Below is a post we published on August 14, 2012, about a GR Bully/Amazon Fora Troll named Anna Karenina. Dougie Brimson was the first to spot Anna and catch her in a lie. Since then, we’ve had several people contact us about her and the heartache she has caused them. One victim (not an author) was even threatened by Anna. Anna found this person’s PII and threatened to reveal it publicly, which would have caused a great deal of pain to this particular individual. We talk about this incident in our post: Psychotic Comments.
Given that Anna has caused so much damage to other people, both on GR (as Zahara Cerise) and on Amazon (as Anna Karenina), we’ve had a couple people mention to us that they were thinking of filing a civil suit against her. The only problem with doing that is that you have to serve someone court papers to file a suit and Anna trolls the internet anonymously. No one knew who she was or how to locate her. Until now.
With a little online research and IP tracking, we’ve managed to find her real name and exact location. So, if someone comes to us and shows us that they have a valid case against her, we will give that person the information so that they can serve her court papers, but until then, we will be keeping this information private. Contrary to what the bullies say, we do not publish people’s PII.
As for our post below. We know for a fact that Anna Karenina trolls around under the names Zahara Cerise and Peachbird, but the other “faces” we mention are pure conjecture. We mention them because we were given evidence by our site visitors that she uses these aliases, but the evidence is not conclusive. For example, we know that there are similarities between Anna and Amber of BBB and that the two live in the same state, but each are located in different cities, so they might not be the same person.
Edit 3/28/2013: We have just received email confirmation from several sources that Anna is, in fact, Amelia Lucan on Facebook. And we have this:
If you click on “Amelie Lucan” guess where it takes you. That’s right. Straight to Anna Karenina’s Musings. Imagine that.
Another edit: we were just informed that the link to the page “Great Summer Reads” suddenly stopped working. The page is no longer there. Hmm… *scratches chin* Looks like Amelie/Zahara/Anna is trying to do some damage control… again. No matter, just try this google cache page instead (until she deletes this one, too, that is.) In any case, we hope you enjoy the post below and come away with a better understanding of one of Amazon’s (and GR’s) nastier bullies.
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Our team has had several bullies under investigation for a while now. One of them is Anna Karenina of the Amazon Review Mafia. So you must be wondering: what is the Amazon Review Mafia and what does it have to do with the GR bullies? Keep reading.
The Amazon Review Mafia was brought to our attention by Dougie Brimson who started the discussion, During his investigation, he came across a particularly nasty bully named Anna Karenina, who is part of the GR bully group of author abusers (although he didn’t know that at the time). To illustrate this, we have a clipping of her threat to authors:
What Dougie also started to notice was that Anna had several online identities, or what we call “faces” that she used to intimidate, harass, and bully other people – usually people who disagreed with her. Sound familiar?
When Dougie found out that she was on GR, he confronted her:
Then, she conveniently avoided the question:
Then all the sudden, a whole slew of people (who are supposed to be in different times zones) jumped to Anna’s defense. To derail the topic, Anna began to insult Dougie and call his credibility into question.
So, does all of this sound familiar? Whenever the bullies are confronted by someone who disagrees with them, they immediately try to discredit them. They did it to us and now to Dougie.
So, back to her counter question. Why did Dougie think she is Zahara Cerise on GR? Well, maybe because of this:
Just like Kat, Jane Litte, and Wendy Darling, Anna shows herself to be a very subtle and clever manipulator. Here she talks about Zahara Cerise as if she’s not her:
So she claims she can’t even see Zahara Cerise’ profile and yet we all know she can simply login to GR as Zahara Cerise and see everything that Zahara Cerise sees.
“I can’t even see her profile.” Uh huh. Liar! Liar! Pants on fire!
But hold onto your hats, STGRB readers, because this gets better. Just moments after Dougie confronted her about being Zahara Cerise, Anna went back to her original comment to HJ Leonard that she wrote in February and deleted it! Look at the dates. It’s the exact same screenshot, only without Anna’s comment:
Nice try, Anna. But you were right about one thing. You did make the front page of STGRB. Congratulations! 
Now, remember what we said before about the bullies trying to cover their tracks once their dirty laundry is discovered? Deleting incriminating evidence like she did is one of their specialties.
Not only that, the bullies lie for each other. Here is a shot of Mayhem (who knows that she is Zahara Cerise) coming to her defense:
So, let’s recap from here. Dougie notices that Anna has multiple accounts and identities. He calls her out. Anna denies it and calls his credibility into question. Then, she says that everyone who believes him is crazy, including us:
So, who do you believe?
For us, it’s a no-brainer. Dougie is telling the truth.
In addition to being Zahara Cerise on GR and Anna Karenina on Amazon, we also know that Anna is peachbird76 on Amazon as well:
Gotcha!
Okay, here’s the thing about liars. Watch them long enough and they will make a mistake. They’ve told so many lies they have to remember that eventually they slip up and embarrass themselves. Our advice: best to just be honest.
Currently our team is reporting Anna to Amazon for using multiple accounts to bully and harass people. If any of our readers would like to join the effort, you are welcome.
So, what are Anna’s other faces? We have strong evidence that she is also Amber of Buried By Books.
First we have this:
We also know, by reading both blogs: Buried By Books and Anna Karenina’s Musings, that both these identities read “the classics” and are into romance and baking. Of course, this evidence is really circumstantial. It doesn’t prove that they are the same person, but it’s enough to make you scratch your chin and go: “Hmm …”
So, now we have Zahara Cerise, Amber of BBB, and peachbird76. Where are we getting these? Each week, on Anna’s blog AKM, she features a color.
Here is the one for Cerise:
Here is the one for Amber:
And this one for Peach:
See the pattern?
The last two faces of Anna are Amelie Lucan of Facebook and Cat McKindle of GR.
displays a giraffe:
If you read Anna’s blog, she is obsessed with giraffes. She has a collection of little giraffe figurines that she posts pics of on her blog. Also, many of Amelie’s FB friends are known posters on the Amazon fora. But the most incriminating evidence of all is that when someone sent an FB friend request to Amelie, Anna and her friends began talking about it on the Amazon fora within minutes. This is per Dougie and we believe him.
As for , well:
Look familiar?
Also, if you look at the mods for the GR group, Badly Behaving Authors, you will recognize a few of them:
If you look further, you will see that Cat McKindle has five friends, two of those friends are HJ Leonard and Mayhem.
Now, let’s count the faces. Anna Karenina, one. Zahara Cerise, two. Peachbird76, three. Amber of BBB, four. Amelia Lucan, five. Cat McKindle, six. Wow! And these are just ones we know of. There could be many more.
“I am only me.” Uh. Yeah. Right.
Anna is only herself playing multiple roles, but during the day she’s a 1st grade teacher. Apparently the immaturity of her 1st graders have been rubbing off on her. Quite sad.
My first encounter with this Anna Karenina was long before STGRB existed, about three years ago this spring. I’d seen a firestorm that involved a friend on Amazon and went to the forums to comment about something. I wasn’t confrontational, even though they were literally roasting this guy (he wasn’t an author either). I just left a simple comment that didn’t bother anyone…except Anna Karenina.
Of course by that time I’d seen plenty of these Jane Litte-esque bully firestorms, so I ignored Karenina completely. She tried to coax me into the argument in subtle ways, with sneaky little comments and replies to me directly designed to hopefully piss me off. I knew what she was doing and didn’t fall for it. But I had no idea she was this notorious.
It’s interesting how these bullies like Litte, Looney, and Karenina follow a pattern and show up in firestorms that usually aren’t related to each other in any way. I’ve never seen it fail. They just keep coming back like bad pennies.
Bad pennies, yes. Good analogy.
Well said. Although you forgot the sad lonely school teacher types who are forced to create a digital ‘social’ life for themselves because of an inability to forge proper relationships with actual people.
LMAO! Good one, AM!
This is so awesome! If you guys can find the bullies through their IPs, they can be tried and held accountable for their actions. Finally!
Excellent work everyone.
Although I’m expecting her fellow trolls to go into their usual denial or even ‘so what?’ mode, the fact that this particular bully has been instrumental in the orchestration of so many attacks on authors means that in my opinion, they need exposing in the biggest possible fashion.
Funnily enough, we haven’t heard a word from them. They’re doing their best to ignore us. So it’s very interesting that our blog keeps getting hits through proxies, all of which we can see along with the original IP address. For example, last night we got a hit through a proxy by an infamous bully whose initials are J.G. (Mr. Darkwriter himself), whose IP address traces to Brooklyn.
So bullies, you should really know that proxies don’t work. We can still see you.
They cannot hide from the eye. *voice of Sauron* Muahahahaha!
Lol!
Johnny’s correct. Their proxies don’t hide them. I thought this would be one of the best ways to record their IP addresses. Only the bullies would want to surf our site anonymously, which is why I removed the firewall.
Anna claimed on the Amazon forums that she doesn’t post reviews because she ‘hates writing,’ and yet, twice I’ve seen posts of hers where she says she’s writing a book. Seriously.
So go figure that one out. I’m confused. :/
ROFL! This proves my point that most of these bullies are failed writers. It’s almost becoming a cliche: the biggest, worst bullies and evil-doers on the web who make it their mission to attack authors are failed writers (Ann Somerloon, etc.). Smacks of some psychological disorder that should be studied.
I heard in another forum that she is a teacher in California. Sad, huh? With her cruel and psychotic personality, I’m sure she has done much damage to the poor children she teaches. She likely traumatizes them for life (remember those bad teachers we’ve all had?). Who has the time and energy to spew such hate and negativity in the world? Only a very unbalanced person. “Anna Karenina” should be grading papers and trying to do good in the world instead of spending her time online spreading hate. Her poor students.
LOL!!
I say post it all–all her info, where she works, etc. I think her school should know what she’s doing online, along with the higher administration. She’s not a good role model for her students, and I’m sure her coworkers and bosses would frown on her behavior and investigate. They would likely do a psychological evaluation on her, which she would fail. I think those poor children she teaches should be protected. Also, the online community should definitely be warned about her. The only way this evil woman will stop is if her mask is ripped off and she’s exposed for the world to see. I know STGRB operates ethically, but if I had it my way, I’d post every single iota of her information and let the world decide. More than anything, I want her employers to open an investigation into her background and online activities. There are surely innocent children being harmed by this woman. People like that don’t just do damage in one area of their lives.
As someone party to the full details, I’d be quite happy to plaster her details all over my blog however, I think we need to be smarter than that because this woman needs to suffer the full consequences of what she’s been doing.
And guess what… if I have my way, she will.
I wasn’t surprised today when I saw that STGRB had written a story about Anna Karenina (AKA Zahara). She bullied me off of Goodreads a little over a year ago. Every time our paths crossed on GR, she viciously verbally attacked me. Nobody understands what it is like to be bulled online unless it happens to them. The amount of bullying that goes on on GR and on the Amazon forums is unbelievable. There is large group of people who dedicate their lives to bullying authors and readers. Anna Karenina is always involved in these attacks, she seems to lead the pack in many of these attacks.
Anna Karenina (although I knew her as Zahara because she used to bully me on Goodreads. So I’ll call her Zahara in this comment) harassed and bullied me so much that I had to delete my Goodreads account. She wouldn’t leave me alone. I don’t want to go into too much detail of how I first came into contact with Zahara, because I don’t want her to know who I am. I am terrified that she will come after me again. Briefly, Zahara and her bully friends started attacking a friend of mine who is a self published author. My friend has to promote her books by herself. Zahara didn’t like my friend promoting her books on GR, so she and her gang repeatedly attacked my friend. They said awful things to her, they made up all sorts of cruel lies about her. And then they shelved my friends books under horrible, nasty names. Many of them left one star bully reviews on her books. They hadn’t even read my friends books, so the reviews were not about the books. The reviews were personal attacks on my friend.
So, I stepped in to defend my friend. I didn’t want to make a bad situation worse, so I was very polite and courteous to Zahara and her gang. I pointed out that my friend had apologised many times for spamming her book. This just made the bullies turn on me. Zahara was the worst. She wouldn’t get off my case. She went onto my GR profile page to dig up info on me and then she mocked me on the public threads. So took pleasure in twisting my words and making me look stupid. I use my real name on GR/Amazon/Facebook. Zahara read through my book reviews and then she sneered at my reviews saying that she knew six year old children who could write better than me. She pulled apart and dissected my book reviews on a public thread. She showed her friends what an imbecile she thought I was. It may not sound like much, but trust me when I say that she was extremely cruel.
Things got much worse. Zahara continued to taunt me mercilessly. I don’t want to go into details because I don’t want her coming after me again. I am quite sure that she went onto my Facebook page digging for more info on me, because some of the things she knew about me could only have only have come from my Facebook profile page. This was truly frightening. Zahara and her gang kept attacking my author friend as well. They were destroying her books. So my friend deleted her GR account. This badly affected my friends career, because self published authors really need GR to promote their books. After that, they couldn’t torment my friend any more so they came after me full force. They accused me of being a sock puppet belonging to my friend. Zahara was always leading the pack. Most of the attacks happened on GR, but once it happened on Amazon as well.
Nobody knows how upsetting online bullying can be until it happens to them. The attacks went on for months. Zahara and her gang followed me around GR. I was so upset that it actually affected my daily life. I couldn’t sleep. Zahara and her gang hated me so much that it scared me. I hadn’t done anything wrong. They saw me as an easy target to pick on.
Eventually, I deleted my GR account and I never went back. Any time I even hear the name “Goodreads” I feel myself panic inside. I had tried so hard to reach out to Zahara, I explained to her how upset I was about the way her and her friends taunted me. I hoped that if she realised how upset I was then she would stop harassing me. I tried to make peace with her many times, but she just laughed at me, it only made her worse. Both my friend and I had to leave GR because of Zahara. I know that she has driven many other people off GR as well. Why does she want to hurt so many people?
Thank you STGRB for writing this story about Anna Karenina/Zahara. Many people have been victims of her vicious attacks. Zahara never backs down. She digs up info up on people (especially authors) and then she twists the truth in to horrible lies. She gets her kicks out of destroying people’s lives. I hope someone brings her to court and holds her accountable for her evil, bullying ways.
Your story makes me physically ill. This is like sociopathic sickening behavior. I can’t imagine living in that kind of sad place. She is a twisted #%^*#. I imagine seeing this all puts a sick smile on her face but at the end of the day, her sad shell of a life is what she made it. Imagine that thing being your mother or sister? Imagine sitting next to it at PTA or watching the kids play soccer? She is no doubt ostracized in the real world for her disturbing ways and the only friends she has are the pathetic little minions who fear her on amazon and Goodreads… I pity her. See her for what she is. She is not a happy human. Don’t give that twisted depraved pathetic little girl your power. She can’t take it if you see her for what she really is. Remember in Harry Potter when they were learning about the Boggart and the spider had roller skates on… Same idea. See her for the lonely pathetic loser she is and take back your power. She can’t hurt you, it’s an illusion.
Hi guys. I haven’t checked in in a while, but then today I saw all the trolls in a flap over on their Amazon thread, so I had to come see what had ruffled their feathers. Once you hear the trolls panicking “Ho ho ho that site has no credibility” you know that you guys have found out something good.
Well – well – well, mega troll Anna Karenina certainly has a lot of sock puppet accounts. There is no denying it now, the proof is here. She obviously has way too much time on her hands. She must be glued to STGRB, she was very quick to delete the page that proved that Amelia Lucan and Anna Karenina are the same person. Luckily the second link works just fine. They are indeed the same person. No point lying any more Anna/Zahara/Peachbird76/Amelia.
Great to hear that STGRB have her real name now. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone brings her to court to hold her accountable for all the lies and slander that she has spread.
Interesting to see how Peachbird76 has suddenly started posting again since you posted this story.
Question: why don’t you guys add Anna to your list of Biggest Offenders?
That’s a good idea.
Is Anna’s name really Janis Hinkle?