Ex Desperate Scousewives star in bitter feud with rival animal agency

EXCLUSIVE: Former Desperate Scousewives star who supplied chicken for Harry Styles ad is found ‘guilty’ of registering bogus internet address to hijack web traffic from rival animal talent agent

• Layla Flaherty admitted creating a fake Instagram account of a rival animal firm 
• Former star of ‘Desperate Scousewives’ called it the Animal Talent CON Agency

A former star of TV show ‘Desperate Scousewives’ has been found ‘guilty’ of registering a bogus internet domain name to hijack web traffic from a rival business to her own website, MailOnline can reveal.

Layla Flaherty, 39, also admits creating a fake Instagram account in the name of her competitors’ firm.

The Co Galway-born ex-model was often painted as a ‘man-eater’ on the E4 scripted reality show, which was scrapped after one series in 2011.

Twelve years later, she now runs her own talent agency for animals called Urban Paws, placing creatures great and small in film and TV dramas, adverts and promotional campaigns.

She says the Liverpool-based agency has supplied corgis for the Netflix series the Crown and one of its star chickens recently appeared in the arms of Harry Styles for a Gucci campaign. According to Companies House, in the latest accounts, the company had net debts of £91,000.

Layla Flaherty ‘registered a bogus internet domain name to hijack web traffic from a rival business’

Former employee Paula Stewart (pictured) says the pair fell out over money and professional differences

Layla says one of her star chickens recently appeared in the arms of Harry Styles for a Gucci campaign

But this month the fur flew when Layla was caught trying to divert business from a rival London agency set up by one of her ex-employees, Paula Stewart.

Paula, 41, set up her firm at theanimaltalent.agency three years ago and is currently involved in a major TV series alongside Hollywood A-listers, in which her own ‘clients’ include pigeons, cats, dogs… and a lobster named Bert.

Shortly after setting up the firm she found that the domain names theanimaltalent.com and theanimaltalent.co.uk were both mysteriously already taken, but thought little more about it.

The two women had met during Layla’s Scousewives period, which she herself has described as ‘disastrous’, and she suffered a huge amount of online abuse, and says she was even glassed in a pub.

As her agent, Paula dealt with much of the ensuing media storm and the pair became friends.

‘Eventually after the series ended she decided to set up her agency and I agreed to work for her,’ Paula told MailOnline.

Over time, the friends fell out over money and professional differences, and Paula took Layla to court over unpaid debts then decided to set up her own London-based company in 2020.

Not long after, Paula’s attention was drawn to a fake Instagram account, bearing her agency’s name and symbol, but calling it the Animal Talent CON Agency, and branding it as ‘far from ethical towards animals, run by deluded people, violent & aggressive and compulsive lier’s [sic]’

Paula mistakenly thought at first that her own Instagram account had been hacked, but when she tried to sign back in, she realised that the parts of the authenticating password and email address she could see were identical to Layla Flaherty’s.

She reported the matter to the police who advised her that as there was no threat of violence, it was not a matter for them.

Paula set up her firm at theanimaltalent.agency after leaving Layla’s business 

She claims that Layla has been trying to actively sabotage her new venture 

Layla Flaherty admitted to MailOnline that she had created the fake account but claimed it was only in retaliation for another Instagram ‘troll’ account bearing the Urban Paws logo, calling itself the ‘Layla Flaherty Survivors Club’, which Paula Stewart insisted to MailOnline she had nothing to do with.

More recently, Paula was made aware that someone had registered the .com and .co.uk animal talent domain names – and when she typed it into her computer’s address bar she was immediately taken to Layla’s Urban Paws website – because of something called a ‘jump link’ which she captured happening on video.

Paula reported the matter to Nominet, the registrar which ‘polices’ all .uk domain names. Soon afterwards, the jumplink stopped working – and on the same day, the fake Instagram account created by Layla Flaherty also disappeared.

The tribunal heard from Paula’s side that the .uk domain name ‘was registered by the Respondent [Layla] primarily for the purpose of unfairly disrupting the business of the Complainant [Paula]’

Layla’s side claimed that she had purchased multiple domain names ‘purely for SEO [search engine optimisation] for her business’ and claimed they did not link to her website.

The expert ruled that Layla ‘specifically chose to register the Domain Name at that time with the intention of disrupting the Complainant’s business.

‘In this regard, the Expert is not convinced that, on the balance of probabilities, the Respondent in some way specifically chose the company name of the Complainant solely for SEO purposes.

‘Therefore, for the reasons set out above, the Expert considers that the registration of the Domain Name took unfair advantage of, and was unfairly detrimental to, the Complainant’s Rights.’

Ex-model Layla had previously been a star of TV show ‘Desperate Scousewives’

The ruling added: ‘In relation to the ‘jump-link’ redirection to the Respondent’s website, the Expert considers that the Respondent used the Domain Name at that time to benefit from the goodwill and reputation of the Complainant in order to generate click-through traffic to its website.’

As a result the .co.uk domain name was handed back to Paula, but the fight is not yet over.

Now she has to go through the whole process again over the .com version of the URL, which is overseen by WIPO, the UN-run World Internet Property Organisation in Geneva.

Paula added: ‘This whole thing has been traumatising and expensive and I just want to put it all behind me, and concentrate on the work, but I’m not going to give up.’

Layla Flaherty admitted setting up the fake Instagram account trolling her rival agency, telling MailOnline: ‘We created it, in retaliation to the fake profile that they set up. We removed ours.’

Questioned further, she repeatedly told MailOnline: ‘I’m not going to talk about it. The Animal Talent have been a pain, there’s a lot to it and there have been so many legal proceedings with them I don’t wish to speak about.’

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