“You Have Been Served”: ZeroDarkTony Sent Hero Not Zero a Cease-and-Desist Letter. Its File Says ChatGPT Made It.

Much of the criticism traces to a teenager. In 2024, a 16-year-old asked a Los Angeles court to protect him and his family from D’Amato, and a judge granted a two-year restraining order that an appeals court upheld this year. Prosecutors charged D’Amato with 26 misdemeanor counts involving the teenager and his mother, including stalking and child cruelty. In December 2025, under a plea agreement, he was convicted of two counts of disobeying a court order, and the other counts were dismissed. He was placed on three years of probation and later ordered to pay the family $7,757.91 in restitution.

In the letter, D’Amato disputes allegations “portraying me, Anthony R. D’Amato Jr., as a pedophile, child molester, or person who has committed sexual crimes,” as well as claims that he is “an agent, operative, or representative of Scientology or its Office of Special Affairs.” Such allegations, he wrote, “can seriously damage my reputation, privacy, personal safety, and livelihood.”

Hero Not Zero is one of the letter’s recipients. In a written reply on Oct. 30, it told him, “We do not publish false statements of fact, about you or anyone else.” It asked him to identify, for each statement he believes is false, the link, the exact words and what he says is true, and said it would publicly correct anything that is wrong. It also said it would oppose “any subpoena or other attempt to identify our writers, contributors or sources.” As of publication, he had not identified any statement.

What the letter demands

The letter makes six demands. D’Amato wants its recipients to stop publishing claims that he has committed sexual crimes or works for Scientology; to stop any “unlawful invasion of privacy,” harassment, threats or intimidation; to stop interfering with his business and relationships; and to stop “directing, coordinating, encouraging, or assisting others.” He also asks them to preserve evidence and to answer in writing within 10 calendar days, a deadline that falls on Nov. 7. The deadline is his own; no court has ordered anything.

He lists claims he might bring “depending on the evidence and applicable defenses”: defamation, false light, invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress, tortious interference and civil conspiracy. He writes that he is also “evaluating” claims under two California civil rights laws, the Ralph Act and the Bane Act. The letter itself notes that those laws involve “violence, threats, intimidation, coercion, or interference with protected rights,” and that “offensive speech or a disputed statement about religion alone does not automatically establish a violation.”

The letter also says what it is not trying to do. “It does not seek to prohibit lawful criticism, protected opinion, truthful reporting, or other speech protected by law,” it says.

Exhibit A

On Oct. 29, D’Amato describes what he says the recipients did:

“Some of them are flat out lying. Some of them try and bend it a little bit, you know, to try and make it seem like it’s an opinion. It’s not an opinion.” … “Some of these individuals never thought they were going to get a cease and desist letter, and they have not ceased, nor have they desisted.”

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The distinction he draws is the one a court would draw. A statement of opinion generally cannot support a defamation claim unless it implies a provably false fact; a false statement of fact can, and a judge decides which is which. In the clip, as in the letter, he does not name a statement he says is false.

No lawyer is named. The email came from [email protected], a Gmail account using the display name “Glenda GW,” and the letter is signed “Anthony R. D’Amato Jr.” The letter’s footer reads “CONFIDENTIAL LEGAL CORRESPONDENCE.” The site has not agreed to keep it confidential and publishes it in full below.

The address was not new. On a livestream just after midnight on Oct. 23, D’Amato asked one of his chat moderators to “drop the new email.” The moderator posted [email protected] in the chat, and he said he would pin it. “Again, I don’t own this email,” he told viewers. “Now, understand, that’s not my email.” On a stream that afternoon, he described it as an address “that someone else controls,” where “anything that goes there will just get forwarded to the lawyer.” He did not name the lawyer, and on Oct. 30 he said, “If we decide we want to get a lawyer at any given time, we will. And when it comes down to the important parts, we will. Until then, I got this.”

He has since disowned the address. “ZDT the God is not my email, and I have abandoned the other email,” he said on Oct. 31. The other one, he said, “is no longer functioning, no longer works.” The letter demands a written response within 10 calendar days and gives no other way to send one. Hero Not Zero sent its reply to the address the letter came from. On Nov. 6, the day before his deadline, we sent a follow-up to the same address. He has not replied to either message.

Exhibit B

On Oct. 30, D’Amato said one of the letters went to a critic he calls JB, and explained why someone else had sent them. Hero Not Zero’s earlier report on that stream uses the same clip.

“By the way, ZDT the God is not my email. It’s not my email. I’m having someone else serve these things because I can’t serve things.” … “I will not be replying to anything that’s sent to that email.” … “IP addresses or whatever that you’ve used, it’s coming, and that letter is the first step.”

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California law allows any adult “not a party to the action” to serve a summons, which is why litigants hand court papers to someone else to serve. That rule applies to court papers. A cease-and-desist letter is not one, and he could have just sent it himself.

The message’s authentication records show it was sent through that Gmail account: Google’s DKIM signature and the SPF and ARC checks all passed, which also indicates it was not altered in transit. The attached PDF carries a C2PA Content Credential, an industry standard for recording how a digital file was made. The credential, signed by OpenAI’s media service, records the document as created with ChatGPT. D’Amato has described how he writes such documents. Early on Oct. 31, answering critics who said he had used ChatGPT on the letter, he said: “I speak into my voice text, right? And then I’ll put it in ChatGPT.” It sometimes takes “anywhere between 10 and 20 runs,” he said, “to get something that’s just like a one or two page to be right.”

The fine print

The letter is addressed to an “Unknown Operator” and says, “I do not claim to know your legal name or identity.” The file attached to the email is named “HeroLightCody_HeroNotZeroNetwork_Cease_and_Desist.pdf.” Two days after sending it, D’Amato told viewers, “I have a little feeling that we already know who you are, but you’re just too much of a chicken [expletive] to come out.”

One of the websites the letter names, “HeroNotZeroNetwork.org,” does not exist. No domain by that name was registered as of Nov. 5. The site’s address is heronotzero.org.

Parts of the letter read like a form that was never filled in. It lists its delivery method as “Platform messaging, website contact forms, email, or other documented means of delivery, if available.” The section headed “Reservation of Rights” holds a single line asking the recipient to “retain a copy of this notice and any records showing its delivery,” and the footer repeats it in capital letters: “retain a copy and proof of delivery.” Proof of delivery is usually something the sender keeps, to show the letter arrived.

Nearly every warning in it comes with a qualifier. Claims are possible “depending on the evidence and applicable defenses.” Subpoenas will be sought “where procedurally available.” Remedies are “subject to applicable law, evidence, defenses, and procedural requirements.” Even the harm it describes is conditional: the accusations he objects to can damage him, it says, “if published as verifiable facts without a factual basis.” On his stream the next day, he used none of the hedging of his letter: “I have you 100 [expletive] percent.”

The letter also asks its recipients to keep their “analytics” and “records of revenue or monetization associated with content about me.” On Oct. 31, he said his critics are “making money off of maligning me.”

A previous attempt to identify critics

In March 2025, a woman who streams on YouTube, Mindy Willens, asked a Los Angeles court for a civil harassment restraining order against him (No. 25STRO01863). In that case, in September 2025, his lawyer, Steven M. Tamer, served three subpoenas, two on YouTube and one on Reddit, seeking identity records, location data and private messages for at least seven accounts that had criticized D’Amato. One was @HeroLightCody, an account named in the new cease and desist letter.

D’Amato talked about the effort on his streams. “We already started the process to subpoena Cody’s accounts for his identification and his locations,” he said on Aug. 10, 2025.

After objections to the subpoenas were served, he told viewers on Sept. 26, 2025, “We are gonna [expletive] find you [expletive] and we’re gonna bring you into court.” Three days later he said, “Any type of denial or objection is merely looked at as an avoidance and something that needs to be dealt with in another fashion.”

The court did not let the subpoenas proceed. On Oct. 20, 2025, Judge Kimberly Repecka granted the petitioner’s amended motion to quash them, according to the minute order. At a hearing on Nov. 20, 2025, Tamer argued that the subpoenas were relevant to witnesses and that the petitioner’s videos about D’Amato drew “higher than normal views and revenue.” The minute order records the court’s answer: “The Court does not find this sufficient relevance for issuing the subpoenas.” The court ordered Tamer to pay $2,000 in fees.

Exhibit C

On Oct. 29, D’Amato describes the cases he says come next:

“I’ll just have to finish up writing some of these declarations and get some of these cases filed. The John Doe cases are coming, and we are going to have a big old Scooby-Doo moment. We are going to serve them with restraining orders, and when we know who they are, then we’re able to file criminal charges.” … “There are some things in the works that I cannot discuss, but just know that things are going to be popping in the next couple days.”

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A petitioner can ask for a restraining order; only a judge can grant one. In California, criminal charges are brought by prosecutors, not by private individuals.

The teenager

Much of the criticism of D’Amato traces to the spring and summer of 2024, when a 16-year-old who was active in the same circle of livestreamers protesting the Church of Scientology became a constant subject of his broadcasts. 

Hero Not Zero reviewed machine transcripts of 94 archived full-length streams from D’Amato’s channel, from September 2020 to July 17, 2024, and about 2,360 recordings and clips of his broadcasts from 2024 to 2026. Every quotation below was checked against the recording. Deleted streams could not be reviewed.

The teenager’s name first comes up in the archive on May 18, 2024. Over the next two months it came up 526 times in 21 of D’Amato’s streams. On July 17, 2024, the last day in that archive, it came up 147 times across three streams. Counting each stretch of talk once, rather than each time he said the name, he talked about the teenager, by name or by nickname, in about 580 separate moments across all of the recordings and clips, most of them in 2024. In at least 120 more, he referred to him without using his name, as “the kid,” “the minor” or “the 16-year-old.” At least nine of his stream titles from that period named the teenager. One announced a “LIVE CPS call” about him. Others called him “Illiterate” and accused him of committing a “FEDERAL CRIME ON LIVESTREAM.”

On May 24, 2024, he told viewers: “He’s 16? … he’s 16 years old.” Three days later: “So I will just tell you that [the teenager] cannot consent to anything.”

On July 2, 2024, he said: “We’re gonna go to Las Vegas with [the teenager] and we’ll fight Scientology in Nevada because [the teenager] can consent in Nevada.” The age of consent in Nevada is 16; in California it is 18. He has cited California’s age himself. Accusing a different man on Jan. 1, 2025, he said, “Age of consent is 18 in California. You’re a statutory rapist.”

In clips from his 2024 broadcasts, he can be heard saying: “I had a dream that I graped [the teenager] in Nevada.” And: “So what, I dream of graping little boys. What’s wrong with that? That’s free speech, right? Just like when you call me a predator.” And: “I am going to personally grape and give the gift of grape to [the teenager] and his mother in their home. I would pay for it.”

“Grape” is common online slang for rape, used to slip past platform filters. D’Amato later said he meant the fruit. “My joke about the graping [the teenager] was about grapes, actual frozen grapes,” he said on Sept. 16, 2024. “If I meant rape, I’d say rape.”

His own streams cut against that explanation. Discussing a woman’s account of her childhood on Nov. 15, 2023, he asked, “So was she a minor in the ’70s … So did the stepdad grape her statutorily?” On May 16, 2024, he described people “talking about graping minors.” And in June 2024, the teenager asked a court to order D’Amato to “stop threating [sic] to rape my mother,” according to the appeals court’s summary of his petition.

D’Amato has also said he never met the teenager and was trying to protect him, pointing to calls he made to child protective services. The teenager’s petition asked the court to make him “stop calling CPS and 911 to harass me and my family,” and the restraining order the court granted barred him from making false calls to law enforcement or first responders.

Hero Not Zero has found no evidence that D’Amato met the teenager or had physical contact with him, and none of the 26 charges filed against him was a sex offense. Some of what he said about the teenager, quoted above, was sexual.

What the courts found

The restraining order. The teenager filed for a civil harassment restraining order in 2024, with his mother acting as his guardian, and a judge granted a temporary order the same day protecting him, his parents and his siblings. The petition asked the court to order D’Amato to stop threatening the family and “not to talk about my family on his social media,” and alleged that he had driven by the teenager, according to the appeals court’s account.

A process server spent weeks trying to deliver the papers. On July 11, 2024, in a livestream the server said was watched by 7,800 people, D’Amato said, “[T]hey will never serve me, what have they got an old address from 3-5 years ago?” On his X account he wrote: “Btw I will never show up in court. I don’t have to. It will be dismissed after my lawyer files a motion.” The court allowed the papers to be served through his social media accounts.

Later that summer, Judge Melanie Ochoa granted a two-year restraining order. It barred D’Amato from contacting the family, required him to stay 100 yards away from them, and stated that “discussing the parties on the YouTube channel” counted as disturbing their peace. When he moved to set the order aside, saying he had never been served, the judge rejected his account: “I do not find Mr. D’Amato’s testimony credible that he had preemptively blocked this paid process server from communicating with him online.” This year, the California Court of Appeal affirmed, finding he had been “attempting to evade service.” The appeals court also awarded the teenager the costs of the appeal. In September, the clerk of the California Supreme Court returned D’Amato’s petition for further review unfiled because it arrived after the deadline.

His petitions against the family. On Oct. 29, 2024, D’Amato, represented by Tamer, filed a restraining-order petition of his own against the teenager, and another against the teenager’s mother. On Feb. 20, 2025, during a hearing on his petition against the teenager, he was arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department outside the courtroom on an outstanding warrant, according to the court’s minute order.  That warrant was for criminal charges in relation to violating the teenager’s restraining order, and included stalking and child cruelty charges. On May 12, 2025, a judge denied his petition against the teenager, finding he had “failed to sustain” his burden of proof. The same day, at his lawyer’s request, the hearing on his petition against the mother was postponed to November, because his criminal case was still pending.

In October 2025, as a hearing neared on the mother’s motion for sanctions against Tamer, D’Amato asked to drop his petition against her without prejudice, which would have let him file it again. On Oct. 28, 2025, Judge Michael R. Powell instead ended the case with prejudice, which bars him from refiling; a corrected minute order says he agreed to that. On Nov. 6, 2025, the judge granted the mother’s request for attorney fees as the prevailing party and ordered D’Amato to pay her lawyer $30,762.38, according to the court’s written order. The judge denied the sanctions motion against Tamer. D’Amato has filed a notice of appeal. A separate appeal he brought in his case against the teenager was dismissed in February 2026 after repeated default notices, and in March the appeals court denied his request to reinstate it, according to the trial court’s online docket.

The criminal case. The Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office filed its case in December 2024 and asked for a warrant for his arrest. It charged 26 misdemeanor counts: two of stalking, four of willful cruelty to a child and 20 of disobeying a court order. The offense dates visible on the court’s online record run from late July to mid-August 2024. The court’s docket shows him remanded to custody on Feb. 21, 2025, the day after his courthouse arrest, and released on a $50,000 bond three days later.

Before trial, prosecutors told the court that D’Amato had violated the court’s orders “dozens of times by posting about the victims on social media and by threatening other people online with violence, including rape and death.” They submitted 41 exhibits, including video clips, and asked that he be jailed with bail set at $500,000. When he learned of the request, prosecutors wrote, he “refused to come to court or communicate with his attorney,” and a bench warrant was issued.

In December 2025, at a bench-warrant hearing, Judge Shannon K. Cooley took his plea and sentenced him. Under a plea agreement, he was convicted of two counts of disobeying a court order. The court’s online record shows sentences on those two counts alone, and a later filing in the case says every stalking and child-cruelty count was dismissed. The judge suspended imposition of sentence and placed him on three years of summary probation. The conditions listed on the court’s record include a criminal protective order, no use or threat of force or violence, no dangerous weapons, restitution, a domestic violence program and 20 days of community labor. He chose the labor over 30 days in jail, the prosecutor told the court in July 2026. He later asked for the labor to be converted to community service.

The protective order, prosecutors wrote, forbids him to “knowingly mention the protected persons in any way, directly, indirectly, or by inference, online.” The judge, they wrote, “strongly admonished” him that his conduct “must stop immediately or he would be sentenced to the maximum jail time allowed by law.”

It did not stop, prosecutors say. In an April 24, 2026 filing, they described new alleged violations, including a March 4, 2026 stream on Rumble in which, they said, he referred to the teenager by an insulting nickname. On June 26, the court ordered him to pay the family $7,757.91 in restitution: $1,050 for their civil lawyer, $694.92 for the process server, $1,800 for psychological care already incurred, and $4,212.99 for a home security system and its installation. A request for $22,100 in future therapy costs was denied without prejudice, meaning the family can ask again. On Aug. 27, the court set his payments at $75 a month. He had completed 77 of the 160 hours of community service. The court’s online record lists his probation as “revoked,” and a hearing to set a probation-violation hearing is scheduled for Jan. 27, 2027. In California, a court can summarily revoke probation while it decides whether a violation occurred. The docket entry is not a finding that he violated his probation.

D’Amato has called the case false. “I didn’t stalk anybody, and I didn’t endanger anybody,” he said on a 2025 stream.

What he says about others

D’Amato’s letter objects to being called a pedophile and a child molester. On his own broadcasts, he regularly levels those accusations at other people. The table counts each moment once across the recordings reviewed for this article.

Counts are approximate and come from machine-generated transcripts. Lines in which he uses a word about himself (“they call me a stalker”) are excluded.

Twelve of his own stream titles apply a sexual label to another person. On Oct. 21, 2026, one week before he sent his letter, he titled a stream with an accusation that a rival had “FILMED MINOR GIRLS.”

The Scientology claim

Some of D’Amato’s critics have accused him of working for the Church of Scientology or its Office of Special Affairs, which handles the church’s legal and public affairs. He denies it. “I don’t get paid by the church. I’m not a Scientologist, right? I don’t like cults,” he said on May 24, 2024. On Oct. 19, 2026, he said, “I’m not OSA.” On Sept. 3, 2025, he called being labeled a Scientologist a hate crime.

He has also called himself a survivor of Scientology. “I survived Scientology, that whole experience,” he said in a July 13, 2023 interview on the YouTube channel Dazed but Not Confuzed, in which he also said, “I was involved in Scientology,” and described taking courses at the church.

He has also said he sent videos to Kendrick Moxon, a lawyer who has represented the church for decades. “I’m the one who sent the videos to Kendrick Moxon,” he said on July 11, 2026. In May 2025: “I’m [expletive] team Moxon all the way.” He has said he met Janet Weiland, an executive in the church’s Office of Special Affairs, at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Northeast station in December 2024, and that “she gave me her email.”

Hero Not Zero has found no evidence that D’Amato is paid by, employed by or directed by the church.

Hero Not Zero’s review of its own coverage

After the letter arrived, Hero Not Zero searched everything it has published, including articles, drafts, videos and shorts, for the words the letter disputes and their slang variants. The search returned 3,060 matches. Editors read every match written in the site’s own voice.

No article calls D’Amato, in Hero Not Zero’s own voice, a pedophile, a child molester, a sex criminal or an agent of Scientology. Those words appear only inside quotations, in claims attributed to named people, in descriptions of court records or in reports of his denials.

On its video and social channels, the site has at times described his conduct toward the teenager and his family more bluntly. Those remarks rest on the record described in this article: his own recorded words about a minor, a restraining order that a judge granted and an appeals court upheld, his convictions for disobeying a court order that protected the family, and the restitution he was ordered to pay them. Where earlier coverage raised questions about whether he works for Scientology, notes were added that say the site has found no evidence that he does.

Hero Not Zero’s corrections policy is linked. If D’Amato or anyone else identifies a specific statement that is wrong, the site will review it and correct it publicly. As of publication, no one had.

What comes next

Hero Not Zero was not the only recipient. On Oct. 28, the day its letter arrived, Scott Hochstetter, who streams as DOA, read on his livestream a cease-and-desist letter that he said came from “Glenda G.W.” at a “ZDT the God” email address. “More than one of those cease and desist went out today,” D’Amato said late that night, and later in the same stream, “I’m not done sending them out.” On Nov. 4, he said he had sent the letters to “initially only two individuals.”

Exhibit D

On Oct. 29, D’Amato speaks to the people who got his letters:

“I will tell you, to the people that I got the, um, cease and desist letters to, y’all are in some deep [expletive]. You are in very deep [expletive].” … “It would be ill-advised for you to continue down the path that you’re going. One down, about five to go.”

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In the clip, he does not say who received the letters or what “one down” refers to.

On Oct. 29, a Los Angeles judge granted part of D’Amato’s request for attorney fees in his civil harassment case against Jarred Brooks (No. 26STRO01932) and awarded him $10,725. Later that day D’Amato went live under the title “Victory,” and in the first 40 minutes he turned to the people he said he had sent cease-and-desist letters.

Exhibit E

D’Amato thanks viewers for donations, says “this is the first domino to fall,” and turns to the people he sent letters:

“This is the first domino to fall because there’s more coming. And, uh, you know, some of you idiots that I have sent cease and desist letters to, you can count on at least that being on your tab. At least.” … “And now for what you have done to me, you are going to pay a dear price in that courtroom because I have you 100 [expletive] percent.”

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The ruling was partial. The Oct. 29 minute order granted his fee motion “in part” and awarded $10,725.00 “for work done related to the motions filed in this case,” with 30 days for the two sides to agree on a payment plan. On Oct. 1, he put the fees he was seeking at more than $20,000, Hero Not Zero reported. The award is in his case against Brooks; no one who received a letter is a party to it.

On Oct. 30, he said he could not wait to “subpoena your metadata.” “I’m going to identify you,” he said. “That’s not a threat. That’s a promise.” He also said a lawsuit would cost his critics, not him. “It’s going to cost you $20,000, $25,000 as a retainer to get a decent attorney to deal with this [expletive],” he said. “And I won’t have to spend a freaking dime.” When his petition against the teenager’s mother ended in 2025, the court ordered him to pay her lawyer $30,762.38.

He has also been asking viewers to pay for lawyers. In July 2025, he promoted a “Justice for ZDT Fund” that he said was “taking donations on Venmo and Cash App, because we have $2,000 that we need to raise,” and promised the money would go “right over to the lawyers and receipts will be provided.” More recently, on Sept. 26, 2026, he announced “a little bit of a legal fundraiser,” naming Venmo, Cash App and PayPal as “the easiest ways to go.” By Oct. 3, he said he was “raising some legal fee money for a lawyer” and had “almost $1,000.” On Oct. 21, one week before the letter, he told viewers, “We’re not at the retain an attorney level on the fund yet.” In the logged streams, he has not said which case the money is for. There is no public accounting of the fund, and no posted receipts could be found.

He has said he is in no hurry. “I can go put this together and file it tomorrow and serve it if I want to,” he said on Nov. 2. “I’m not gonna rush.”

A cease-and-desist letter has no legal force by itself. To pursue a John Doe lawsuit, D’Amato would have to file a complaint and then ask a court to authorize subpoenas to the platforms. Under a 2008 California appellate decision, Krinsky v. Doe 6, a plaintiff seeking to unmask an anonymous online speaker must first make a prima facie showing that the speech is actionable. California’s anti-SLAPP law lets people sued over speech on public issues seek early dismissal; it pauses discovery while that motion is pending and awards attorney fees to defendants who win.

Exhibit F

On Oct. 29, D’Amato calls the letters the first phase of a lawsuit and compares the recipients with Brooks:

“There are some of them that never thought they would see the day when they would get a cease and desist letter from me, which is, by the way, the first phase of a lawsuit. So I’m going to write up some things for these degenerates and continue my path of justice.” … “I’m going to have the same amount of mercy that they had on me. And I’ve been nice to Jarred. I’ve been nice about this. I’m not going to be so nice with these.”

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“Jarred” is Jarred Brooks, the respondent in the case that produced that morning’s fee award.

Exhibit G

On Nov. 2, D’Amato says his letters did not need to come with evidence:

“If they want to, you know, tell me that I got to attach this, that and the other thing, then, you know, that’s just too [expletive] bad.” … “I am in no way required or obligated to attach any exhibits to any cease and desist letter. The cease and desist letter is not in the court. It’s, it’s out of court.” … “It’s saying, hey, look, like, if you don’t want to stop, then we’re going all the way.”

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No rule requires a cease-and-desist letter to include evidence. A lawsuit is different. In California, “the words constituting an alleged libel must be specifically identified, if not pleaded verbatim, in the complaint,” the Court of Appeal has said. It appeared he was responding to Hero Not Zero’s reply.

On Nov. 5, he said he would “ease up” if his critics stopped. “I do not want to be lied about or painted in a false light as if I am currently engaging in some behavior that was never actually proven,” he said. “So, stop it. And I will ease up.” Later in the same stream: “We will not stand down. We will hold our position, but we will cease fire.”

Exhibit H

On Nov. 5, D’Amato says he is serious about the letters:

“But I’m dead ass serious about that cease and desist [expletive], and I have very actionable data. So stopping is a good idea, because I don’t want to do it either.”

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He does not say what the data is or whom the remark is aimed at.

The deadline he set for a written response falls on Saturday, Nov. 7.

The letter in full

The email Hero Not Zero received at 5:52 p.m. on Oct. 28, 2026, and the one-page letter attached to it appear below, followed by Hero Not Zero’s reply. The letter is shown as he sent it; select it to open the original PDF.

From: Glenda GW <[email protected]>

Sent: Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026, 5:52 p.m.

Subject: Cease and Desist

Attachment: HeroLightCody_HeroNotZeroNetwork_Cease_and_Desist.pdf

You have been served.

Hero Not Zero’s reply

Hero Not Zero sent this reply to the address the letter came from at 10:08 p.m. on Oct. 30, 2026.

From: Hero Not Zero

To: Glenda GW <[email protected]>

Sent: Friday, Oct. 30, 2026, 10:08 p.m.

Subject: RE: Cease and Desist

Mr. D’Amato,

We received your letter dated October 28, 2026.

You ask whether we will comply. We do not publish false statements of fact, about you or anyone else, and we will keep it that way. We will also keep reporting. Your letter says it “does not seek to prohibit lawful criticism, protected opinion, truthful reporting, or other speech protected by law.” That is what we publish.

Our reporting on you is based on your own public livestreams and recordings, cited by date, and on court records, and it includes your denials. We stand by it.

Your letter does not identify any statement you say is false. If you believe we have published something false, send us, for each statement, the link, the exact words and what you say is true. We will review each one and publicly correct anything that is wrong.

We have not agreed to keep your letter confidential.

Please preserve all evidence related to your claims, including the complete recordings of your livestreams on every platform, your clips and chat logs, and your communications about us, about this letter, and about identifying or locating anyone who has criticized you.

We will oppose any subpoena or other attempt to identify our writers, contributors or sources, and we will seek our fees and costs. If you sue over our reporting, we will ask the court to dismiss the case under California’s anti-SLAPP statute and to award us our fees.

Hero Not Zero

How we reported this

• The letter. The original email, with full headers, and its PDF attachment are preserved unaltered and hashed (SHA-256). The DKIM, SPF and ARC results come from the message headers; the C2PA credential was validated with standard Content Credentials tools. Hero Not Zero’s reply, sent to the same address on Oct. 30, 2026, is preserved the same way.
• Court records. In the civil harassment case against D’Amato in which his subpoenas were quashed (No. 25STRO01863) and his case against Jarred Brooks (No. 26STRO01932): minute orders. In the teenager’s restraining-order case, D’Amato’s petitions against the teenager and his mother, and the criminal case: minute orders, requests and orders, online dockets, the City Attorney’s April 24, 2026 filing, the Court of Appeal’s 2026 opinion and the California Supreme Court clerk’s September 2026 letter. Case numbers in those matters are withheld to protect the minor’s identity.
• The law. Code of Civil Procedure section 414.10 and Government Code section 26500, read on the Legislature’s site, leginfo.legislature.ca.gov, on Nov. 1, 2026. The ages of consent: California Penal Code section 261.5 and Nevada Revised Statutes 200.364 and 200.366, read on Nov. 4, 2026. The pleading rule for libel: Medical Marijuana, Inc. v. ProjectCBD.com (2016) 6 Cal.App.5th 602, quoting Vogel v. Felice (2005) 127 Cal.App.4th 1006, read on CourtListener on Nov. 5, 2026. The standard for unmasking anonymous speakers: Krinsky v. Doe 6 (2008) 159 Cal.App.4th 1154. California’s anti-SLAPP statute: Code of Civil Procedure section 425.16. Summary revocation of probation: Penal Code section 1203.2. Krinsky was read on CourtListener and the two statutes on FindLaw, on Nov. 5, 2026.
• His words. Machine transcripts (Whisper) of 94 full streams from his archived channel and about 2,360 recordings and clips of his broadcasts, each quotation checked against the audio. Counts are machine counts of those transcripts, with each moment counted once and lines about himself left out. His remarks about the letter and the address come from his streams of Oct. 23 to Nov. 5, 2026, and the saved chat log of the stream in which the address was posted. Hochstetter’s reading is from his Oct. 28 livestream. D’Amato’s description of himself as a survivor of Scientology is from “The Zero Dark Tony Story,” a July 13, 2023 live interview on the YouTube channel Dazed but Not Confuzed (YouTube duyTBkNfw0o, at 1:22:31 and 1:47:55). His account of meeting Weiland is from his streams of Dec. 7 and 16, 2024. Some deleted streams could not be reviewed.
• The exhibits. Clips from his livestreams of Oct. 29 (“Victory,” YouTube U6H5Fvok6tA) and Oct. 30 (YouTube b81saRz7B5w), with each stream’s full transcript and chat log, and from his streams of Nov. 2 (YouTube U0DlUua_WTA) and Nov. 5 (YouTube pmqXZZ_FJ3M). The fee award is from the Oct. 29, 2026 minute order in No. 26STRO01932. Transcripts: Oct. 29: for HNZ Supporters, Oct. 30: for HNZ Supporters, Nov. 2: for HNZ Supporters, Nov. 5: for HNZ Supporters.
• His fundraising. Hero Not Zero’s log of his on-stream donation requests, with stream IDs and timecodes.
• The coverage review. Hero Not Zero’s editorial database was exported without alteration and searched for the disputed terms and slang variants; every match in the site’s own voice was read by an editor.
• The teenager. Not named. No video showing him is linked or embedded.
• Disclosure. Hero Not Zero is a recipient of the letter described in this article.
• Corrections. https://www.heronotzero.org/corrections/