2022 my young son was informed by my nephew that he saw in a video on the "TikToK" app that I was pictured, I could be heard speaking and the license plates of my commercial vehicle (TAXI) which he titled were visible: [... "THIS 'GENTLEMAN' ATTACKED ME.....I HIRED A TAXI VIA TAXIBEAT, HE PICKED ME UP FROM MY HOUSE WITH A DESTINATION DISTANCE OF 2.3 KM AND BECAUSE I TOLD HIM TO DROP ME OFF IN THE ALLEY ON THE LEFT 50M BEFORE, HE SUDDENLY STARTED SWEARING, GOT OUT OF THE CAR AND STARTED CHASING ME. PSYCHOALERT AND THAT THE PERSON WHO PUBLISHED THE ABOVE VIDEO, WITHOUT MY KNOWLEDGE AND WITHOUT MY CONSENT, IS CALLED (P.MY NEPHEW WAS STUNNED WHEN THE TIK TOK APP SHOWED HIM THIS VIDEO, HE RECOGNIZED ME UNCONDITIONALLY, AND IMMEDIATELY SENT IT TO MY YOUNG SON, WHO WAS HORRIFIED AND INFORMED ME AND SHOWED ME THE VIDEO FOOTAGE!
It is worth mentioning that on April 20, 2022, when the above incident took place, at that moment I did not realize that I was being videotaped, nor did I even think about it, it did not pass -literally- from my mind.
The legal view
The lawyer of the taxi driver Mr. Evangelos Troubetaris, referring to the case, stresses to protothema.gr that "Some people became aware of this false news, which was illegally posted on social media, namely TikTok and then relayed in cyberspace. Today, everyone has access to the internet. So you can understand the damage done to the honour and reputation of the victim and his family. It should be mentioned that both the Tik Tok application and the other sites to which the video in question was relayed are in the PUBLIC domain and can be accessed and viewed by anyone at any time.
Source: protothema.gr
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