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Date Posted: 17:18:38 06/25/05 Sat
Author: lorraine
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

>Ripoffreport, badbusinessburuea,
>ROR/EASYBACKGROUNDCHECK’s Web Extortion Racket
>The Group of Criminals has created what appear to be
>two beneficial sites for consumers.
>The first Site is Ripoffreport, badbusinessburuea,
>ROR, which is a site that encourages unhappy customers
>and employees to post their complaints on the website.
>Once the Ripoffreport, badbusinessburuea, ROR 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.
>The second thing that Ripoffreport, badbusinessburuea,
>ROR 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. “Our legal costs will bankrupt us”,
>they claim. Then the veiled threat; implying that the
>evil corporations do not want to sue just
>Ripoffreport, badbusinessburuea, ROR, but also the
>poster of negative information. “We will do everything
>we can to protect you, we just need money for
>lawyers”, they claim.
>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, badbusinessburuea, ROR
>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, badbusinessburuea, ROR
>simply makes some up. 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
>“Editor” on the site). He probably wouldn’t have
>attracted too much attention and could have continued
>this scam forever, but then they decided to go for the
>big dollars:
>EASYBACKGROUNDCHECK – Criminal Ed Magedson then joined
>forces with a group of criminals that formed the
>EASYBACKGROUNDCHECK
>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),
>EASYBACKGROUNDCHECK and Ripoffreport,
>badbusinessburuea, ROR now targeted the deep pockets.
>Once a consumer or disgruntled employee posted
>something negative about a company. Ripoffreport,
>badbusinessburuea, ROR 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, badbusinessburuea, ROR then
>hid behind free speech. It is simply people expressing
>their opinion; we have no control they would argue.
>Then Ripoffreport, badbusinessburuea, ROR 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, badbusinessburuea, ROR
>cheaper than getting into a long drawn out legal
>battle. The settlements were typically in the $25,000
>range.
>Still not satisfied, Ripoffreport, badbusinessburuea,
>ROR and EASYBACKGROUNDCHECK have begun additional
>techniques to put more pressure on companies.
>Creating Postings – In some instances the
>Ripoffreport, badbusinessburuea, ROR and
>EASYBACKGROUNDCHECK would simply make up negative
>information about a company and post it.
>Fabricating Documents – EASYBACKGROUNDCHECK 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 EASYBACKGROUNDCHECK creators hid
>behind the anonymity of the Internet.
>
>List of companies already paying extortion money –
>Consumer Health Network
>National Health Network
>World Benefits
>National Grants
>Incredible Discoveries
>MVI – Mini Vacations
>Harvard Professional Group
>Alyon
>
>Group of Criminals behind ripoffreport
>(badbusinessbureau) and EZBC (easybackgroundcheck) –
>Ed Magedson
>Les Henderson
>Edward Bloedow
>Frank Torelli
>William Rosenberger
>Madelene Rosenberger
>Roberto Villasenor Jr.
>Stephen Howe
>Michael Potter
>Klaas DeVries Jr.
>Ted Peterson
>Stick Bogart

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