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AuctionHintsForum
Ripoffreport/EZBC Fraudulent Scheme LINK
Posted By: nick <hotspot@yahoo.com> In Response To: Attorney General Complaint (PA) (Anon)
Date: Monday, 19 July 2004, at 10:25 a.m.
http://www.beiconline.com/
The Group of Criminals (Click here to see Criminal Architects) has created what appear to be two beneficial sites for consumers.First Site
The first Site is Ripoffreport.com, which is a site that encourages unhappy customers and employees to post their complaints on the website. In order to post a complaint the victim must post and address, phone number, and valid email address. This is all to make sure the information is legit the company claims.
Once the Ripoffreport.com has duped the victims into posting a negative report, then the operation begins.
The first thing they do is try to sell the customer a pamphlet on how to attack companies. This book basically advises customers to harass and attack the company, especially to keep posting on Ripoffreprt.com. (Click here to see link for manual solicitation)
The second thing that Ripoffreport does is send emails to the posters asking for donations to help fight legal battles with these companies. They use a combination of guilt and veiled threats. We are being attacked by these companies because we just want to help you the consumer. Please help us; we can barely keep our doors open and our servers running. ³Our legal costs will bankrupt us², they claim. Then the veiled threat; implying that the evil corporations do not want to sue just Ripoffreport, but also the poster of negative information. ³We will do everything we can to protect you, we just need money for lawyers², they claim. (Click Here for a sample of the letters sent out by Ripoffreport.com)
After trying to collect money from the consumer then Ripoff charges a business $25 to respond to a complaint after the fourth response. To keep the responses going Ripoffreport emails every complaining consumer every time a complaint is responded to. This gets the consumers to keep complaining and forces the company to keep responding. If the consumer does not file additional complaints, RipoffReport simply makes some up. This forces the company to pay to respond.
Initially it stopped there and was just a run of the mill penny anti scam run by convicted felon Ed Magedson (He bills himself as ³Editor² on the site). He probably wouldn¹t have attracted too much attention and could have continued this scam forever, but then they decided to go for the big dollars:
EZBC ¯ Criminal Ed Magedson then joined forces with a group of criminals that formed the EZBC (Click here to see a list and history of the EZBC founders)
The name of the game is now blackmail. The system was designed to extort money from large companies (no longer satisfied with penny anti consumer donations), EZBC and Ripoffreport now targeted the deep pockets.
Once a consumer or disgruntled employee posted something negative about a company. Ripoffreport would then make sure that information was picked up by the search engines whenever anyone did a search for the company. Thus, anytime the company was searched on Google or Yahoo the negative information would be seen.
When companies showed that information was false or libelous, Ripoffreport then hid behind free speech (Click here too find out why this is not just free speech). It is simply people expressing their opinion; we have no control they would argue.
Then Ripoffreport would make the companies and individuals pay large sums of money to have the information removed or modified.
Companies, not wanting to get into protracted litigation and wanting to just clean up information found paying Ripoffreport cheaper than getting into a long drawn out legal battle. The settlements were typically in the $25,000 range.
Still not satisfied, Ripoffreport and EZBC have begun additional techniques to put more pressure on companies.
Past Records ¯ If a company President of any officers or directors had ever had a legal problem Ripoff and EZBC hype the problem and post sites and excerpts from media articles that talked about the problem. Their goal is to make it look like the problem is with the current company. For example if an officer of a company had been investigated for a crime, even if he was cleared, they would make a big deal about the investigation and post news excerpts without ever saying that he was cleared. If the company tries to get out information that the officer was cleared or that the issue was unrelated to the current company, EZBC and Ripoff promptly post information saying that the individual used high priced lawyers or somehow evaded the law.
Guilt by Association ¯ If they cannot find anything on the current owners, officers or directors of a company they would simply find an employee with a legal problem and hype the fact that the company was a bunch of criminals. Sometimes the employee would be a low level employee and the company would be forced to terminate the employee. In such cases EZBC and Ripoff start posting that the company finally got rid of the criminals only when it was attacked and that maybe other criminals lurked.
Guilt by Distant Association ¯ EZBC and Ripoff have sometimes gone so far as to find companies that have vendors with a legal problem. Say company A hires Company B to provide services such a consulting or printing. If Ripoff and EZBC cannot find any dirt on anyone at Company A, but uncovers an employee of Company B with a legal past they will attack Company A saying it has criminals doing work for it. This simply expands their net, as no company can check the employees of every vendor it uses.
Taking Down Negative Postings ¯ Some companies when attacked posted rebuttals on Ripoff. If the information was incorrect the company would simply dispute it. If the information posted was true or partially true the company would admit the problem and post how it was being handled. EZBZ and Ripoff would simply delete postings that corrected incorrect information, if the company had admitted to a portion of the wrongdoing, EZBC and Ripoff would simply post the companies admission everywhere. They take the admission out of context and point to them as proof that the company is an ongoing scam.
Creating Postings ¯ In some instances the Ripoffreport and EZBC would simply make up negative information about a company and post it.
Involving Legitimate Media ¯ By collecting both true and untrue negative reports Ripoff and EZBC have tried to incite legitimate media organizations to run stories about companies that they are pressuring.
Involving Law Enforcement ¯ Sometimes by having enough false information posted Ripoff and EZBC have gotten real customers who might feel that they have been working with a legitimate company to believe that they have been duped. These companies then file real complaints. To put more pressure on the companies to settle Ripoff and EZBC will encourage these customers to file complaints with the Attorney General or other authorities. Once the Attorney General starts investigation the complaints they will immediately seize on this information to show that the company is being investigated.
Fabricating Documents ¯ EZBC began the practice of making official looking documents. They made the page look like a BBB page, a lawsuit, or even a newspaper article. These pages would then be displayed on the site or through links.
All of these tactics were for one thing ¯ to extort money from companies. They gambled that companies would prefer to pay hush money than gamble with losing customers or get into protracted litigation. There was also another problem with getting into protracted litigation. The EZBC creators hid behind the anonymity of the Internet. Ed Magedson would never allow his address or information out. When sued he told a Judge that he wanted to enter witness protection programs because he was afraid for his life.
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