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Date Posted: 13:21:12 02/10/06 Fri
Author: mobie
Subject: Re: ripoffreport and easybackgroundcheck web extortion
In reply to: scamcat 's message, "ripoffreport and easybackgroundcheck web extortion" on 12:54:07 02/08/05 Tue

Companies victimized by Negative Web sites, Forums, Blogs and Post Scams
Negative advertising is a fact of life. We see it every day. The Presidential candidates throw insults and accusations at each other, often twisting the facts for their own benefit. This type of abusive attack advertising has proven very effective in the political arena, but now an ugly side affect of the success of this type of advertising has emerged - attack advertising in business. Don't get me wrong, there have always been negative aspects to mainstream advertising, but with the evolution of the Internet as an informational source, negative attack advertising has reached a new height. Web logs (blogs) and unregulated online discussion forums are now being manipulated to attack business competitors with fraudulent and unsubstantiated accusations, carrying absolutely no burden of truth!
Modeling industry has gotten a lot of press recently, most of it has been focused on the accusations and allegations from competitors and Internet industry forums run by competitors. These competitors use blogs, forums posts and their own anonymous web sites to damage competitors and try to convince the competitor's customers to switch service providers using their phony posts as evidence of their competitor's inadequacies. It seems that on these "unbiased" industry forums there is no regulation on what can be posted, so this type of negative advertising can often be malicious and deceitful. Personal attacks, outrageous threats, unfounded accusations have become the norm. So instead of being a good source of information these forums become breeding grounds for guerilla marketers, spammers and unscrupulous competitors.
Corporate officers and employees have been victimized personally by these forums; they have been accused of various nefarious deeds, and shady activities all of which have no bases in fact. "These forums can be very damaging to a business or a person's reputation; they can say anything they want without the fear of prosecution. It is however very suspicious that these un-moderated forums post only negative messages against the sponsor companies competition, in the long run this type of activity will be a serious blow to the Internets credibility."
For months companies and its officers, have been under a barrage of attacks by a competitor who calls himself "easybackgroundcheck.com and ripoffreport.com". These people, supposedly a secret group of industry professionals, is actually two pathetic individuals who use "the web" to make themselfs appear to be a large collection of experts. These individuals have mounted a coordinated repeated malicious attack on blogs and forums to solicit and encourage people to join a non-existent class action suits. On one forum a post brags about making numerous false complaints against modeling companies to the Better Business Bureau. Another post says join the army of lawsuits against modeling companies.
These forums claim to be un-moderated which means they are not responsible for any posts. Furthermore, these forums have no burden of proof, which makes them very difficult to prosecute for liable or slander.
I attempted to contact several blog and forum administrators who are heavily engaged in trashing competitors and was unable to get through to most of them.
It seems that the Internet is littered with these one sided forums that actively promote themselves or their affiliate companies by using their forums for their own benefit. These forums use questionable tactics to slander and defame their competitors often personally. Many large companies in many industries have become victims of this rapidly growing activity. This is an emerging ugly part of the new Internet world.
With this new barrage of blogs, posts and forum scam activity, how is someone to evaluate what he reads on the Internet about a prospective purchase? Probably the old fashioned way - due diligence, look at a prospective company's results and speak to their customers. It seems as though using blogs, forums and posts for your evaluation may get you a very skewered view of the prospective purchase.

News Release 1-27-06
Les Henderson has now joined the ranks of such notable liars as Jason Blair (N Y Times), Dan Rather (CBS) and James Frey (Oprah Book Club-A Million Little Pieces)
Les Henderson’s cut and paste “industry report” Crimes of Persuasion, which he claims was published, was in fact never published—the lie. Actually Les Henderson paid to have a limited printing done. The fact is that Les Henderson made-up the name Coyote Ridge Publishing (even stole the name from a book – Coyote Ridge by Barb Mihaljevich, 2003).
To add to the lie, Les Henderson not only posted the false claim that the “industry report” was published and that he was a “published author,” he actually wrote and posted a “review” by the fictitious publisher of Crimes of Persuasion and posted that all over the Internet in his attempt to sell his “book.”

News Release 1-27-06
Federal Judge strips internet crooks of their cowardly defense of “no jurisdiction” and describes their criminal acts of extortion, attempts to sell personal information of individuals that post on their website, and conspiracy with class action lawyers for as much as $800,000 per year for the sale of the personal information.
DEFENDANTS: Ed Magedson, Xcentric Ventures, LLC, Ripoffreport.com, and Bad Business Bureau.com
“IT IS SO ORDERED. Defendants’ Motions to Dismiss for Lack of Jurisdiction are denied.”
January 18, 2006, Charles R. Norgle, District Judge (IL)
This decision by a Federal Judge clears the way for business, that have been the target of Ed Magedson’s extortion racket, to sue, shut down and jail Ed Magedson and his collaborators.
According to the Judge, some of the salient Facts in Evidence:
“Visitors must register with Sites (Ripoff, etc.) by providing identifying information such as name, IP address, email address and street address, in order to post comments. Defendants (Ripoff, etc.) sell this information to law firms seeking to file class action lawsuits against companies. In addition, discovery has revealed that Defendants sought to enter into a business relationship with the law firm of…, which holds itself out as a firm, which ‘prosecutes class actions throughout the United States...’ Defendants (Ripoff, etc.) proposed to refer clients to this firm, and attempted to negotiate a fee of $800,000 per year for this service. Defendants referred clients (personal information) to one of these (law) firms and actively solicited the business of another.”
In one case, the website (Ripoff, etc.) posted more than 110 “complaints” about a company, supposedly from consumers. Investigation proved that only 11 of these postings were actually from customers; seven of whom tried to have their postings removed when they saw how much slanderous wording was added to their posting by Magedson’s staff. The remaining 99 reports were made-up by members of Magedson’s staff, followed by the generous offer to the company being targeted, from Ed Magedson, to write a glowing report about the company and change all the negative statements into positive comments.

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  • Re: ripoffreport and easybackgroundcheck web extortion -- yellow pages main, 07:43:39 03/01/06 Wed
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