Note that, just like Yaniv’s reviews of other businesses and sharing of their content, this post is a review of Yaniv’s services and includes images of Yaniv’s products, including samples of TrustedNerd.com. I do not claim to own the content on that site and I use them under fair use portions of Canadian laws. The content here is speculation and opinion based on readily available online information. I could be wrong about all of it. If in doubt, contact these businesses yourself for more information.
Jessica (Jonathan) Yaniv has bragged about being many things but he’s all but gone silent about his business ventures, JY Knows IT, an admittedly clever name for a local tech support venture, and TrustedNerd.com, a tech blog that Yaniv created to clone CNET or Wired. Both have failed, miserably, but there are some stories here worth reviewing.
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First off, everything here is alleged. This is information I’ve gathered from the internet and, like everything else on Meow Mix, can’t always be proven. However, we all know Yaniv’s patterns – what you’ll see here fits right in.
JY Knows It was a local venture and there appears to have been a small client base, possibly Yaniv family friends or members of the local Jewish community. The problem with Yaniv’s business model is that he was a scammer – he’d leave poor reviews about businesses using fake accounts, or spam email and social media pages with porn, then contact them offering his services to correct the problem. Sure enough, once he was signed on, the problem would go away and he looked heroic.
Problem is, people have a pretty good spidey sense when it comes to bullshit, and Yaniv’s business never took off. For the last several months, it’s shown a generic banner saying he’ll be back.
One important side story on this, and one that Meow Mix is unable to verify, is that NY Bistro in the Vancouver area was a client of JY Knows IT. The owner, who I won’t name here, allegedly sexually assaulted Yaniv, according to what Yaniv told Manda. We have contacted this person for comment. He was shocked at the accusation and is consulting his lawyer.
Personally, I tend to side with victims, but in this case I feel it is unlikely that anyone would sexually assault Yaniv. I’m also skeptical because, until recently when JY Knows IT went down, this restaurant, owned by Yaniv’s alleged sexual assaulter, was still listed as a valued client. Wouldn’t a sexual assault victim remove that?
TrustedNerd.com is another story. The screenshot below was taken January 12, 2020 and it really shows when things started to unravel for Yaniv. One featured article is from 2016, and all of the content is outdated. Much of it is simply plagiarized from other sites or reposted content. Further down the page is a post from GROW 2014.
In fairness, there are some newer articles, but it’s clear things have taken a turn in recent years. While TrustedNerd.com was once trying to be a serious player in the tech review world, by 2018 it had devolved into a sex toy review site, featuring reviews of vibrators and other adult devices.
It does appear Yaniv may be considering a revamp to his outdated and hard-to-look at site, as he posted a very poorly written, typo-filled, grammatically–incorrect review of a cell phone booster in 2019, but that’s it.
Yaniv’s bio on the site is interesting as well, as he won’t even include a picture of himself, but makes it sound like he’s the CEO of a massive empire. In fact, Yaniv runs the site from his disgusting condo that his mother pays for.
It is interesting that Yaniv mentions major tech shows like CES, which just ended this year. As we learned from a past associate of Yaniv’s, he would complain and whine to companies and claim to be from a major tech review site so he could get passes to these events. He posed with celebs like Jessica Alba and Xzibit, and leaders of tech companies like Twitter, and later claimed to have connections, but he doesn’t. These photo ops are truly open to everyone in attendance, and Yaniv was just another reviled leach that stood in line to rub shoulders with people much more successful than he’ll ever be. Notably, Yaniv did not attend CES 2020, which happened this past week.
While operating TrustedNerd, Yaniv ran a competition for a follower to join him on a trip to Las Vegas for a conference. Two weeks later, a “random” girl was “randomly” selected, then announced with a winky emoji.
This is nearly identical to a stunt Yaniv pulled in 2012 when blogging for Gizmofusion. The full article by Anna Slatz of The Post Millennial goes into more detail, but the contest was posed as a trip to CES, and Yaniv turned it into a creepshow, later asking the girl to review sex toys and send nude pictures. She also received unsolicited pictures of Yaniv’s very male genitals. Read the full Anna Slatz article for details about how Yaniv created a fake identity using photos from an adult webcam model to further manipulate this girl.
To conclude that section, Yaniv is a creature of habit. Twice he tried to bait girls into his hotel room in Vegas via contests, and twice he’s filed vexatious, frivolous lawsuits against people, claiming he’s afraid for his life and the safety of his one-person family.
Yaniv has also had some independent business ventures outside of his two brand names, including volunteering to moderate YouTube sister band Cimorelli’s social media pages. It comes as no surprise that Yaniv worked so hard to get behind the scenes of a girl group, mostly filled with minors, where he would jealously ban other males from the site as soon as they showed interest in the girls. Yaniv also tried to represent another girl, 16-year old singer Desiree, but she barely knew him and only chatted online a few times. Oddly, Yaniv allegedly gloated to Cimorelli fans that he was in a romantic relationship with Desiree and had impregnated her. A very strange thing to brag about when you’re in you’re nearly 30 and she’s 16.
Soon enough, Yaniv’s days as a social media manager dried up, but not before one last ditch attempt to make it big by making a deal with businessman Andrew Barron to produce Cimorelli-branded headphones. The case might sound familiar.
It started as a GoFundMe. Barron promoted the headphones on the site and several people bought in. They were never delivered. To this day you can see complaints on the site.
It’s unclear how they met, but when the deal went south, Yaniv sued Barron (File # VLC-S-S-1611566 and NEW-P-C-16878 ) for non-payment of services in the amount of approximately $25,000. Barron claimed he and Yaniv agreed that Yaniv would be paid with stock in the headphone company and when it didn’t work out Yaniv denied this. In Yaniv’s claim, he stated that Barron had a gun and was stalking his family, and demanded a no contact order. Yaniv later added a follow-up claim to request that the judge order Barron not to discuss Yaniv in person or online.
Sound familiar Donald?. It gets better.
Yaniv cited various Twitter usernames in his claim, stating they were Barron’s fake accounts or friends and they were stalking him. He “demanded” that the judge arrest Barron. Yaniv claimed Barron had a gun, used drugs, and was mentally ill and dangerous.
Barron’s response was a total denial and called the case “the definition of frivolous”. The case was dismissed and the judge stated that Yaniv must refile the entire thing if he wants to pursue this case. Meow Mix has obtained the legal documents and will cover this case in a future deep dive.
So what do we know? Let’s do some myth busting.
- Myth: Yaniv claims to be connected and know people. The truth is that he stood in line for photo ops with celebs and later claimed to be close to them, just like he claims to be close to actor Corey Dixon, who he plagiarized a tweet from.
- Myth: Yaniv is a major player in the tech industry. Yaniv isn’t a player, at all. His businesses have no clients and his tech review website looks like a vibrator-filled time capsule from 2017.
- Myth: Yaniv has connections on sites like Twitter and that’s how he gets enemies banned. The truth is that in October 2018 Twitter changed their terms of service to prohibit intentional misgendering and deadnaming of trans people. Yaniv saw this opportunity and uses Twitter reporting forms like this one to report people en masse. He searches for key words like Jonathan or male and reports them, citing the specific tweet and the specific clause of Twitter TOS. Yaniv, without any meaningful employment or companionship, spends hours each day doing this.
- Myth: Yaniv was a social media manager for celebrities and stars like Cimorelli. Outright false. Yaniv made fake accounts trying to promote himself as a Cimorelli-employee but he was just a volunteer, never paid. He didn’t work for Cimorelli, and the Cimorelli family has entirely disavowed him and cleaned their social media pages of all signs of him. Laughably, he even started a rumor that his name was Jonathan Cimorelli.
- Myth: Yaniv is a tech influencer. Yaniv isn’t even techy, never mind influential. Yaniv is the greasy snake oil salesperson of the tech world. Nobody relies on his opinion, expertise, or businesses for tech guidance or decisions. I would bet money that this site has more daily hits than his.
- His Google bio describes him as a Canadian journalist. Yaniv wrote that and provided it himself.
- Sites online describe his net worth as $500,000-$1,000,000. Yaniv wrote this himself. He’s currently doing gig work like demo’ing wine in grocery stores and allegedly delivering food to people. He owns a condo, but he also owes money on it. His business and domain names are worthless. He claimed he was broke to the BC HRT when appealing his $6,000 penalty.
- Yaniv has advanced technical skills and can hack people. No. Just no. In reality, most modern “hacks” are due to phishing attempts, poor security, or keylogging. It’s virtually impossible to actually hack into websites like Twitter or Gmail. However, it is known that Yaniv has attempted to guess people’s passwords to gain access to their accounts, and sends password resets to scare people.
What does the future hold for Yaniv? There’s no business. He’s destroyed on Google. His identity is known globally. He lacks the basic skills and resources to create a successful online venture. He’s too litigious to risk associating with professionally. He’s generally tainted. Er…allegedly.
