103-1 - Exhibits To Judicial Notice

Case 2:11-cv-01426-GMS Document 103-1 Filed 07/31/12 Page 1 of 242
EXHIBIT 6

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John Giordano, individually, and G & G Addiction Treatment, Inc., a Florida corporation, Appellants, vs. Donna L. Romeo, and Xcentric Ventures, LLC, an Arizona Limited Liability Corporation, Appellees. No. 3D11-707 COURT OF APPEAL OF FLORIDA, THIRD DISTRICT 76 So. 3d 1100; 2011 Fla. App. LEXIS 20660; 40 Media L. Rep. 1245; 37 Fla. L. Weekly D 31
December 28, 2011, Opinion Filed SUBSEQUENT HISTORY: January 13, 2012. Released for Publication court found, inter alia, that however much it might disapprove of the provider's business practices in refusing to remove defamatory postings from its website, it enjoyed complete immunity under 230(c)(1) from any action brought against it as a result of the postings of third party users of its website. OUTCOME: The decision of the trial court was affirmed. LexisNexis(R) Headnotes PROCEDURAL POSTURE: Appellants, treatment center and its operator, appealed a decision by the Circuit Court for Miami-Dade County (Florida) that dissolved an injunction and dismissed appellee internet service provider from their defamation action pursuant to the Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S.C.S. 230. OVERVIEW: In 2009, a disgruntled recipient of the center's services went online to the provider's website and posted false and defamatory claims about the center, identifying the operator as a convicted felon and claiming, among other things, that the employees of the center illegally disbursed medications and that the facility itself was dangerous. The appellants filed a complaint asserting four defamation-based claims against the user, and one claim seeking injunctive relief against the provider, requesting that the trial court prohibit the provider from allowing the post to remain on its website. The appellate
PRIOR HISTORY: [**1] An Appeal from the Circuit Court for Miami-Dade County, Beatrice Butchko, Judge. Lower Tribunal No. 09-68539. CASE SUMMARY:
Communications Law > Federal Acts > Communications Decency Act Torts > Intentional Torts > Defamation > Defenses > Privileges > General Overview [HN1] See 47 U.S.C.S. 230(c)(1).
Communications Law > Federal Acts > Communications Decency Act [HN2] See 47 U.S.C.S. 230(e)(3).
Communications Law > Federal Acts > Communications Decency Act

Page 3 76 So. 3d 1100, *; 2011 Fla. App. LEXIS 20660, **; 40 Media L. Rep. 1245; 37 Fla. L. Weekly D 31 Torts > Intentional Torts > Defamation > Defenses > Privileges > Absolute Privileges [HN3] The Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S.C.S. 230, provides absolute immunity to interactive computer services. defamation-based claims against the user, and one claim seeking injunctive relief against Xcentric, requesting that the court prohibit Xcentric from allowing the post to remain on its website. The trial court determined that at least a portion of the post was defamatory per se. However, Xcentric moved to dismiss the complaint against it on the basis of its immunity from suit under the Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S.C. 230 ("CDA"). The CDA specifies that [HN1] "[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." 47 U.S.C. 230(c)(1). The CDA further provides that [HN2] "[n]o cause of action may be brought and no liability may be imposed under any State or local law that is inconsistent with this section." 47 U.S.C. 230(e)(3). Protracted legal proceedings ensued, with Xcentric consistently refusing to remove the defamatory post. Even after the original user was [**3] subjected to an injunction prohibiting her from allowing the post to remain on the website, in response to which she begged Xcentric to remove the statements, Xcentric refused to comply. Ultimately, while Appellants were able to obtain an injunction prohibiting the maintenance of the posting on Xcentric's website, that injunction was dissolved. Appellants seek review of the order dissolving the injunction and dismissing Xcentric. Xcentric raises the same arguments it presented to the trial court. The Florida Supreme Court has held that [HN3] the CDA provides absolute immunity to interactive computer services like Xcentric. In Doe v. America Online, Inc., 783 So. 2d 1010 (Fla. 2001), an internet service provider that had allowed third parties to publish allegedly illegal postings on the internet was deemed immune from suit. Relying on the Fourth Circuit decision in Zeran v. America [*1102] Online, Inc., 129 F.3d 327 (4th Cir. 1997), the Florida Supreme Court held that "section 230 expressly bars 'any actions' and we are compelled to give the language of this preemptive law its plain meaning." Doe, 783 So. 2d at 1018. Further, the Court adopted the reasoning of Zeran unambiguously, stating that it [**4] was accepting Zeran's account of the scope and purpose of the CDA "as a basis for our reading of section 230." Doe, 783 So. 2d at 1015. That account included the statement that [HN4] "Section 230 was enacted, in part, to maintain the robust nature of Internet communication and, accordingly, to keep government interference in the medium to a minimum." Zeran, 129 F.3d at 330. Consequently, under Florida law, section 230 of the CDA "creates a federal immunity to any cause of action that would make service providers liable for information originating with a third-party user of the service." Id.
Communications Law > Federal Acts > Communications Decency Act Torts > Intentional Torts > Defamation > Defenses > Privileges > Absolute Privileges [HN4] 47 U.S.C.S. 230 was enacted, in part, to maintain the robust nature of Internet communication and, accordingly, to keep government interference in the medium to a minimum. Consequently, under Florida law, 230 creates a federal immunity to any cause of action that would make service providers liable for information originating with a third-party user of the service. COUNSEL: Rosen, Switkes & Entin and Mendy Halberstam and Joshua M. Entin, for appellants. Stack Fernandez Anderson & Harris and Brian J. Stack and Sammy Epelbaum; Jaburg & Wilk and Maria Crimi Speth (Arizona), for appellees. Lyrissa C. Barnett Lidsky; Paul Alan Levy as amicus curiae on behalf of Public Citizen and Eric Goldman. JUDGES: Before WELLS, C.J., and CORTIAS and ROTHENBERG, JJ. OPINION BY: CORTIAS OPINION [*1101] CORTIAS, J. John Giordano ("Giordano") operates G&G Addiction Treatment, Inc. ("G&G"), a Florida corporation which offers addiction treatment services. In July 2009, a disgruntled recipient of G&G's services went online and posted false and defamatory claims about G&G, identifying Giordano as a convicted felon and claiming, among other things, that the employees of G&G illegally disburse medications and that the facility itself is dangerous. These posts were made on a website operated by Appellee, Xcentric Ventures, LLC ("Xcentric"), located at http://www.ripoffreport.com. The purpose of the website is to allow third party users to post complaints about companies or individuals, as happened here. Xcentric [**2] does nothing to prevent users of its website from posting false and defamatory statements, as also happened here. In September 2009, Giordano and G&G (collectively, the "Appellants") filed a complaint asserting four

Page 4 76 So. 3d 1100, *; 2011 Fla. App. LEXIS 20660, **; 40 Media L. Rep. 1245; 37 Fla. L. Weekly D 31 The [**5] business practices of Xcentric, as presented by the evidence before this Court, are appalling. Xcentric appears to pride itself on having created a forum for defamation. No checks are in place to ensure that only reliable information is publicized. Xcentric retains no general counsel to determine whether its users are availing themselves of its services for the purpose of tortious or illegal conduct. Even when, as here, a user regrets what she has posted and takes every effort to retract it, Xcentric refuses to allow it. Moreover, Xcentric insists in its brief that its policy is never to remove a post.1 It will not entertain any scenario in which, despite the clear damage that a defamatory or illegal post would continue to cause so long as it remains on the website, Xcentric would remove an offending post. 1 As part of the record on appeal, Xcentric describes a "service" it provides to people and entities who wish to challenge false postings on Xcentric's website. This "service" is called the "Corporate Advocacy Program" by Xcentric. Individuals or businesses who believe they have been defamed by a posting on Xcentric's website must, according to the amicus brief filed in this case, "pay [**6] a tidy sum to be investigated by Xcentric's management." Moreover, "[i]n addition to a steep upfront charge, the business is required to make periodic payments to keep its status in the program." Xcentric further indicates on its website that the program "NEVER includes removal of complaints." http://www.ripoffreport.com/ ConsumersSayThankYou/WantToSueRipoffReport.aspx (emphasis in original). However much as this Court may disapprove of business practices like those embraced by Xcentric, the law on this issue is clear. Xcentric enjoys complete immunity from any action brought against it as a result of the postings of third party users of its website. The decision of the trial court is affirmed.
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Analysis As of: Jul 31, 2012 BORIS Y. LEVITT, et al., Plaintiffs, v. YELP! INC., Defendant. No. C-10-1321 EMCCONSOLIDATED WITHNo. C-10-2351 EMC UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 124082
October 26, 2011, Decided October 26, 2011, Filed PRIOR HISTORY: Levitt v. Yelp! Inc., 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 99372 (N.D. Cal., Mar. 22, 2011) COUNSEL: [*1] For Boris Y. Levitt, on behalf of himself and all others similarly situated doing business as Renaissance Restoration, also known as Renaissance Furniture Restoration, Tracy Chan, on behalf of herself and all others similarly situated doing business as Marina Dental Care, Bleeding Heart, LLC, on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated doing business as Bleeding Heart Bakery, Professional Construction Group, Inc., on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated doing business as Paver Pro (3:10-cv01321-EMC), Plaintiffs: Amelia D Winchester, David Raymond Ongaro, Ongaro Burtt LLP, San Francisco, CA; Lawrence Dale Murray, Murray & Associates, San Francisco, CA; Robert Close Strickland, Murray and Associates, San Francisco, CA. For Cats and Dogs Animal Hospital, Inc., Plaintiff: John Joseph Fitzgerald, IV, LEAD ATTORNEY, Santa Clara, CA; David Raymond Ongaro, Ongaro Burtt LLP, San Francisco, CA. For Astro Appliance Service, on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, Celibre, Inc., on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, Zodiac Restaurant Group, Inc., on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, Wag My Tail, Inc., [*2] on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, J.L. Ferri Entertainment, Inc., on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, San Francisco Bay Boat Cruises, LLC, on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, California Furnishings, Inc., on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, Le Petite Retreat Day Spa, LLC, on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs: Jared Harrison Beck, LEAD ATTORNEY, Elizabeth Lee Beck, Beck & Lee Business Trial Lawyers, Miami, FL; John Joseph Fitzgerald, IV, LEAD ATTORNEY, Santa Clara, CA; Gregory Steven Weston, The Weston Firm, San Diego, CA; David Raymond Ongaro, Ongaro Burtt LLP, San Francisco, CA. For John Mercurio, Plaintiff: Amelia D Winchester, David Raymond Ongaro, Ongaro Burtt LLP, San Francisco, CA. For Yelp! Inc., Defendant: Ashlie Beringer, LEAD ATTORNEY, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP, Palo Alto, CA; Aaron Schur, Yelp! Inc., San Francisco, CA; Gail E. Lees, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP, Los Angeles, CA; Susannah Stroud Wright, Gibson Dunn Crutcher LLP, Palo Alto, CA. For Beck & Lee Business Trial Lawyers, Interested Party: Jared Harrison Beck, LEAD ATTORNEY, Beck & Lee Business [*3] Trial Lawyers, Miami, FL.

Page 2 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 124082, *
For Jennifer Battoon, Claimant: Mark Goldowitz, Paul Christopher Clifford, Ryan Metheny, California AntiSlapp Project, Berkeley, CA. For Cats and Dogs Animal Hospital, Inc., on behalf of itself and all others similarly situated (3:10-cv-02351EMC), Plaintiff: Gregory Steven Weston, LEAD ATTORNEY, John Joseph Fitzgerald, IV, The Weston Firm, San Diego, CA; John Joseph Fitzgerald, IV, LEAD ATTORNEY, Santa Clara, CA; Elizabeth Lee Beck, Jared Harrison Beck, Beck & Lee Business Trial Lawyers, Miami, FL; Gregory S Weston, Weston Firm, San Diego, CA. For Astro Appliance Service, on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, Celibre, Inc, on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, Zodiac Restaurant Group, Inc., on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, J.L. Ferri Entertainment, Inc., on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, Bleeding Heart, LLC, on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, San Francisco Bay Boat Cruises, LLC, on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, Le Petite Retreat Day Spa, LLC, on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs: Elizabeth [*4] Lee Beck, Jared Harrison Beck, Beck & Lee Business Trial Lawyers, Miami, FL; Gregory S Weston, Weston Firm, San Diego, CA; John Joseph Fitzgerald, IV, The Weston Firm, San Diego, CA. For Wag My Tail, Inc., on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, Plaintiff: Elizabeth Lee Beck, Jared Harrison Beck, Beck & Lee Business Trial Lawyers, Miami, FL; Gregory S Weston, Weston Firm, San Diego, CA; Gregory Steven Weston, John Joseph Fitzgerald, IV, The Weston Firm, San Diego, CA. For California Furnishings, Inc., on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, Plaintiff: Gregory Steven Weston, LEAD ATTORNEY, John Joseph Fitzgerald, IV, The Weston Firm, San Diego, CA; Elizabeth Lee Beck, Jared Harrison Beck, Beck & Lee Business Trial Lawyers, Miami, FL; Gregory S Weston, Weston Firm, San Diego, CA. For Yelp! Inc., Defendant: Aaron Schur, Yelp! Inc., San Francisco, CA; Matthew Dean Brown, Cooley LLP, San Francisco, CA; Neha Mukund Marathe, Cooley Godward Kronish, Palo Alto, CA. For Beck & Lee Business Trial Lawyers, Miscellaneous: Jared Harrison Beck, Beck & Lee Business Trial Lawyers, Miami, FL.
For The Weston Firm, Miscellaneous: John Joseph Fitzgerald, IV, LEAD ATTORNEY, [*5] Santa Clara, CA. JUDGES: EDWARD M. CHEN, United States District Judge. OPINION BY: EDWARD M. CHEN OPINION ORDER GRANTING DEFENDANT'S MOTION TO DISMISS (Docket No. 77) Defendant's motion to dismiss Plaintiffs' Third Amended and Consolidated Class Action Complaint ("TAC") for lack of standing and failure to state a claim came on for hearing before the Court on October 14, 2011. Docket No. 77. Having considered the parties' submissions and oral argument, the Court hereby enters the following order. I.FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND Plaintiffs allege that Yelp unlawfully manipulated the content of their business review pages in order to induce them to pay for advertising. See TAC, Docket No. 74, 118. They seek to represent two subclasses of businesses, one which has declined to advertise with Yelp and one which at some point in the relevant four-year time period advertised with Yelp. Id. 105. Plaintiffs allege that Yelp's conduct constitutes violations of California Business and Professions Code 17200 through its acts of extortion, civil extortion, and attempted civil extortion. Id. 118. In addition, the TAC adds separate causes of action for civil extortion and attempted civil extortion. See Id. 131-46. This [*6] Court has provided a detailed summary of the facts and allegations in this case in its previous Order dismissing Plaintiffs' Second Amended Complaint ("SAC") with leave to amend. See Docket No. 70 at 2-7 ("Order Dismissing SAC"). Therefore, to the extent that those facts have not changed from the SAC to the TAC, the Court will not repeat its summary here. The Court's previous order dismissed Plaintiffs' SAC for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. While the Court concluded that Plaintiffs' had adequately pled facts to support both Article III and UCL standing to bring this action, id. at 9-13, Plaintiffs had nonetheless fallen short of stating a claim under the unlawful prong of 17200 because (1) certain theories of extortion-those "premised on Yelp's failure to remove negative reviews"-were covered by Yelp's immunity under the Communications Decency Act ("CDA"), 47

U.S.C. 230(c), see Order Dismissing SAC at 14-15; (2) it was "entirely speculative that Yelp manufactures its own negative reviews or deliberately manipulates reviews to the detriment of businesses who refuse to purchase advertising," id.; and (3) the SAC lacked "factual allegations from which any [*7] distinct communication of a threat might be inferred," id. In short, the SAC had "fail[ed] to plausibly allege that any of Yelp's conduct amounted to an implied extortionate threat. Id. As for the unfair prong of 17200, to the extent it was not based on the same defective theories of extortion already rejected, the Court found that Plaintiffs' claims failed because (1) they "point to no legislatively declared policy allegedly contravened by Yelp," id. at 19-20; (2) they fail to "allege beyond a speculative level that Yelp's actions threaten competition," id. at 20; and (3) "there are no allegations from which the court could reasonably infer that Yelp is materially tilting the economic playing field in favor of plaintiffs' competitors," id. The Court therefore dismissed the SAC with leave to amend and declined to reach Defendant's motion to strike class allegations. Id. Plaintiffs filed their TAC on May 23, 2011. Docket No. 74. The TAC removes the allegations of former plaintiff Paver Pro and replaces them with new Plaintiff Wheel Techniques. See TAC 72-83. Plaintiffs allege that around late 2008 and early 2009, Wheel Techniques noticed negative reviews on its Yelp page which did [*8] not correspond with its records of actual customers. TAC 74-75. At "[a]round the same time," Wheel Techniques received sales calls from Yelp requesting that the business advertise. Id. 76. Plaintiffs allege that the "false" reviews were created and posted by Yelp "as a threat to induce Wheel Techniques to advertise." Id. 77. Also in 2009, Plaintiffs alleged that when Wheel Techniques contacted Yelp to ask why a competitor had a high rating on Yelp, the Yelp representative told him the competitor advertised and "we work with your reviews if you advertise with us." Id. 78. On March 8, 2010, Wheel Techniques was again contacted to purchase advertising. Upon declining, Plaintiffs allege that a 1-star review was moved to the top of the business page "within minutes" as a threat to induce Wheel Techniques to advertise. Id. 79-81. Plaintiffs allege that Wheel Techniques owner John Mercurio was told 1 several Yelp employees had been fired and computers had been frozen "as a result of scamming related to advertising." Id. 82. 1 The TAC does not indicate the source of this information. Apart from the Wheel Techniques allegations, Plaintiffs also add allegations that "approximately [*9] 200 Yelp employees or individuals acting on behalf of Yelp have written reviews of businesses on Yelp." Id. 37.
Plaintiffs allege that Yelp's CEO has admitted to a New York Times blog that "Yelp has paid users to write reviews." Id. 38. Plaintiffs' TAC adds no other new factual allegations. Defendant filed a new motion to dismiss the TAC and to strike Plaintiffs' class allegations on July 22, 2011. Docket No. 77. This motion is now pending before the Court. II.DISCUSSION A. Standing Defendant's motion to dismiss renews its prior argument that Plaintiffs lack Article III standing. Mot. at 19. At a constitutional minimum, standing requires the party invoking federal jurisdiction to show that it has "suffered some actual or threatened injury as a result of the putatively illegal conduct of the defendant, and that the injury can be traced to the challenged action and is likely to be redressed by a favorable decision." Valley Forge Christian Coll. v. Ams. United for Separation of Church & State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 472, 102 S. Ct. 752, 70 L. Ed. 2d 700 (1982) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). Unlike its prior motion, which presented only a facial challenge to standing based on the pleadings, Defendant now [*10] brings a Rule 12(b)(1) factual challenge, pursuant to which the Court "is permitted to look beyond the complaint to extrinsic evidence." 2 In re Facebook Privacy Litig., No. C 10-2389 JW, 791 F. Supp. 2d 705, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 60604, 2011 WL 2039995, at *2 (N.D. Cal. May 12, 2011) (citing Wolfe v. Strankman, 392 F.3d 358, 362 (9th Cir. 2004)). When a defendant "present[s] affidavits or other evidence properly brought before the court, the party opposing the motion must furnish affidavits or other evidence necessary to satisfy its burden of establishing subject-matter jurisdiction." Safe Air For Everyone v. Meyer, 373 F.3d 1035, 1039 (9th Cir.2004). Plaintiffs' allegations are not entitled to a presumption of truthfulness under a factual attack. White v. Lee, 227 F.3d 1214, 1242 (9th Cir.2000); Augustine v. United States, 704 F.2d 1074, 1077 (9th Cir.1983). "However, in the absence of a full-fledged evidentiary hearing, disputes in the facts pertinent to subject-matter are viewed in the light most favorable to the opposing party." In re Facebook, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 60604, 2011 WL 2039995 at *2 (citing Dreier v. United States, 106 F.3d 844, 847 (9th Cir. 1996)). "The disputed facts related to subject-matter jurisdiction should be treated in the same way [*11] as one would adjudicate a motion for summary judgment." Id. 2 Plaintiffs' evidentiary objections, Docket No. 85-2, are overruled. See Hughes v. United States,

953 F.2d 531, 543 (9th Cir. 1992) ("While the facts underlying the affidavit must be of a type that would be admissible as evidence . . . the affidavit itself does not have to be in a form that would be admissible at trial."). In this case, the Court finds that the standing issue is too intertwined with the merits of Plaintiffs' claims to be determined at this stage on the basis of a factual challenge. As the Ninth Circuit held in Roberts v. Corrothers, 812 F.2d 1173, 1177 (9th Cir. 1987), "The relatively expansive standards of a 12(b)(1) motion are not appropriate for determining jurisdiction in a case like this, where issues of jurisdiction and substance are intertwined." Whether Yelp in fact created or orchestrated the creation of negative content on Plaintiffs' business pages, and/or whether it removed certain content in bad faith, goes directly to the merits of Plaintiffs' claims and whether Yelp's conduct falls inside or outside the shelter of the CDA. See Order Dismissing SAC at 17-18 (examining whether Plaintiffs had sufficiently [*12] alleged that Yelp's conduct was in bad faith and that it was directly involved in the creation or manipulation of content). "Where jurisdiction is intertwined with the merits, [the Court] must 'assume [ ] the truth of the allegations in a complaint . . . unless controverted by undisputed facts in the record.'" Warren v. Fox Family Worldwide, Inc., 328 F.3d 1136, 1139 (9th Cir. 2003) (quoting Roberts, 812 F.2d at 1177). In the instant case, while Defendant's evidence casts doubt on Plaintiffs' allegations that Yelp created some of the content at issue on Plaintiffs' review pages, Plaintiffs point out that there are other potential routes for employees to contribute content without being detected through Mr. MacBean's investigation methods. See Gralnik Decl., Docket No. 85-1, 9-14. Similarly, regarding Yelp employees' ability to re-arrange the order of reviews, MacBean's declaration indicates that its employees do not have the technical ability to do so. MacBean Decl. 7. However, such an assertion is contrary to Plaintiffs' allegations in their complaint as to what they were told by some of Yelp's own employees. See TAC 36, 63-64, 78, 87-88, 91, 99. The Court also notes that Plaintiffs [*13] have not been afforded an opportunity to conduct discovery. Thus, permitting a Rule 12(b)(1) challenge based on facts asserted by Yelp would be inappropriate. Cf. Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(d). Accordingly, at this juncture, the Court reaffirms Judge Patel's prior conclusion that "based on the allegations in the [TAC], [the Court] may exercise its limited jurisdiction in this case." Order Dismissing SAC at 9; see Augustine v. United States, 704 F.2d 1074, 1079 (9th Cir. 1983) ("[I]t was improper for the district court to grant the government's [factual] motion [challenging jurisdiction] unless the relevant facts were not in dispute
and the government was entitled to prevail as a matter of law.") (citing Thornhill Publishing Co. v. General Telephone Corp., 594 F.2d 730, 733-34 (9th Cir.1979)); Roberts, 812 F.2d at 1178 ("If a district court cannot determine jurisdiction on the basis of a threshold inquiry analogous to a 12(b)(6) motion, the court may assume jurisdiction and go on to determine the relevant jurisdictional facts "on either a motion going to the merits or at trial.") (citations omitted). Defendant's motion to dismiss for lack of standing is therefore DENIED and Plaintiffs' request [*14] for jurisdictional discovery, Opp. at 11, is DENIED as moot. B. Failure to State a Claim Defendant next argues that Plaintiffs' TAC fails to improve upon their SAC and that it still fails to state a claim under either the unlawful or the unfair prong of 17200. See Mot. at 10-11. Furthermore, Defendant argues that the TAC similarly fails to state a claim of civil extortion or attempted civil extortion. Id. at 15-16. The Court agrees. Pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), a complaint may be dismissed against a defendant for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted against that defendant. A motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6) "tests the legal sufficiency of a claim." Navarro v. Block, 250 F.3d 729, 732 (9th Cir. 2001). Dismissal may be based on the lack of a cognizable legal theory or the absence of sufficient facts alleged under a cognizable legal theory. Balistreri v. Pacifica Police Dep't., 901 F.2d 696, 699 (9th Cir. 1988). A motion to dismiss should be granted if a plaintiff fails to plead "enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face." Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 569, 127 S. Ct. 1955, 167 L. Ed. 2d 929 (2007). "The plausibility standard is not [*15] akin to a 'probability requirement,' but it asks for more than a sheer possibility that a defendant has acted unlawfully." Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 1949, 173 L. Ed. 2d 868 (2009) (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556). Allegations of material fact are taken as true and construed in the light most favorable to the non-moving party. Cahill v. Liberty Mut. Ins. Co., 80 F.3d 336, 33738 (9th Cir.1996). The Court need not, however, accept as true pleadings that are no more than legal conclusions or the "formulaic recitation of the elements" of a cause of action. Iqbal, 129 S.Ct. at 1950; see also Sprewell v. Golden State Warriors, 266 F.3d 979, 988 (9th Cir. 2001); Clegg v. Cult Awareness Network, 18 F.3d 752, 754-55 (9th Cir. 1994). "Determining whether a complaint states a plausible claim for relief . . . [is] a contextspecific task that requires the reviewing court to draw on its judicial experience and common sense." Iqbal, 129 S.Ct. at 1950.

As a preliminary matter, the parties dispute whether Judge Patel's previous Order constitutes the law of the case. Compare Mot. at 11-12, with Opp. 12-13; see Mendenhall v. Nat'l Transp. Safety Bd., 213 F.3d 464, 469 (9th Cir. 2000) ("Under [law of the case] [*16] doctrine, a court is generally precluded from reconsidering an issue that has already been decided by the same court or a higher court in the same case."). To the extent Plaintiffs add new allegations to the TAC that effect all claims, the law of the case doctrine would not apply. See, e.g., Moreno v. The GEO Group, Inc., No. 1:07-CV01630-CKJ, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 25750, 2009 WL 841139, at *2 (E.D. Cal. March 26, 2009) (declining to apply law of the case where "Defendants' current Partial Motion to Dismiss presents additional bases to determine that Watts was not a government actor and cites to additional authority in support of their assertion that a Bivens claim cannot proceed against Watts"). In addition, Plaintiffs urge the Court to examine the full TAC, including those sections that merely repeat the same allegations as the SAC. See Opp. at 13 (arguing that the law of the case doctrine does not apply even as to issues covered in both complaints because the TAC supersedes the SAC). Because the law of the case doctrine "directs a court's discretion, [but] does not limit the tribunal's power," the Court will consider the TAC as a whole, rather than simply its new allegations. Mendenhall, 213 F.3d at 469 (quoting [*17] Arizona v. California, 460 U.S. 605, 618, 103 S. Ct. 1382, 75 L. Ed. 2d 318 (1983)). Nonetheless, while the Court's reasoning differs from Judge Patel's with respect to certain aspects of this case, the Court agrees with her ultimate conclusion and finds that the TAC is as deficient as the SAC. 1. Yelp's Creation of Negative Reviews First, the TAC, like the SAC, fails to allege facts sufficient to support a conclusion that Yelp created any content. Plaintiffs have added an allegation that "approximately 200 Yelp employees or individuals acting on behalf of Yelp have written reviews of businesses on Yelp," TAC 37, and that "Yelp has paid users to write reviews," id. 38. Despite these allegations, however, it remains "entirely speculative that Yelp manufactures its own negative reviews or deliberately manipulates reviews to the detriment of businesses who refuse to purchase advertising," and "[t]he [TAC] provides no basis from which to infer that Yelp authored or manipulated the content of the negative reviews complained of by plaintiffs," Order Dismissing SAC at 17. That Yelp employees have written reviews, even for pay, does not raise more than a mere possibility that Yelp has authored or manipulated content related [*18] to Plaintiffs in furtherance of an attempt to "extort" advertising revenues. See Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. at 1950 ("[W]here the well-pleaded
facts do not permit the court to infer more than the mere possibility of misconduct, the complaint has alleged-but it has not 'show[n]'-'that the pleader is entitled to relief.'") (quoting Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2)). Similarly, that Wheel Techniques noticed negative reviews of its business that did not match its customer records does not support the logical leap that Yelp created those reviews. See TAC 74-75. Nor does an allegation that Mr. Mercurio (Wheel Techniques' owner) "was told" by an unnamed source "that a former Yelp employee stated that Yelp, upon information and belief, terminated a group of sales employees . . . as a result of scamming related to advertising" and that "the computers of sales employees were, at one point, frozen to prohibit employees from being able to change reviews" raise more than a speculative possibility that Yelp employees created or substantively manipulated the content of Plaintiffs' reviews in this case. See TAC 82. "Scamming related to advertising" could have referred to a host of practices not involving manufacturing [*19] of false reviews. 2. Yelp's Manipulation of Third Party Reviews Second, with respect to Plaintiffs' allegations based on Yelp's purported manipulation of user-generated content, the Court concludes that Plaintiffs' claims based on this conduct are barred by the CDA. Section 230(c) of the CDA provides, in relevant part, (1) Treatment of publisher or speaker No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. (2) Civil liability No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of -(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.
47 U.S.C. 230(c). An "interactive computer service" is defined as "any information service, system, or access software provider that provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server, including specifically a service or system that provides access [*20] to the Internet and such systems operated or ser-

vices offered by libraries or educational institutions." Id. 230(f)(2). An "information content provider" is defined as "any person or entity that is responsible, in whole or in part, for the creation or development of information provided through the Internet or any other interactive computer service." Id. 230(f)(3). Thus, the CDA immunizes providers of an "interactive computer service" -- such as Yelp -- "where liability hinges on content independently created or developed by third-party users," unless the service provider (such as Yelp) created or developed part of that content. Order Dismissing SAC at 15. Accordingly, "any activity that can be boiled down to deciding whether to exclude material that third parties seek to post online is perforce immune under [47 U.S.C.] section 230." Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley v. Roommates.com, LLC, 521 F.3d 1157, 1170-71 (9th Cir. 2008) (en banc). Plaintiffs' allegations of extortion based on Yelp's alleged manipulation of their review pages -- by removing certain reviews and publishing others or changing their order of appearance --falls within the conduct immunized by 230(c)(1). [*21] See Carafano v. Metrosplash.com. Inc., 339 F.3d 1119, 1123 (9th Cir. 2003) ("[Section] 230(c) provides broad immunity for publishing content provided primarily by third parties."); Zeran v. Am. Online, Inc., 129 F.3d 327, 330 (4th Cir. 1997) ("[L]awsuits seeking to hold a service provider liable for its exercise of a publisher's traditional editorial functions -- such as deciding whether to publish, withdraw, postpone or alter content -- are barred."), cited with approval by Roommates.com, 521 F.3d at 1179-80; Mazur v. eBay Inc., No. C 07-03967, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16561, 2008 WL 618988, at *9 (N.D. Cal. Mar. 4, 2008) (Patel, J.) ("Screening a potential auction house . . . is akin to deciding whether to publish and therefore eBay is immune under section 230 for its screening decisions."). Plaintiffs contend that Yelp "creates" its aggregate business rating (the star rating at the top of each business's review page). They argue this constitutes editorial content created by Yelp, and thus 230(c)(1) does not apply. Defendant counters that this aggregate rating is based solely on an aggregation of user-generated data, and thus is still covered by the CDA. Yelp relies on Gentry v. eBay, Inc., 99 Cal. App. 4th 816, 834, 121 Cal. Rptr. 2d 703 (2002), [*22] which found eBay's star ratings based on user-generated data did not render eBay a content provider because such a construction "would treat eBay as the publisher or speaker of the individual defendants' materials, and thereby conflict with section 230." Gentry was cited with approval by Carafano, 339 F.3d at 1124. Since the aggregate rating in this case is likewise based on user-generated data, the Court finds that aspect of Gentry persuasive. To be sure, there is a potential dis-
tinction between the instant case and Gentry inasmuch as Plaintiffs contend the inclusion and exclusion of reviews upon which the aggregate rating is based was manipulated for wrongful reasons by Yelp. In contrast, any bad faith manipulation in Gentry was at the hand of thirdparty content providers, not eBay. 99 Cal. App. 4th at 834. But Plaintiffs do not contend that Yelp's aggregative star rating based on well-intentioned vetting of the database (e.g., to filter out false reviews or those which did not meet Yelp's neutral terms and conditions) would fall outside of 230(c)(1). Rather, Plaintiffs' argument is based on Yelp's motive in vetting the reviews. This places a premium on the more fundamental question [*23] whether the decision to include, exclude, or rank comments for purportedly wrongful purposes falls outside the "traditional editorial function" of a publisher as Judge Patel suggested in her order dismissing the SAC. Docket No. 70, at 16 (quoting Mazur v. eBay, Inc., 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16561, 2008 WL 618988 at *10 (N.D. Cal. March 4, 2008). In so arguing, Plaintiffs in effect seek to import an intent-based exception into Section 230, whereby the same conduct that would otherwise be immune under the statute (editorial decisions such as whether to publish or de-publish a particular review) would no longer be immune when motivated by an improper reason, such as to pressure businesses to advertise. The Court is sympathetic to the ethical underpinning of Plaintiffs' argument and is mindful of Judge Patel's reasoning that such a wrongful motive could strip the Defendant of the editorial immunity. 3 However, 230(c)(1) contains no explicit exception for impermissible editorial motive, whereas 230(c)(2) does contain a "good faith" requirement for the immunity provided therein. 4 That 230(c)(2) expressly provides for a good faith element omitted from 230(c)(1) indicates that Congress intended not to import a subjective [*24] intent/good faith limitation into 230(c)(1). "[W]here Congress includes particular language in one section of a statute but omits it in another . . . , it is generally presumed that Congress acts intentionally and purposely in the disparate inclusion or exclusion." Keene Corp. v. United States, 508 U.S. 200, 208, 113 S. Ct. 2035, 124 L. Ed. 2d 118 (1993). Accordingly, the text of the two subsections of 230(c) indicates that (c)(1)'s immunity applies regardless of whether the publisher acts in good faith. 3 Indeed, Judge Patel noted that such conduct "seems quite distinct from the traditional editorial functions of a publisher" that courts have interpreted section 230 to protect. Order Dismissing SAC at 16.

4 These the two immunity provisions are distinct. See Barnes v. Yahoo!, Inc., 570 F.3d 1096, 1105 (9th Cir. 2009) ("Subsection (c)(1), by itself, shields from liability all publication decisions, whether to edit, to remove, or to post, with respect to content generated entirely by third parties. Subsection (c)(2), for its part, provides an additional shield from liability . . . not merely [for] those whom subsection (c)(1) already protects, but [for] any provider of an interactive computer service."). Nor have cases [*25] interpreting 230(c)(1) established or suggested an intent-based exception to its immunity. Indeed, courts have found the immunity applies to conduct that arguably constitute bad faith. For example, courts have found providers to be immunized from intentional torts like defamation, even when the provider has arguably exercised its publishing functions in bad faith. See, e.g., Zeran, 129 F.3d at 331-33 (finding interactive service providers to be immune from defamation liability even when they have actual knowledge of the statements' falsity); Asia Economic Institute v. Xcentric Ventures LLC, No. CV 10-01360 SVW (PJWx), 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 145380, 2011 WL 2469822, at *6 (C.D. Cal. May 4, 2011) (holding that defendant's deliberate manipulation of HTML code for paying customers to make certain reviews more visible in online search results was immune under section 230 and that "[a]bsent a changing of the disputed reports' substantive content that is visible to consumers, liability cannot be found."). The only authority that could be read to support Plaintiffs' interpretation of 230(c)(1) is the observation in Mazur and other cases that 230(a)(1) immunity protects service providers from lawsuits for their "exercise [*26] of a publisher's traditional editorial functions." 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16561, 2008 WL 618988 at *9; see Gentry, 99 Cal. App. 4th at 829; Zeran, 129 F.3d at 330. Wrongfully manipulating a business's review page for the purpose of soliciting advertising revenues, as Judge Patel noted, would seem "quite distinct from the traditional editorial functions of a publisher." Order Dismissing SAC at 16. However, these cases which refer to traditional editorial functions do not describe or imply a range of permissible purposes behind exercise of that function. They merely describe the exercise of that function (i.e., the decision whether to publish content) without regard to the reasons a given publisher might make for such a decision. For example, Gentry defines the editorial function as "whether to publish, withdraw, postpone or alter content." 99 Cal. App. 4th at 829 (quoting Zeran, 129 F.3d at 330). There is no indication that "whether to publish" means "whether to publish for good faith reasons." Thus, while courts have described the functions of an editor (and the application of 230(c)(1)
thereto), they have not scrutinized the purposes behind an editor's exercise of those functions under 230(c)(1). Furthermore, [*27] it should be noted that traditional editorial functions often include subjective judgments informed by political and financial considerations. See, e.g., Blumenthal v. Drudge, 992 F. Supp. 44, 49-52 (D.D.C. 1998). Determining what motives are permissible and what are not could prove problematic. Indeed, from a policy perspective, permitting litigation and scrutiny motive could result in the "death by ten thousand duck-bites" against which the Ninth Circuit cautioned in interpreting 230(c)(1). Roommates.Com, 521 F.3d at 1174. One of Congress's purposes in enacting 230(c) was to avoid the chilling effect of imposing liability on providers by both safeguarding the "diversity of political discourse . . . and myriad avenues for intellectual activity" on the one hand, and "remov[ing] disincentives for the development and utilization of blocking and filtering technologies" on the other hand. 230(a), (b); see also S. Rep. No. 104-230, at 86 (1996) (Conf. Rep.), available at 1996 WL 54191, at *172 (describing purpose of section 230 to protect providers from liability "for actions to restrict or to enable restrict of access to objectionable online material"). For that reason, "[C]lose [*28] cases . . . must be resolved in favor of immunity, lest we cut the heart out of section 230 . . . ." Roommates.Com, 521 F.3d at 1174. As illustrated by the case at bar, finding a bad faith exception to immunity under 230(c)(1) could force Yelp to defend its editorial decisions in the future on a case by case basis and reveal how it decides what to publish and what not to publish. Such exposure could lead Yelp to resist filtering out false/unreliable reviews (as someone could claim an improper motive for its decision), or to immediately remove all negative reviews about which businesses complained (as failure to do so could expose Yelp to a business's claim that Yelp was strong-arming the business for advertising money). The Ninth Circuit has made it clear that the need to defend against a proliferation of lawsuits, regardless of whether the provider ultimately prevails, undermines the purpose of section 230. See Roommates.Com, 521 F.3d at 1174 (cautioning that section 230 should be "interpreted to protect websites not merely from ultimate liability, but from having to fight costly and protracted legal battles"); Carafano, 339 F.3d at 1124 ("Faced with potential liability for each [*29] message republished by their services, interactive computer service providers might choose to severely restrict the number and type of messages posted. Congress considered the weight of the speech interests implicated and chose to immunize service providers to avoid any such restrictive effect.") (quotations omitted); see also Zeran, 129 F.3d at 331-33 (explaining that even a notice-based standard for defamation liability -- as op-

posed to a strict liability standard -- would create a chilling effect on providers). Thus, even assuming Plaintiffs have adequately pled allegations stating a claim of an extortionate threat with respect to Yelp's alleged manipulation of user reviews, Defendant is immune from suit under 230(c)(1). Although the Court is sympathetic to Plaintiffs' complaint, the sweep of 230(c)(1) as a matter of text and legislative purpose is broad. 3. Failure to State Claims Based on Yelp's Creation or Manipulation of Content Accordingly, Plaintiffs have failed to allege a violation of 17200 as well as Plaintiffs' separate civil extortion and attempted civil extortion claims. 5 These claims are based on the assertion that Yelp: (1) created negative reviews -- a claim not [*30] supported by the allegations of the TAC, and (2) manipulated the third party reviews to pressure businesses to advertise -- a claim barred by 230(c)(1). 5 The parties dispute whether Plaintiffs may separately allege a cause of action for civil extortion. Compare Hisamatsu, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 115712, 2009 WL 4456392 at *5 ("California has long recognized a claim of 'civil extortion.'"), with Arista Records v. Sanchez, No. CV 05-07046 FMC (PJWx), 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 100515, 2006 WL 5908359, at *2 (C.D. Cal. March 1, 2006) ("[T]here is no private right of action for "extortion."). However, to the extent courts have recognized such a claim, it is based on the same elements as criminal extortion and therefore rises and falls along with Plaintiffs' 17200 claim. The same is true as to the unfair prong of 17200. That claim is likewise based on the same allegations that Yelp created negative reviews or manipulated those of third parties. 6 6 While Plaintiffs point out that the determination of whether a business practice is unfair "often cannot be made solely on the pleadings," Ferrington v. McAfee, Inc., No. 10-CV-01455-LHK, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 106600, 2010 WL 3910169 at * 13 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 5, 2010), courts may still dismiss such claims where they fail to allege facts sufficient [*31] to support such a cause of action, see Mangindin v. Wash. Mut. Bank, 637 F. Supp. 2d 700, 709-10 (N.D. Cal. 2009). The Court notes that Plaintiffs do not allege in the TAC that Yelp violated 17200 by falsely stating its posting of reviews is based on bona fide neutral criteria.
Indeed, it could be argued that the harm to the public (and potentially to businesses), which relies on the purported neutrality of Yelp's service, stems from an alleged misrepresentation about Yelp's posting criteria and failure to disclose its alleged practice of manipulating ratings in favor of those who advertise. Claims of misrepresentation, false advertising, or other causes of action based not on Yelp's publishing conduct but on its representations regarding such conduct, would not be immunized under 230(a)(1). See, e.g., Anthony v. Yahoo Inc., 421 F. Supp. 2d 1257, 1263 (N.D. Cal. 2006) (holding that the CDA did not immunize defendant for misrepresentations relating to third-party generated content); Barnes, 570 F.3d at 1108-09 (holding that a breach of contract claim based on promissory estoppel for failing to remove content a website promised to remove was not barred by the CDA). However, while Plaintiffs [*32] refer vaguely to Yelp's misrepresentations, see TAC 4 ("Contrary to the representations Defendant makes to the general public, a business's reviews are often connected to whether a business advertises with Defendant."), they do not allege any cause of action based on that particular harm. Indeed, Plaintiffs voluntarily withdrew their false advertising allegations from their First Amended Complaint, and so it is not at issue herein. Compare First Amended Complaint, Docket No. 48 (including allegations of false advertising), with Second Amended Complaint, Docket No. 58 (deleting all references to false advertising). Thus, the Court finds that leave to amend the TAC would be futile in this case. Eminence Capital, LLC v. Aspeon, Inc., 316 F.3d 1048, 1052 (9th Cir. 2003). Plaintiffs have already been granted leave to amend to cure the same deficiencies described herein and have failed to do so. Indeed, Plaintiffs added only minimal allegations in the TAC that failed to correct the deficiencies identified by Judge Patel. See Order Dismissing SAC at 20 ("[P]laintiffs' counsel represented at the motion hearing that continued investigation has produced additional facts that would bolster plaintiffs' [*33] allegations."). Defendant's motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim is granted. The TAC is dismissed with prejudice. C. Motion to Strike Because the Court determines that the TAC fails to state a plausible claim for relief, it need not address Defendant's motion to strike Plaintiffs' class allegations. III.CONCLUSION For the foregoing reasons, the Court hereby GRANTS Defendant's motion to dismiss with prejudice. The Clerk shall issue judgment and close the file. This order disposes of Docket No. 77.

IT IS SO ORDERED. Dated: October 26, 2011 /s/ Edward M. Chen
EDWARD M. CHEN United States District Judge
EXHIBIT 8
Case Case 2:10-cv-01360-SVW 2:11-cv-01426-GMS -PJW Document Document103-1 96 Filed Filed 07/27/10 07/31/12Page Page 1 of 1684 of 242 Page ID #:2322
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Daniel F. Blackert, (SBN 255021) blackertesq@yahoo.com Lisa J. Borodkin, (SBN 196412) lisa_borodkin@post.harvard.edu ASIA ECONOMIC INSTITUTE, LLC 11766 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 260 Los Angeles, CA 90025 Telephone (310) 806-3000 Facsimile (310) 826-4448 Attorneys for Plaintiffs Asia Economic Institute, LLC, Raymond Mobrez, and Iliana Llaneras UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT CENTRAL DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA ) Case No.: 2:10-cv-01360-SVW-PJW ) ) ) FIRST AMENDED COMPLAINT FOR: ) ) ) (1) VIOLATION OF 18 U.S.C. 1962(c) -) CIVIL RICO ) Plaintiffs, ) (2) VIOLATION OF 18 U.S.C. 1962(d) -) vs. RICO CONSPIRACY ) (3) UNFAIR BUSINESS PRACTICES -) XCENTRIC VENTURES, LLC, ) CAL. BUS. & PROF. CODE 17200 et ) an Arizona LLC, doing business seq. ) as BADBUSINESS BUREAU, ) (4) DEFAMATION ) (5) DEFAMATION PER SE RIPOFF REPORT, and ) (6) INTENTIONAL INTERFERENCE RIPOFFREPORT.COM, ) BAD BUSINESS BUREAU, ) WITH PROSPECTIVE ECONOMIC ) LLC, organized and existing RELATIONS ) under the laws of St. Kitts and ) (7) NEGLIGENT INTERFERENCE Nevis, West Indies; EDWARD ) WITH PROSPECTIVE ECONOMIC ) MAGEDSON an individual, also ) RELATIONS ) (8) NEGLIGENT INTERFERENCE known as EDWARD MAGIDSON also known as the ) WITH ECONOMIC RELATIONS ) Editor, and DOES 1 through ) (9) DECEIT ) (10) FRAUD 100, inclusive, ) )) (11) INJUNCTION ) Defendants. JURY TRIAL DEMANDED ASIA ECONOMIC INSTITUTE, LLC, a California LLC; RAYMOND MOBREZ an individual; and ILIANA LLANERAS, an individual,
First Amended Complaint - 1
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Plaintiffs Asia Economic Institute, LLC (Asia Economic Institute or AEI), Raymond Mobrez (Mobrez) and Iliana Llaneras (Llaneras) (collectively, Plaintiffs) complain of defendants Xcentric Ventures, LLC doing business as Ripoff Report, Bad Business Bureau, RipoffReport.com and BadbusinessBureau.com (Xcentric), Bad Business Bureau LLC (Bad Business Bureau) and Edward Magedson, also known as Ed Magedson, also known as Edward Magidson, also known as the EDitor (Magedson) (collectively, Defendants), and alleges as follows: I. JURISDICTION AND VENUE 2. This Court has jurisdiction of the subject matter of this action under
federal question jurisdiction, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 1331 and 18 U.S.C. 1962 (c) and (d) (the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) (RICO), in that federal questions are alleged under 18 U.S.C. 1962(c) and (d). Thus far, this Court has exercised supplemental jurisdiction over Plaintiffs state law claims pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 1367. 3. This Court has personal jurisdiction over all Defendants pursuant to the RICO statute. Specifically 18 U.S.C. 1965(a) and (d), which confers nationwide service of process authority upon this Court. In addition, this Court has personal jurisdiction over all Defendants because they have sufficient contacts with this judicial district and California to satisfy the minimum contacts doctrine articulated in International Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310, 316 (1945). Defendants (a) direct conduct at Plaintiffs, who maintain principal places of business in, and are domiciled in, this judicial district; and (b) operate a commercial, interactive website in this judicial district. 4. Venue is proper in this judicial district pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 1391 because a substantial part of the events, acts and omissions giving rise to Plaintiffs claims occurred within this judicial district, and is also proper under 18 U.S.C.
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1965(a) and (d) because all Defendants have transacted and presently transact their affairs in this judicial district. 5. Defendants have previously consented to and waived objections to II. THE PARTIES 6. Plaintiff Asia Economic Institute is a limited liability company and, at this Courts jurisdiction and to venue within this judicial district.
all times relevant hereto, organized and existing pursuant to the laws of the State of California, and is authorized to do business in the State of California. Plaintiff Asia Economic Institute has its principal place of business at 11766 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 260, Los Angeles, California 90025. 7. Plaintiff Mobrez is an individual and, at all times relevant hereto, a resident of Los Angeles, California, County of Los Angeles. Plaintiff Mobrez is a principal and manager of Asia Economic Institute, LLC. In addition, as a California-licensed broker, Mr. Mobrez derives a significant amount of revenue from brokering commercial real estate transactions. 8. Plaintiff Llaneras is an individual and, at all times relevant hereto, a resident of California, County of Los Angeles. Plaintiff Llaneras is a principal and manager of Asia Economic Institute, LLC. In addition, as a California-licensed broker, Ms. Llaneras derives a significant amount of revenue from brokering commercial real estate transactions. 9. Defendant Xcentric is a limited liability company organized and existing pursuant to the laws of the State of Arizona with its purported domestic address as P.O. Box 470, Phoenix, Arizona 85280. Plaintiffs are informed and believe and thereon allege that Xcentric is owned by a single member, Creative Business Investment Concepts, Inc., a Nevada corporation located at 2533 North Carson Street, Carson City, Nevada 89706. Defendant Xcentric transacts business in interstate commerce as, inter alia, Ripoff Report, an enterprise, located in this
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1
judicial district and elsewhere in California and Arizona, and employs, contracts with and engages individuals, partnerships and business entities, who share the common goals of perpetuating the goals and purpose of the Ripoff Report enterprise, pursuant to long-term relationships, drawing from the same pool of associates and spanning several years, from at least 2005 to the present, and sharing in the substantial financial and other benefits derived therefrom. 10. Plaintiffs are informed and believe and thereon allege that Xcentric operates or manages the Ripoff Report enterprise and substantially directs many of its activities and operations, including selling goods and services; acquiring exclusive, perpetual, world-wide copyrights in original text and graphical content about businesses, consumer goods and services, as well as the intimate personal lives of private individuals, in the form of reports (Rip-off Reports or Reports),1 rebuttals and comments; writing and producing original, paid, sponsored endorsements and testimonials of consumer businesses, goods and services often substantially co-written by the subjects themselves as investigations and notices; thereafter distributing, displaying, publishing, continuously republishing, indexing, and optimizing for the Web such acquired and paid, self-produced content to make the content interactive and easily searchable by commercial Internet search engines; advertising against such acquired and self-produced, paid content, deriving revenues based in part on demonstrated analytics including numbers of unique visitors, page views and ad clicks; attracting visitors to its website for the purpose of selling them goods and services, increasing its analytics, enhancing the websites authority or reputation with Internet search engines, and soliciting additional content to add to its massive compilation of business, consumer and personal data; and creating, modifying, customizing or licensing software code, database architecture, network
For avoidance of confusion, Defendants business is referred to herein as Ripoff Report
while the reports themselves are referred to as Rip-off Reports or Reports.

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and computer programming. In operating or managing the Ripoff Report enterprise, Xcentric uses instrumentalities of interstate commerce, specifically wire, including through websites hosted at the domain names ripoffreport.com, badbusinessbureau.com, ripoffreport.net and ripoffreport.org, among others, all of which redirect to the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) for Defendants primary website, http://www.ripoffreport.com (the ROR Website, sometimes ROR) and self-hosted electronic mail services operated through the ripoffreport.com domain name. Plaintiffs are informed and believe and thereon allege that the domain names for the ROR Website and electronic mail services are registered by directNIC, located at West Bay, Grand Cayman, hosted by Intercosmos Media Group, Inc. with servers located in Ankara, Turkey, and directed, operated and controlled from Maricopa County, Arizona. 11. Plaintiffs are informed and believe and thereon allege that Defendant Bad Business Bureau is, or was at times relevant hereto, a limited liability company organized and existing pursuant to the laws of Saint Kitts or Nevis, West Indies. Defendant Bad Business Bureau is or was the predecessor to Xcentric in operating and managing the Ripoff Report enterprise and is or was otherwise associated with the Ripoff Report enterprise. 12. Defendant Edward Magedson, also known as Ed Magedson, also known as Edward Magidson, also known as the EDitor (Magedson) is an individual and, at all times relevant hereto, a resident of the State of Arizona and/or the State of California and, by his own admission, represented himself at certain times relevant hereto as present in the State of California. Magedson is the Manager of Xcentric and Bad Business Bureau, the Editor of Ripoff Report and operates and manages activities of the Ripoff Report enterprise, including by, inter alia, making top-level policy, business, risk management, legal and strategy decisions, sometimes in consultation with outside counsel; operating and managing business conducted through the ROR Website; administering its Corporate Advocacy and Remediation Program; performing investigations of the veracity of
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the contents of certain reports; writing and publishing findings; collaborating with the subjects of paid testimonials and endorsements in writing original content about them and publishing it through the ROR Website; communicating with individual subjects of reports by electronic mail, particularly to urge them to file rebuttals or comments to existing Reports; supervising or acting in association with a currently unknown individual identified only by the electronic mail address Karen@ripoffreport.com at certain times relevant herein, whose duties included responding to complaints that rebuttals were not posting or were being posted to the wrong reports; engaging, supervising and collaborating with counsel to draft significant and influential portions of the ROR Website and otherwise. Magedson uses instrumentalities of interstate commerce to conduct these activities, specifically wire. 13. Xcentric and its associates in the Ripoff Report enterprise use extremely aggressive litigation strategies to, inter alia, protect and perpetuate its business model, and silence and retaliate against their critics, including by affirmatively initiating an Arizona state court action against Washington Statebased attorney and search engine optimization consultant and blogger Sarah L. Bird, Xcentric Ventures LLC v. Bird, (D. Ariz. 09-cv-1033) which action was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds and is currently on appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (10-1546); initiating an Arizona state court defamation action against Phoenix New Times reporter Sarah Fenske, her husband, a source for an article, the sources spouse and the publishers, Xcentric v. Village Voice Media, CV2008-2416 (Arizona Sup. Ct. for Maricopa County); and is currently opposing an appeal to the Seventh Circuit (10-1167) in Blockowicz v. Williams, 675 F. Supp. 2d 912 (N.D. Ill. 2009) (09-cv-3955) regarding its purported right to defy compliance with a permanent injunction ordering it to remove defamatory content. 14. The Ripoff Report enterprise until approximately May or June 2010 had a regular business practice of secretly recording or causing to be recorded all telephone conversations to its business telephone number, in association with an
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unidentified vendor, without disclosure to or consent of all parties to the telephone conversations, in violation of, inter alia, the wiretapping laws of the State of California. The Ripoff Report has used or attempted to use the contents of such secret recordings as a surprise litigation tactic in actions in, inter alia, California and Arizona. Defendants used instrumentalities of interstate commerce, specifically wire, to record such telephone calls. 15. The true names and capacities, whether individual, corporate, or otherwise, of Defendants DOES 1 to 100 are unknown to Plaintiffs at the present time, who therefore sue such Defendants by fictitious names, and will amend this Complaint to show their true names and capacities when ascertained. Plaintiffs are informed and believe and thereon allege that each of the defendants assigned as a DOE is responsible in some manner for the events and happenings herein referred to, and thereby proximately caused injuries and damages to the Plaintiffs. Plaintiffs will amend this complaint to add as defendants in this action those individuals and entities who have assisted Defendants in perpetrating the acts and omissions complained of herein, including additional individuals and entities complicit in managing and operating the affairs of the Ripoff Report enterprise. III. SUMMARY OF THE ALLEGATIONS 16. The Ripoff Report enterprise takes advantage of the average persons
lack of sophistication in technology, reliance on Internet search engines, and general lack of time. It misrepresents its true nature to the public and places its victims in desperate positions through elaborate technological and legal traps and artifices. It then intimidates and defrauds its victims into believing that the only practical way of saving their good names is to defend them on its home turf, the ROR Website, where it makes the rules, it decides who gets heard, and most of all,
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2
it makes money. Many do, not realizing until it is too late, that they are only aggravating their injuries and enriching Defendants by doing so. 17. The Ripoff Report enterprise is the ultimate Internet troll.2 It survives and earns revenues through a fraudulent scheme (the Content Trolling Scheme) by building a huge database of controversial content about other people and businesses (victims or subjects), which it then enhances for search engines and advertisers, often with additions from the victims themselves. The Ripoff Report enterprise runs the Content Trolling Scheme by tricking its victims through various misrepresentations of material fact conveyed through the ROR Website and in electronic mail, and otherwise furthered by use of the wires, into believing there is no legal redress for them in the courts, that the Reports will forever remain as a Scarlet Letter on their permanent records, and that their best available option is to file a rebuttal. 18. The Ripoff Report enterprise solicits purely negative, often hateful and extremely personal and in many instances, judicially recognized as defamatory content in the form of Rip-off Reports. The Ripoff Report enterprise acquires ownership of all content contributed through the ROR Website under an exclusive grant of copyright before it is ever published to the web. Before publishing Reports, the Ripoff Report enterprise conducts its own-pre-publication review, whereby it filters out the positive and publishes only the negative, sometimes redacting or disclaiming portions of the content, at times in a manner that significantly changes its meaning, and in certain cases (often under a financial arrangement) adds additional content that completely transforms or negates its meaning, or, for a fee, suppresses the Reports from publication altogether.
Wikipedia defines an Internet troll as someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-
topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog with the primary intent of provoking other users into a desired emotional response.
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19.
Cloaked in the false disguise of a consumer advocate, the Ripoff
Report enterprise purports to advise the victims of the Content Trolling Scheme that the best thing they can do is to file a free rebuttal. Unbeknownst to the victims, the free rebuttals come at a cost. A rebuttal is likely to make the negative content in a Report go up in page rank in search engine queries, while doing nothing to alter the snippets of negative content that appear as search results. The Ripoff Report enterprise does not disclose its own financial self-interest in having victims file rebuttals fresh content and page visits that make the ROR Website more attractive to search engines and online advertisers. The Ripoff Report enterprise does not disclose that some Reports do come down, and are materially altered or suppressed, for a price. Without knowing all this, the victims file rebuttals. The Ripoff Report enterprise then leads its victims down a path toward applying for the Corporate Advocacy Program, which promises to turn a negative into a positive, and seeking either exorbitant fees or tax returns and personal information, and conditioning acceptance in to the program on repeated admissions of responsibility more akin to the Salem Witch Trials or Spanish Inquisition than an outsourced customer satisfaction program. 20. The Ripoff Report enterprise even incorporates the Content Trolling Scheme into its recommended procedure for obtaining the identity of anonymous contributors of Reports. Citing a string of impressive-looking legal citations on its legal information page, the Ripoff Report enterprise insists, falsely, that the case of Mobilisa, Inc. v. Doe, 217 Ariz. 103, 110-11 (Ct. App. 2007) , requires that holders of a subpoena for author information MUST post a notice as a rebuttal to each report for which you are seeking the authors information, as the only acceptable way of informing the anonymous author of the discovery request. This is a misrepresentation. The true facts are that Mobilisa states that the notice must be via the same medium used by the anonymous party to post the contested message, e.g., if the message . . . was posted to an internet message board, the requesting party must make the notification via a posting to that same message
Case 2:10-cv-01360-SVW Case 2:11-cv-01426-GMS -PJW Document 96 103-1 Filed Filed 07/27/10 07/31/12 Page Page 10 25 of 84 of 242 Page ID #:2331
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board. Id. Rebuttals on the ROR website lack certain important properties that Reports have, such as an automatic sharing, emailing button, and printing button. In fact, rebuttals are nearly impossible to print without taking the intermediate step of making a screen shot. Proper notice under Mobilisa would thus be posting of a new Report, perhaps in the category notices. Defendants could easily facilitate actual notice by forwarding an email. But by misinforming the public that Mobilisa requires a rebuttal as a precondition to proper notice, the Ripoff Report enterprise finds still another way to feed the troll that is, its content database. 21. By the time the victims realize that the best way of dealing with a Report may be to let it sink to the bottom over time, the damage has often been done. The victims have sat on their rights, business has evaporated, houses have gone into foreclosure, and the Reports have been pushed so far up in page rankings that it takes significant additional money and time to post alternative, positive content about themselves to the Web to undo the damage to their online reputations. 22. The Ripoff Report enterprise profusely claims that Reports never come down. But, for a price, the Ripoff Report enterprise will sell something even more valuable the opportunity to change a negative Google search engine result into a positive. The Ripoff Report enterprise markets the Corporate Advocacy Program (CAP) to the subjects of Reports, typically after strongly urging them to file rebuttals. By joining CAP or otherwise making financial arrangements with the Ripoff Report enterprise, a subject can buy the privilege of essentially writing (or approving) her own Google search result. The CAP member writes or approves between 250 and 350 additional words of positive content that will be inserted into the body of a Report and also in a known strategic location in the HTML for the Report. 250 words is just the right amount of text to push the surrounding negative content so far down in the HTML as to be irrelevant to search engines. Thus, negative content virtually disappears from the Google search results for CAP members, replaced by the words approved by the CAP member. Because Googles
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search algorithms are generally influenced to select text that matches, between both a web page and the corresponding HTML (that is, identical text that is present in both), putting the positive content in the strategic location in the HTML, along with a matching block of test in the Report effectively negates the harmful effect of the Report with the Google search engine, while allowing Defendants to continue claiming (falsely) that they never remove Reports. 23. There are at least two ways to get into CAP. One is to follow the application process, admit fault, sign away important legal rights, and pay exorbitant prices starting at thousands of dollars over a three-year period. The other way is to sue Defendants. In order to preserve the fiction that they never lose a case and that plaintiffs pay all their attorneys fees, the Ripoff Report enterprise sometimes settles difficult cases by channeling the plaintiffs into CAP or similar arrangements. 24. The Ripoff Report enterprise deceives consumers and violates Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTC Act), 15 U.S.C. 45 by providing paid endorsements and testimonials on the ROR Website without clearly disclosing the material considerations received for such paid endorsements and testimonials. The Ripoff Reports enterprises deceptive presentation of itself as by consumers, for consumers, failure to disclose receipt of consideration for specific endorsements, Verified Safe and other favorable contents, in violation of the FTC Act, and failure to disclose that part of its motivations for publishing Reports and seeking rebuttals are self-interested financial ones. This deliberate conduct proximately interferes with and causes damage to Plaintiffs economic relations and prospects, because these false impressions make the existence of a negative Report damning in search results, damning on its face and damning by negative implication.
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IV. FACTUAL ALLEGATIONS COMMON TO ALL CLAIMS A. Defendants Business and the ROR Website 25. Defendants Xcentric, Bad Business Bureau and Magedson, doing
business as Bad Business Bureau and Ripoff Report, together and in association with other individuals, partnerships and business entities, including employees, contractors, consultants, counsel, service providers and other participants, acting with a common purpose, pursuant to relationships among those associated with the Ripoff Report enterprise, with longevity sufficient to pursue the purposes of the Ripoff Report enterprise, operate and manage the affairs of the Ripoff Report enterprise, often through the ROR Website. 26. Defendants control other domain names that redirect visitors to the The Ripoff Report enterprise transacts a substantial ROR Website, including, inter alia, ripoffreport.net, ripoffreport.org, and badbusinessbureau.com. amount of its affairs through the domain name ripoffreport.com, both through the ROR Website and through electronic mail emanating from email addresses including 27. info@ripoffreport.com, Editor@ripoffreport.com and karen@ripoffreport.com. The Ripoff Report enterprise must be viewed for what it is a selfinterested business model, not a disinterested consumer advocacy or consumerprotection, public service. The Ripoff Report enterprise is a for-profit business. The Ripoff Report enterprise earns revenues from the sale of goods and services and Web-based advertisements, which generate revenues based in part upon analytics including, Internet visitor traffic, page visits, page views, length of visit, number of clicks on advertisements and links, and link referrals to paid advertisements, whether under a revenue-sharing agreement or fee for advertising model.
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28.
The Ripoff Report enterprise uses instrumentalities of interstate
commerce, specifically wire, to further its purposes, including conducting the Content Trolling Scheme and other schemes that protect its revenues and power. 29. The Ripoff Report enterprise conducts its trolling on two levels. One is on the visible, superficial level of what it publishes on web pages at the ROR website, in the contents of the Reports, rebuttals, comments, advertisements and editorials. The Ripoff Report enterprise painstakingly frames any legal challenge to its practices solely as a challenge to its conduct on this first, visible, two-dimensional plane. 30. However, the true, three-dimensional space in which the Ripoff Report enterprise conducts its trolling for content, page views and visitors occurs on the level of the dynamic, semantic computer code that makes the first level of content searchable and interactive. For each web page comprising the ROR Website, there is an accompanying page of Hypertext Markup Language code (HTML). The HTML for a web page is responsible for generating what people see on their Internet browsers, influences how the page ranks with search engines, and influences what appears in the snippets of content displayed as search engine results, which is often the publics first impression of any web page on the Internet. 31. The Ripoff Report enterprise determines not only what goes into web pages, but also what goes into the HTML, by design and continual improvement of its database, user interface and system architecture. 32. The Ripoff Report enterprise has designed its systems to generate web pages from content it acquires, and also the HTML for such web pages. Simply put, the web pages are written in plain, generally understandable English language, readily visible and comprehensible to a web visitor of ordinary sophistication. 33. The HTML for such web pages is written in dynamic, semantic computer code, using generally accepted elements that express intentions, ideas and conduct readily understandable to a person of moderate to advanced
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sophistication in HTML, but likely not visible, noticeable to a casual Google searcher making snap impressions based on a few search results. 34. The Ripoff Report enterprise knowingly, deliberately and with intent to deceive, exploits the gap between web pages and their respective HTML. The Ripoff Report enterprise has designed its servers and databases so that for ordinary Reports, the matching text in the body of the web page and the header of the HTML is generally negative, combined with the subjects name as keywords. 35. However, for money, the Ripoff Report Enterprise will allow a subject to rewrite the matching portion of text that will be identical in the Report and in the HTML, and thus influencing Google to display a positive search result for the subject. 36. An advertising-supported Internet business model such as the Ripoff Report enterprise supports itself and earns revenues by attracting visitors to the content it publishes on the Web. As an advertising-supported business, the Ripoff Report enterprise must constantly acquire or generate content that will attract visitors. Therefore, like many Internet-based content publishers, the Ripoff Report enterprise aggressively solicits original content in the form of contributions or submissions and generates original content of its own, for publication and continual republication, for the purpose of advertising against it. 37. The ROR Website comprises over 500,000 unique web pages organized and hosted through the domain name ripoffreport.com and stored on servers owned or controlled by the Ripoff Report enterprise. The Ripoff Report enterprise copiously represents through the ROR Website, in electronic mail and in filings in the public records that it does not remove, depublish or delete content from its database. Therefore, the amassed stored content owned by the Ripoff Report enterprise is constantly increasing, thereby increasing the total number of web pages comprising the ROR website and associated database, and thereby increasing opportunities for attracting visitors to the ROR website to which it can
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serve advertisements, and in turn enhancing the various analytics that determine the advertising revenues that the Ripoff Report enterprise can earn. 38. The ROR Website gains so-called authority, or favorable page ranking, with Internet search engines based on a numbers of factors. These include the overall number of web pages, the quality of the content and links, the more fresh content it posts, the more often it is linked to, and the more frequently its content is updated, including by comments and rebuttals. 39. In addition to selling two-dimensional advertisements on its static web pages, Ripoff Report also sells links to paid advertisements in the body of the rebuttals that users post to its web pages. 40. Ripoff Reports offers programs such as the Verified Safe program, under the tagline businesses you can trust! and the Corporate Advocacy Program, described as a Business Remediation and Consumer Satisfaction Program. . . . a long name for a program that does a lot for both the consumer and businesses alike. 41. While the goals of consumer self-help, providing a place to report scams and rip-offs and generally exercising First Amendment-protected pure expressive speech rights are noble, Ripoff Report does much more, behind the scenes, that destroys livelihoods, reputations and businesses. B. 42. Rip-Off Reports and the ROR Websites Terms of Service As part of the Content Trolling Scheme, the Ripoff Report enterprise
holds the ROR Website out to the public and in judicial tribunals as a consumer review website or public discussion forum. 43. Ripoff Report purports to serve the public as by consumers, for consumers, urging the public to contribute reports of scams, consumer complaints, and frauds under mottos such as Let the truth be known! These reports are referred to hereinafter as Rip-off Reports or Reports.
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44. 45.
The ROR Website will not publish positive reviews. The only positive Not all Rip-off Reports are about companies with shady business
material that can be posted are rebuttals and comments. practices or individuals engaging in fraud or deceit. The ROR Website hosts, and has hosted Rip-off Reports concerning the deeply private details of the lives, habits and health conditions of individuals, including purported reports of individuals alleged mental health problems, attributing to individuals sexually transmitted diseases, substance abuse habits and other deeply personal, private details, along with names and home addresses. 46. The ROR Website differs from other community websites or public discussion forums in several unusual ways. Ripoff Report does not merely host the Rip-off Reports. Ripoff Report takes ownership of the copyright of every Report, rebuttal and user comment before it is even published to the Web, under the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 101. Thus, at the time of publication, Ripoff Report is the exclusive owner of all content that is posted to the ROR Website. 47. This is because, unlike community websites such as Facebook, Craigslist, and Roommates.com, Ripoff Report makes it mandatory for a user wishing to contribute content to the ROR Website to register and accept the ROR Websites Terms of Service, which requires an automatic, exclusive grant of copyright in all user submissions to Ripoff Report before the user can contribute. 48. A true and correct copy of the ROR Websites Terms of Service, as they existed on April 3, 2009 (and identical today with respect to Paragraph 6) are attached as Exhibit 1 and is incorporated herein by this reference. Paragraph 6 of the ROR Websites Terms of Service provides that a user wishing to use the site grants Ripoff Report an irrevocable, perpetual, exclusive, world-wide license for certain rights exclusive to copyright holders, before they can post anything to a public area: 6. Proprietary Rights/Grant of Exclusive Rights
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3
By
posting
information
or
content
to
any
public
area
of
www.RipoffReport.com, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to Xcentric an irrevocable, perpetual, fully-paid, worldwide exclusive license to use, copy, perform, display and distribute such information and content and to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such information and content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. Exhibit 1, Paragraph 6. 49. Because the rights to copy, display, perform, and prepare derivative works are among the exclusive rights comprised in a copyright, and Paragraph 6 of the ROR Websites Terms of Service is an exclusive license of these rights, Paragraph 6 of the ROR Websites Terms of Service constitutes a transfer of copyright ownership3 with respect to all user contributions, under the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 101. 50. Because all user-generated submissions are screened (and sometimes altered) by Ripoff Reports content monitors before they are posted to the ROR Website, and because copyrighted works are created when they are first fixed in any method that is sufficiently stable that they can be perceived, reproduced or communicated, under the definitions of the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 101, Ripoff Report has already acquired exclusive copyright ownership of all user-submitted content before it is published to the Web.
In Definitions of the Copyright Act, a transfer of copyright ownership
is defined as an assignment, mortgage, exclusive license, or any other conveyance, alienation, or hypothecation of a copyright or of any of the exclusive rights comprised in a copyright, whether or not it is limited in time or place of effect, but not including a nonexclusive license. U.S.C. 101.
17
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4
51.
Websites Facebook,4 Craigslist,5 Roommates.com6 and most
standard community websites only require users to agree to grant a non-exclusive license for user content. By contrast, Ripoff Report owns the perpetual, exclusive, worldwide copyright in and to every single item of content any user has contributed to the ROR Website, even before it is posted to the Web. 52. Moreover, unlike community forums such as Facebook or Craigslist, Ripoff Report embeds links into the contents of user-submitted material for paid advertisements for sometimes unrelated advertisers like Cash4Gold. C. ROR Websites Rebuttal and Commenting System 53. Ripoff Report does not allow users to post positive Reports about a
business or individual on the ROR Website. Ripoff Reports content monitors review Reports before they are posted to filter out those that say positive things about a business.
you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sublicensable, royalty-free,
worldwide license to use any IP content that you post . . . This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account . . . (Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities Last Revision April 22, 2010)
5
you automatically grant . . . to craigslist an irrevocable, perpetual, non-
exclusive, fully paid, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display and distribute said Content. . . (Craigslist Terms of Service, July 24, 2010)
6
with respect to Content you submit . . . you grant us the following world-
wide, royalty-free and non-exclusive license(s) . . . the license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform and publicly display such Content . . . (Roommates.com Terms of Service as of July 24, 2010)
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54.
Instead, Ripoff Reports restricts subjects wishing to defend
themselves or others identified in a Report to placing such comments in a rebuttal or as a comment to a Rip-off Report. 55. Rebuttals and comments are placed in a less prominent position than the Reports. They are in smaller type, and lower down the screen, than the headers and main body of Rip-off Reports. 56. Ripoff Report also has designed the ROR Website with various technical restrictions that make it much more difficult to reproduce, memorialize or share the rebuttal and comment sections purportedly attached to the Reports. 57. Attempts to print a Rip-off Report directly from a standard web browser such as Firefox will only print the negative Rip-off Report and sidebar advertising, and will not print the purportedly associated rebuttals and comments. 58. The Rip-off Report section of a ROR Website web page containing a Report includes a print this button. However, using the print this button will only print the negative Rip-off Report and sidebar advertising, and will not print the purportedly associated rebuttals or comments. D. Ripoff Reports Commercial Goods and Services 59. Ripoff Report is a business. In addition to being in the business of
attracting visitors to the ROR Website and advertising against the resulting visitor traffic analytics, selling paid advertising links and banner and sidebar advertisements, Ripoff Report directly vends goods and services in interstate commerce through the wires by means of, inter alia, the ROR Website and emails. 60. Among the goods Ripoff Report sells is a book, pamphlet or guide called the Rip-Off Report.com Do-It-Yourself Guide: How to Get Rip-off Revenge. This book is offered for sale in the United States for $21.95.
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61.
Purchasing this book is actually Step Two in following the ROR
Websites How to Get Rip-Off Revenge instructions. Step One is to file a detailed Rip-Off Report at the ROR Website. 62. At all times relevant herein, and since at least 2005, Ripoff Report has offered and offers for sale, through the ROR Website and through emails in interstate commerce a program called the Corporate Advocacy Program (sometimes herein, CAP). 63. Defendants describe CAP as where a business may publicize its proactive approach to addressing . . . complaints. Defendants insist that all businesses will get complaints, but how those businesses handle those complaints separates good business from bad business. Defendants advertise to the public that that CAP demonstrate[es] yours is an honest business, with integrity, and willing to make a commitment to righting consumer wrongs. 64. In or around April 2010, Defendants also introduced the Ripoff Report Verified Safe program. Defendants advertise, with reference to CAP, This program now includes Ripoff Report Verified. 65. The ROR Website depicts a logo for the Ripoff Report Verified Safe program comprising a stylized figure of a person wearing a necktie with a halo floating above, and a checkmark in a box, together with the tagline businesses you can trust! 66. Defendants advertise that this Verified Safe Program also includes a commitment to Ripoff Report Corporate Advocacy Business Remediation and Customer Satisfaction Program, which is CAP. Defendants advertise CAP as a program that benefits the consumer, assures them of complete satisfaction and confidence when doing business with a member business. 67. The web page on the ROR Website dedicated to the Ripoff Report Verified Safe program represents, in hyperlinked text, that Advertisers have met our strict standards for business conduct. Clicking on that hyperlinked text directs the viewer to another web page located at the URL
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7
http://www.ripoffreport.com/ConsumersSayThankYou/AdvertisingStandards.aspx and titled About Us: Advertising Standards. 68. On the About Us: Advertising Standards web page of the ROR Website, Defendants state that they ensure an advertiser is Scam-free and has no outstanding reports filed against them. This implies that having outstanding Reports on the ROR Website means a business cannot be trusted. E. Ripoff Reports Relationship with Search Engines and HTML 69. In order to truly understand the nature of the harm and destruction
wrought by Defendants, it is critical to recognize the importance of search technology in the modern use of the Internet. 70. Search is currently the most powerful, vibrant determinant in the way people use the Internet today. The global search advertising market was a reported $6.2 Billion in the second quarter of 2010.7 Google, which reported a total market capitalization of $36 Billion in 2009, rose to prominence by making the Internet searchable. 71. Courts have long recognized the importance of search as a means for users to locate information or consume content of interest on the Web. In 2000, the Court in Bihari v. Gross, 119 F. Supp. 2d 309, 312 (S.D.N.Y. 2000) wrote of search: Because entering the company's name as the domain name often fails to take the user to the desired webpage, many users prefer the . . . search technique. Here, a websurfer enters a particular company name or search
Source: Investor Business Times, Google search share slips, Baidu gains: report (July 23, 2010).
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request in a search engine. The search engine then displays a list of websites that match the user's request. The search engine ranks the relevant sites according to the relative frequency with which the word or phrase appears in the metatags and in the text of the websites. The websurfer then chooses, based on any number of considerations, which website to visit. Bihari v. Gross, 119 F. Supp. 2d 309, 312 (S.D.N.Y. 2000). 72. Many members of the public influenced by a Rip-off Report do not locate it by navigating to the ROR Website by domain name -- ripoffreport.com -and then searching the ROR Website for a company or a person. 73. Instead, many -- if not most -- discover Rip-off Reports by searching for that company or person on the Web generally, by entering the name of that company or a person as a query in a search engine such as Google and then viewing the web pages returned in response to the search query. 74. The public often does not type in unique web addresses or "URLs into address bars in their browsers. Instead, it is much more convenient and often faster to type in a query to the search pane of a browser or enter a search query into one of the major search engines: Google.com, Yahoo.com, or Bing.com. See Declaration of Joe Reed, attached as Exhibit 25 and Declaration of Anthony Howard attached as Exhibit 24. 75. Defendants conduct herein encompasses their affirmative activity directed at search engines through the HTML which they cause to be designed, written, generated and published for each unique web page comprising the ROR Website. Thus, the Ripoff Report enterprise communicates with the public by shaping the HTML and Report texts in ways that it knows will influence search results to appear in certain, predictable ways. 76. HTML is the language of expression for individual web pages that are published to the web. The ROR Website comprises an estimated over 500,000 unique web pages, by Defendants admission.
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77.
HTML determines not only how a web page is formatted to a viewer,
but also influences how a page is located and displayed in response to a search engine query. Among other things, a web pages HTML influences (1) the order in which a search engine query returns and displays results for a particular web page (page rank) and (2) how the description of the web page returned by the search query appears (search result). 78. It is well-recognized that a party can be held liable for damages proximately caused by writing or causing computer software, computer code, or HTML to the extent it influences the public through a search engine. 79. Courts have long held parties accountable for their deliberate conduct expressed in HTML and aimed at the intermediate space between the front, or user-facing, side of a Website, and the back end of a website. 80. Courts regularly enjoin parties to refrain from infringing trademarks through inserting infringing terms in the description and keyword metatags of HTML, and find such inclusion of infringing terms in metatags to be actionable infringement, even where the HTML is not immediately visible to the viewer. See, e.g., Brookfield Communs. v. W. Coast Entm't Corp., 174 F.3d 1036, 1065 (9th Cir. Cal. 1999). 81. Courts have also recognized that computer code can qualify as speech, inasmuch as it is readable by humans and computer programmers communicating ideas to one another almost inevitably communicate in code, much as musicians use notes. Universal City Studios v. Corley, 273 F.3d 429, 448 (2d Cir. 2001). 82. Thus, Courts have long recognized the power and impression of search results on a user surfing the Web, and held parties accountable for what they write in HTML. 83. The business model of commercial search engine companies such as Google, Yahoo and Microsofts Bing is an advertiser-supported one.
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84.
The underlying business model of such search engine companies is
the delivery of online advertising to as many users as possible. Websites that have more visitors create greater opportunities for a search engine company to deliver online advertisements. 85. A typical search engine user begins by entering a query, or keywords into a field in the search engines website or perhaps in Web browser bar. After a user enters keywords or terms as a search query in a search engine, blocks of text are yielded, known as search results, comprising the link to the web page and snippets of content associated with the web page. The order of prominence in which the search results appear are known as page rank or "page rankings." 86. Google operates an Internet search engine, which allows Internet users to locate Web sites that match the keywords or search terms they enter. A search engine uses algorithms to process the keywords and produce a search results page that displays links to the Web sites in the search engines database that match the keywords. Links to the Web sites usually are displayed in order of decreasing relevance, with the most relevant Web sites listed first. Googles free search engine processes hundred of millions of searches daily and covers billions of Web pages. See, e.g., Google Inc. v. Am. Blind & Wallpaper Factory, Inc., 74 U.S.P.Q. 2d 1385 (N.D. Cal. 2005) at *6. 87. A person searches for a business or person by typing the business or person as a query into a search engine such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing. She views the pages of results returned by her search query, in decreasing order of relevance as determined by the search engines proprietary algorithms. 88. What she sees is a powerful first impression of the subject of her search query. Both the "search results" and "page rankings" are important determinants for a user filtering the total amount of information available to the public through Internet research.
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8
89.
An entire business of "search engine optimization" or SEO has
developed around the critical importance of these factors. Search engine optimization concentrates on organic or algorithmic search results -- that is, natural, unpaid, search results and page rankings (as opposed to Sponsored Results that appear on the side of the main search results page and which are influenced by the purchase of keywords). See Howard Declaration, Exhibit 24. 90. Search engine optimization has been described as the business of help[ing] companies rank high on Internet search engines, such as Google, for certain keywords, so that their prospective customers can find them on the web. See, e.g., Rhino Sports, Inc. v. Sport Court, Inc., 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 32970 (D. Ariz. May 3, 2007) at *7. 91. The size of the market for SEO services provided to companies seeking to attract customers to their websites through optimizing content on the Web about them for search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo was, in 2009, a reported $14.6 billion.8 92. Courts have long recognized the importance of this first impression in the context of initial interest confusion in trademark cases, whereby the defendant, by diverting or capturing the consumers initial attention, improperly benefits from the goodwill that the plaintiff developed in its mark. 93. In this case, the Defendants improperly assassinate the goodwill of the subject in search results. They do not do this solely for altruistic reasons. They do this for their own direct pecuniary gain, either (1) in the form of sales of goods and services, or (2) in the form of increased Web traffic to its ROR Website, which drives up the statistics in web analytics that partially determines the amount of advertising revenue they receive from online advertisements. It is a win-win situation for Defendants.
Source: Crains Cleveland Business, Search Engine Advisers Growth Easy to
Fathom. (July 23, 2010).

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94.
Thus, Defendants conduct herein must be viewed not only in terms of
what is displayed on the ROR Website itself, but also in terms of what Defendants cause to be published in the HTML for each web page on the ROR Website in view of the economics of advertiser-supported search engine business models. 95. content. 96. Defendants are the owners of all Reports, rebuttals and comments by Defendant fills the content with paid the time anyone ever reads them. By the time any content is published to the Web through the ROR Website, Defendants have already acquired an exclusive, perpetual license to the
advertisements, links and sometimes paid endorsements or testimonials. Speech on the ROR Website is thus commercial speech, and accorded a lower level of protection under the First Amendment than purely expressive speech. 97. The HTML influences such things as the URL for the web page, how prominently ROR Website web pages rank in search query results and which information about Rip-off Report subjects appears in actual search results. 98. Defendants have taken many affirmative, deliberate actions in designing and controlling the process by which HTML is generated for the over 500,000 unique web pages comprising the ROR Website that are deliberately intended to improve the organic search results for web pages containing Rip-off Reports when the subjects name is search queried. 99. In particular, Defendants have been successful in maintaining favorable page ranking, or authority from Google for the over 500,000 web pages comprising the ROR Website. F. Ripoff Reports Authority with Google and Preference for Google 100. The ROR Website has been on the Internet since 1998.
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101. Google is by far the most popular search engine for Web searches. In July 2010, an estimated 69.7% of users use Google as a search engine, an estimated 5.4% use Yahoo, and an estimated 4.8% use Microsofts Bing. 102. Some professional SEO consultants have openly speculated that search engines Yahoo and Bing have changed their search algorithms to punish or downgrade Ripoff Report within their organic search results, based on the observation that search queries conducted through Yahoo or Bing for a company or individual will ordinarily return search results that rank web pages from the ROR Website containing or referring to that company or individual relatively low. 103. However, Googles search algorithms continue to give high authority to web pages from the ROR Website. Having high authority means a websites individual web pages rank consistently highly in search query page rankings. 104. Search queries conducted through Google for a company or individual will ordinarily consistently return search results that rank web pages from the ROR Website containing Rip-off Reports about that company or individual (the subject) relatively highly, if any such Rip-off Reports exist. 105. For a small business or individual that has not deliberately engaged in any SEO activities, if there is a Rip-off Report about that subject, a Google search for that business or individual will frequently return search results that rank the web page containing the Rip-off Report about that subject on the top page of Google search results, if not as the first page rank. G. Defendants Use of Domain Names To Influence Google Page Rankings 106. One of the factors that influence a particular web pages ranking in responses to Google search engine queries is the domain name and URL assigned to it.
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107. Defendants are responsible for the operating system, website design, and user interface of the ROR Website. As designed, maintained and operated by Defendants, the user interface of the ROR Website generates a unique URL for each web page associated with each of the over 500,000 Rip-off Reports hosted through the ROR Website. 108. A ROR Website user cannot actually choose a URL to assign to the web page associated with a Rip-off Report. Defendants own and control all domains and sub-directories that direct through the ROR Website located at ripoffreport.com. Only Defendants can create a web page with a URL that begins with the domain name http://www.ripoffreport.com/ . . . 109. Ripoff Report designs and operates its user interface and website operating system in a manner that it creates a unique URL for every ROR Website web page that includes in the URL itself, the name of the subject of the Report, sometimes repetitively. 110. This inclusion of the subjects personal or business name in the unique URL for a Report, always combined with the ripoffreport.com domain names for Rip-off Report web pages influences Googles search engine to give higher page rankings to Reports than web pages located at URLs that do not include such business or personal names in the URL. 111. For example, in Rip-off Report number 621543, a Report about a company called JobsforMoms.com with the headline JobsforMoms.com take our money and run Internet generates the domain name http://www.ripoffreport.com/work-at-home/jobsformoms-com/jobsformoms-comtake-our-mone-8e566.htm. This URL visibly incorporates the words ripoff, "ripoffreport," "work," "work at home," "home," "jobsformoms", and "jobsformoms.com" and would result in a higher page ranking for the web page hosting Report 621543 in search queries for those words than a web page located at a URL that did not include those words in the URL itself.
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112. The Ripoff Report enterprise designs and operate their website operating system, directories and subdirectories to generate unique URLs for individual ROR Website web pages that include the names of companies or individuals written about in the Reports. These URLs are created, controlled by and owned by Defendants thus influence search engines to return higher page rankings for ROR Website web pages displaying Rip-Off Reports about the subject companies or individuals than other web pages that may mention the same company or individual but do not include the company or individuals name in the domain name. 113. Another place the Ripoff Report enterprise optimizes the Reports for search engines are in the headlines. The headlines for many Rip-off Reports are not written in standard English with ordinary grammar and syntax. In many instances, they read like nonsense or gibberish. Such headlines frequently include redundant, repetitive instances of a company or individuals name.
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114. For example, Defendants published to the Web on or about January 28, 2009 Rip-off Report number 417493 concerning Plaintiffs. A true and correct reproduction of relevant portions of Report number 417493 and screen shot showing the URL in the browser bar is reproduced below. 115. At all times relevant herein, Report number 417493 included text near the top that repeats the name of Plaintiff Asia Economic Institute twice and also includes the acronym AEI. Asia Economic Institute, AEI, WorldEcon: Raymond Mobrez And Iliana Llaneras Complete exploitation as an employee. Do not work for the Asia Economic Institute its a SCAM! West Los Angeles California. 116. The URL for the web page on the ROR Website that displays Report number 417493 is currently http://www.ripoffreport.com/employers/asiaeconomic-instit/asia-economic-institute-aei-ef3f4.htm. This mirrors the double
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inclusion of Plaintiff Asia Economic Institutes name and the inclusion of the acronym AEI that is also in the header.
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117. The Ripoff Report enterprise changed the URL for Report 417493 at some time between the date it was originally published and the present. In or about January 2009, the URL for Report 417493 did not include so many repetitive instances of Plaintiffs names. The Ripoff Report enterprise has since optimized it for search engines. 118. Defendants updated Report number 417493 on or about May 21, 2010 at 3:30 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. Defendants continuously publish Report number 417493 to the Web. 119. At some time between January 28, 2009 and the present, Defendants caused the terms Asia Economic Institute to be repeated in the header of Report number 417493 and in URL for the web page displaying Report number 417493 to attract search engines to the web page of the Report for search queries for Asia Economic Institute and to influence the search engines to rank the web page more highly, rather than to express an idea to a reader that has already navigated to the page displaying Report number 417493. 120. Many businesses and individuals of ordinary sophistication have not purchased domain names consisting of their business or personal names. Many, if not most, businesses and individuals or ordinary sophistication do not host content at URLs or domain names that include their business or personal names. G. Defendants Preferential Treatment of Google and Founders in Reports 121. Ripoff Report actively and deliberately encourages users to prefer Google as a search engine above others, invoking Google frequently by name. Various portions of the ROR Website and form emails sent by Defendants on May 12, 2009 to Plaintiff Raymond Mobrez state, Why do we win? just do a Google search for Communications Decency Act or suggests recipients of emails to Google for advertisers to demonstrate the validity of various propositions.
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122. Ripoff Report also strongly protests on the ROR Website that it does nothing to earn special, favorable treatment from Google. 123. As early as June 26, 2009, Defendants stated on their website: Why would a multi-billion dollar company like Google give preferential treatment to a relatively small, controversial site like Ripoff Report? IT WOULDN'T, PEOPLE! . . . Ripoff Report has never, ever (not now, and not in the past) done anything to cause Google to rank our website higher in search results than other sites. Plaintiffs viewed such statements on June 26, 2009 and October 27, 2009. 124. Despite this protest, Defendants changed significantly the content of Report numbers 607436, 517026 and 144627 in a manner that makes the Reports more favorable to Google and its founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Evans. 125. Report number 607436 is a complaint about the Google Adwords program. The purportedly user-submitted Report by Chris of Atascadero, California, bears the headline beginning Google Adwords Waste of Time Internet and states that the users ad performed much better on Yahoo. 126. On or about May 31, 2010 at 9:31 a.m. Pacific Standard Time Defendants inserted in type of equal prominence on Report 607436, and transmitted through the wires in interstate commerce through the ROR Website the following false statement: NOTICE..!! this ripoff has nothing to do with Google search engine many rip-off businesses use the Google name to fool consumers. 127. The Notice on Report number 607436 transmitted by Defendants is false on its face. The true facts are that AdWords is a program operated and owned by Google, the same company as Google search engine. Google Adwords is sold at http://google.com/ads/adwords2 and the Google search engine is located at http://google.com. Both reside under the same top-level domain name, google.com 128. A true and correct copy of relevant sections of Rip-off Report Number 607436 is reproduced herein.
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129. Defendants also placed a false *Notice in between the title and header of Rip-off Report Number 517026. A true and correct copy of relevant portions of Rip-off Report Number 517026 is reproduced below:
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130. Report number 51706 is a complaint about the Google Adwords program. The Report is dated Thursday, October 29, 2009 and indicates the last posting was October 30, 2009. The purportedly user-submitted Report number 517026 by Robert of Painesville, bears a headline including google Adwords advertising ripped me off on sponsored search advertising Internet and states that anyone thinking of trying Google adwords sponsored search advertising dont Do It. 131. On or about October 30, 2009, at 4:26 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, Defendants inserted in Report number 517026 and transmitted through the wires in interstate commerce through the ROR Website, the following false statement, in bold type of much larger point size than the body of the Report consisting of the following Notice:
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NOTICE..!! this ripoff has nothing to do with Google search engine many rip-off businesses use the Google name to fool consumers. 132. The Notice added by Defendants on Report number 517206 is false on its face. 133. The true facts are that Google does offer a keyword-triggered advertising program called AdWords. See Google Inc. v. Am. Blind & Wallpaper Factory, Inc., 2005 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6228 (D. Cal. 2005) at *6. 134. Plaintiffs are informed and believe and thereon allege that Defendants changed the names in Report number 144627 from Sergey Brin to Soney Bonoi. 135. Defendant Magedson admitted that he suppressed or changed the names in Rip-off Reports about Google Co-founder Sergey Brin because Google is a company that Ripoff Report does business with and Magedson was personally told that [a user was] going to file phony reports about Google, anybody that [the user] could find out that I was doing business with. 136. Defendant Magedson admits that Sergey Brin is not a member of the Corporate Advocacy Program. Therefore, Defendants added the additional material in Report number 607436 and changed the names in Reports. 137. The true facts are that Ripoff Report does many things in creating, formatting and publishing the web pages and associated HTML of content it publishes to the Web that optimize its ranking with search engines, particularly Google, and that influence the way search results appear. H. Defendants Alter Google Search Results for CAP Members 138. Defendants misrepresent their SEO efforts in part to appear authentic
to the public and add credibility to the Reports. The Ripoff Report enterprise then offers certain ways that a subject can change or contribute to his or her own Report. One is by joining CAP.
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139. There are at least two ways to become a member of Defendants Corporate Advocacy Program. The first, official way is to engage in Defendants elaborate CAP application process. 140. Following the official method of enrolling for CAP, the potential applicant jumps through various procedural hoops, makes various written factual admissions, agrees to jurisdiction in Maricopa County, Arizona and eventually compromises and waives substantive legal rights, including all claims against Defendants. 141. The first step is to complete an intake questionnaire included on the ROR Website, a sample of which is attached hereto as Exhibit 2 as it appeared on July 26, 2010, and which is in substantially the same or same form as presented by the Ripoff Report Enterprise to Plaintiffs at all relevant times herein (First Questionnaire). 142. The First Questionnaire informs applicants that the program requires accepting responsibility for past problems and a commitment to making things better. It asks applicants, Will you be willing to accept responsibility for mistakes made? 143. On information and belief, Plaintiffs allege that a CAP applicant must answer this question in the affirmative, as well as describe information such as the average dollar amount of its sale, to continue in the application process. Attached hereto as Exhibit 3 are true and correct copies of electronic mails between one such prospective CAP applicant, Tina Norris (Norris) and Magedson, including those sent on March 9, 2010 at 8:23 p.m., May 20, 2010 at 7:55 a.m., and May 20, 2010 at 10:31 a.m. On March 2, 2010, Norris filled in and submitted the information requested by the Ripoff Report enterprise as responses to the First Questionnaire through the ROR Website. 144. After receiving responses to the First Questionnaire, Defendants send interested CAP applicants an email that advises applicants, inter alia, that they have the option of filing a free rebuttal to any Rip-off Reports about them on the
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ROR Website. Prospective CAP members receive an email from Defendants that instructs them to copy and paste into a return email to Defendants the following text: Dear Rip-off Report, I understand I could file rebuttals to the one or small hand full of reports I have. I would still like to understand the program that Rip-off Report has created to try and help businesses gain consumer trust, whether or not the reports are true or false. I realize, with or without Rip-off Report we would get complaints somewhere. I have already filled out the form which is below for your review. Please send me the RATES and whatever information you think I need to know about the benefits of joining Rip-off Report Corporate Advocacy Program. On March 9, 2010 at 8:23 p.m., Magedson sent Norris an email with the abovedescribed instructions and requesting the above-described acknowledgement (Exhibit 3). 145. On May 20, 2010 at 7:55 a.m., Norris cut and pasted the requested text into an email and emailed that reply back to Magedson, as requested in Magdsons March 9, 2010 email to Norris (Exhibit 3). 146. Thereafter, Defendants send prospective CAP applicants an email with the subject Corporate Advocacy Intake Form with several attachments. The attachments include (1) a document entitled Corporate Advocacy Program Description and Rates, which contains more details about CAP, some additional terms and conditions of CAP, some of the benefits of CAP, and a rate sheet setting forth the fees for CAP (CAP Rate Sheet), (2) a document entitled Sample letter we send to anyone that filed a Ripoff Report. 147. A true and correct copy of an actual Corporate Advocacy Program Description and Rates and covering email that was sent from Defendant Magedson to Tina Norris (Norris) on May 20, 2010 at 10:31 a.m. Central Standard Time with the subject line Corporate Advocacy Intake = TNT MGMT,
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Tina Norris 11 Reports? Our philosophy the RATES is attached hereto as Exhibit 3 at pages 6 to 10 and incorporated herein by this reference. 148. A true and correct copy of the attachment to the May 20, 2010 10:31 a.m. email from Magedson to Norris consisting of solely the Corporate Advocacy Program Description and Rates document is attached hereto as Exhibit 4. The first page of that document written and sent by the Ripoff Report enterprise states: NOTICE: Jurisdiction for this program is in Arizona, under the laws and the state of Arizona. Doing this program, both parties agree they will have no claims against each other, and jurisdiction for any disputes is in Arizona, Maricopa County. Exhibit 4. 149. The cost of joining CAP is revealed in the Rate Sheet, entitled Costs for the Cap Program - $$$$. A true and correct copy of the Rate Sheet portion of the Corporate Advocacy Program Description and Rates emailed to Tina Norris by Defendant Magedson on May 20, 2010 at 10:31 a.m. Central Standard Time is attached hereto as Exhibit 5. 150. The cost of joining the CAP program has two components, (1) an initial charge, consisting of a Programming charge plus a flat fee based on the number of reports existing at the time of joining the program, and (2) a mandatory, 36-month contract requiring Monthly Monitoring Fee payments of between by the third of the month. 151. To join CAP, an applicant with 1 to 350 Reports must pay the initial Programming charge is $7,500, plus a flat fee of between $600 to $140,000, plus a 36-month contract to pay between $35 to $7,000 per month, depending on the total number of Reports at the time of joining. 152. To join CAP, an applicants with 351 to 500 Reports must pay the initial Programming charge is $8,500, plus a flat fee of between $122,850 to $175,000, plus a 36-month contract to pay between $5,265 to $7,500 per month, depending on the total number of Reports at the time of joining.
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153. To join CAP, an applicant with 501 to 1000 Reports must pay the initial Programming charge is $15,500, plus a flat fee of between $122,850 to $175,000, plus a 36-month contract to pay between $7,515 to $15,000 per month, depending on the total number of Reports at the time of joining.. 154. To join CAP, an applicant with 1001 to 1500 Reports must pay the initial Programming charge is $20,500 plus a flat fee of between $250,250 to $375,000, plus a 36-month contract to pay between $10,010 to $15,000 per month, depending on the total number of Reports at the time of joining. 155. If the applicant is more than 10 days late in paying a monthly monitoring fee, a $50.00 late fee per day is assessed, which is incorporated into the members currently, monthly fee. 156. Thereafter, another step that an applicant to CAP must take is to provide more detailed information about its business to Defendants in the form of a second questionnaire (Second Questionnaire). A true and correct copy of an example of Defendants Second Questionnaire is attached hereto as Exhibit 6. 157. The Second Questionnaire purports to be Questions for the Agreement that Defendants will prepare based on the CAP applicants answers. 158. The email accompanying the Second Questionnaire explains that a few days after successful completion of the Second Questionnaire, Defendants will send an agreement for the CAP members signature (CAP Agreement). 159. Defendants represent that upon return of a signed CAP Agreement with payment, Defendants will send the CAP member, inter alia, a TEXT outline so you can give us your proposed comments you would like us to use to talk about your company, explaining changes your company has made . . . and other positive comments about your company. 160. Defendants also promise that upon joining the CAP program (by returning the signed CAP agreement with payment, Defendants will, inter alia, send the CAP member the 250 to 350 words you want us to put in front of the Reports found on search engines. Finally, The Ripoff Report enterprise gives as
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an example, a Google search query like this onehttp://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Blue+Coast+Financial&aq=f&aqi =g8g-m1&aql=&gs_rfai= 161. This Google search query for Blue Coast Financial yielded, as of July 25, 2010, search results as reproduced in the screenshot below: 162. As promised, joining CAP has turned the negative into a positive in
Google search results. The web page for Rip-off Report number 412338 still remains in a high-ranking position three in page rank for a Google search query for Blue Coast Financial. However, the viewer of the Google search query results sees only the following preview snippets of text for the web page displaying Ripoff Report Number 412338:
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Blue Coast Financial Review | Rip-off Report #412338 Apr 9, 2010 ... INVESTIGATION: Shawn Hull, Blue Coast Financial Commitment to 100% client satisfaction, Feel confident and secure when doing business with ... www.ripoffreport.com/.../Blue-Coast-Financial/investigation-shawn-hullblu-cc86w.htm - Cached - Similar 163. The reason this happens is that after a subject joins the CAP program,
the negative content in the Rip-off Report about the subject may not be removed, but the negative comments are pushed so far down the content attribute of the head section of the HTML code for the web page displaying the Report that the negative content becomes virtually irrelevant to the search engines because of the overwhelming good content placed in the first 90% of the metatag. 164. Cash4Gold: <meta name="keywords" content="rip-off, ripoff, rip off, Cash4Gold, Corrupt Companies" /><meta name="description" content="INVESTIGATION: Cash4Gold customers can feel safe confident & secure when doing business Cash4Gold & Albar Precious Metal Refining Commitment to total customer satisfaction, positive rating for its customer support. Consumers best bet when looking to get Cash for Gold.*UPDATE ...Rip-off Report Investigation: Cash4Gold pledges to resolve complaints. Commitment to Rip-off Report Corporate Advocacy Program.- Executives stated "We are only as strong as our weakest link running a company of this size & volume you must adapt to your customers needs" Over $350,000 spent on new state of the art tracking systems " /></head> 165. In the above example, the new, custom content is shown after the content= attribute inside the second set of meta angle brackets (between the
An example is shown below, for Ripoff Reports advertiser,
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<meta and the />. Although the previous negative part of the actual Report may not be physically removed, it is effectively removed for search results because of the change in meta tags and overwhelming page modification with positive comments. 166. The actual Rip-off Report used as an example in the Second Questionnaire Email, Report number 412338, appears to have been replaced by a retraction from the original poster as of July 25, 2010. A true and correct copy of Report Number 412338 as it appeared on July 25, 2010 currently is attached hereto as Exhibit 7. 167. Report Number 412338 provides in part: Dear Editor: Please publish the following post: I would like to retract my original post. I was completely wrong for posting what I did about Blue Coast Financial. After my post rip off report investigated the company and that made me think about what I was actually doing. I would like to apologize to the company and staff that tried to help me make this business successful. Exhibit 7. The original post referred to in Report 412338 is not visible. 168. Thus, the Ripoff Report enterprise promises, perhaps tacitly, that membership in CAP will get the CAP member favorable, prominent search results, and points the CAP applicant to an example where the original Report has obviously been replaced. The only thing that appears to remain the same is the number. 169. A second, unofficial way to get into CAP is to file a lawsuit against Defendants. 170. The Ripoff Report enterprise makes many representations of fact to the public and to victims in furtherance of the Content Trolling Scheme. 171. Among Defendants most striking false representations, both on the ROR Website on both June 26, 2009 and October 27, 2009, and in emails to
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individuals seeking information about Rip-off Reports, is that WE DO NOT Remove any Rip-off Reports and never removes reports for money. 172. ROR falsely claims that it never takes down reports, whether for money or even if you sue, including currently on the Ripoff Report Website Ripoff Report . . . will not remove complaints even if you sue. This quotation appeared on the Website on June 26, 2009 and October 27, 2009. Plaintiffs viewed the page containing this statement on those dates, and relied thereon. 173. This is absolutely false. Ripoff Report has taken down at least two reports after litigation, and for a sum of over $100,000, in October 2009 and December 2009. 174. The true facts are that Ripoff Report has removed Rip-off Reports, and for substantial amounts of money. For substantial amounts of money, Rip-off Report will disclaim Rip-off Reports, has permitted the subjects of Rip-off Reports to write large portions of the contents, and has taken down Rip-off Reports. 175. A settlement agreement dated May 15, 2009 entered into and signed by Defendants Xcentric and Magedson, on the one hand, and QED Media Group, LLC, and Robert Russo, the subject of certain Rip-off Reports, on the other hand (the QED Agreement) attached hereto as Exhibit 8, provides in part: a. b. d. QED will pay to Xcentric the sum of Eleven Thousand dollars ($11,000) in the form of a cashiers check; . . . QED will execute a promissory note [to Xcentric] for the principal sum of Ninety Thousand Dollars ($90,000) . . . Xcentric will insert into the beginning of the body of Report number 311070, Report number 254798, and Report number 261756 up to 250 words of content provided by QED.
Exhibit 8. 176. Defendants induce subjects of negative reports, including Plaintiffs, to take steps that effectively aggravate their injuries rather than helping them, by posting rebuttals, while deterring them from exercising their rights by misleading them as to Defendants track record of success in the courts.
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177. ROR tells the subjects of its reports that they can tell their side of the story if they file a rebuttal. 178. However, not all rebuttals are posted. Moreover, what ROR does not tell subjects of reports is that filing a rebuttal is likely to increase the prominence of the negative statements, and does so in a way that only the negative appears in search results, not the positive. See Exhibit 24. 179. ROR also does not tell subjects that filing a rebuttal is financially helpful to ROR because it increase the visitor traffic, amount of fresh content and strengthens the overall authority of the site. 180. ROR also does not tell those to whom it advocates filing a rebuttal that ROR then sells advertising links from the rebuttals. Thus, ROR is the ultimate troll a website that baits innocent people into defending themselves, and then advertising against the fresh content contained in their rebuttals. 181. Furthermore, ROR claims that you can always file a free rebuttal. This is false. Many rebuttals do not get posted, thus depriving subjects of the ability to tell their side of the story and aggravating the harm to their reputation on the Internet with devastating consequence to their business and personal lives. Moreover, the claim that anyone can file a free rebuttal leads the public to infer that the subject does not have a response. 182. ROR also makes a number of exaggerated claims concerning its own legal liability. It claims never to have lost a case, and that people who sue will pay their legal fees. This intimidates subjects and potential lawyers from exercising their rights through overly exaggerated misrepresentations of the proper standards of law, amount to fraud under the circumstances. Meanwhile, their victims businesses quickly disintegrate, leaving them desperate, and if they followed RORs advice to post rebuttals, ultimately without true recourse except to join CAP or pay an SEO consultant. 183. Ripoff Report presents CAP and its Verified Safe program as endorsements that a consumer can trust. This violates Section 5 of the FTC ACT,
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15 U.S.C. 45, and the Codes of Federal Regulations promulgated there under, 16 C.F.R. Part 255.0 et seq. because Defendants fail to make material disclosures that would affect consumers perception of Defendants endorsement of such programs as paid advertisements and are not neutral and objective. 184. Defendants conduct violates the FTC Guides because ROR does not disclose that it is paid money to make these testimonials and endorsements. They will endorse and verify safe anyone that pays them, even when the federal authorities have found the endorsed business to be corrupt. 185. Finally, ROR claims that it has not done anything to get more favorable search results with Google. Yet, ROR has altered content concerning Google to maintain its good favor. 186. Together, these false statements and misrepresentations constitute a scheme to defraud Plaintiffs and others similarly situated through the use of wire communication as defined in 18 U.S.C. 1343. 187. This pattern of wire fraud proximately caused the injuries to Plaintiffs and others in their business or property as defined in 18 U.S.C. 1962(c) and (d). 188. Desperate, the subjects of Reports are overwhelmed in the aftermath of having a report go up about them. 189. The distress of a subject is well known among a business sector of consultants who purport to have knowledge as to how to address the existence of a Report. 190. Victims are deluged with calls, e-mails and faxes from services soliciting fees to repair online reputation caused by the ROR. 191. Defendants intentionally used their Web site as a scheme to attempt to obtain money from advertisers, Plaintiff and others by means of (1) the negative Google search results generated from Rip-Off Reports and (2) false and defamatory content acquired and distributed by Defendants. 192. Promising media attention and monetary compensation via class action lawsuits, Defendants solicit purely negative content about businesses and
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individuals and guide the creation of these complaints with their Ripoff Revenge guidebook. In fact, the Rip-off Report Do-It-Yourself Guide to Rip-off Revenge offers step by step instructions to readers looking to redress their grievances. 193. Defendants then label these businesses or individuals a Ripoff and preclude publication of positive Reports. 194. This biased presentation of these targets appears in Google search results and are typically visible on the first page of the results page. 195. Using the pseudonym Corporate Advocacy Program (CAP), Defendants charge as much as $7,500 to replace the negative search results with positive affirmations. In addition, CAP members must pay a fee based on the number of reports and a monthly monitoring fee per report times the reports originally filed. The monthly monitoring fee agreement is for a minimum term of 36 months. V. DEFENDANTS VIOLATIONS OF 18 U.S.C. 1343 (Wire Fraud)
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A.
Defendants Falsely Represent That Reports Never Come Down 196. Defendants make several, false and fraudulent statements of fact on its
Web site and in e-mails sent by Defendant Edward Magedson to Plaintiffs and others similarly situated in a concerted effort to collect revenue from the sale of their Ripoff Revenge guidebook, sale of their Corporate Advocacy Program, advertisements, Internet traffic and link referrals. 197. These misrepresentations were made with the specific intent of: (1) deceiving the public as to the legitimacy of their purported consumer advocacy site; (2) deceiving the public as to the impartiality of their Rip-off Reports; (3) deceiving the public as to safety of those businesses and individuals endorsed via CAP; (4) deceiving the targets of the Ripoff Report enterprise into believing the
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free rebuttal will be effective and helpful; and (5) deceiving the targets into believing that legal action is futile because it cannot accomplish the goal of removing Reports from Defendants database or the ROR Website, and that the only way to remedy the harmful effects of Defendants Web site is through payment to information technology consultants or the Defendants themselves. 198. Defendants mislead those victimized on their website when they state both on the site and in emails they never take reports down. come down or reports always stay up. 199. At all times relevant hereto, Defendants state on the ROR Website that they never remove reports. 200. Defendants state on the ROR Website, including on April 3, 2009 and on July 26, 2010 that: Since the Ripoff Report was started in 1998, our policy has always remained the same we never remove reports. 201. Currently, and at all relevant times hereto including specifically on They have expressed this false statement in a number of ways, also stating that reports never
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April 3, 2009, June 26, 2009 and July 26, 2010, the Ripoff Report enterprise makes
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the following statements of fact through the ROR website:

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i.
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We . . . will not consider removal requests from anyone, including a Ripoff Report . . . will not remove complaints even if you sue. We dont write reports, and we dont remove reports. PERIOD.
request which claims to be from the original author of a report. ii.

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iii.
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202. A true and correct screen shot of the ROR Website containing these statements of fact as it appeared on July 23, 2010 is attached hereto as Exhibit
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9.
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203. On May 12, 2009, Defendant Edward Magedson sent Plaintiff

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Raymond Mobrez an e-mail containing the following false statements of fact: i. Rip-off Report is a permanent record.
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ii. iii. iv. v. vi.
a Rip-off Report cannot be taken off. we have a uniform policy against removing reports. WE DO NOT Remove any Rip-off Reports we do not remove a submitted Rip-off Report, and we never will. Some people claim we remove reports for money, but that is just plain false.
Attached hereto as Exhibit 10 is a true and accurate copy of the email sent on May 5, 2009 from Magedson to Mobrez making these false statements of fact. 204. On July 24, 2009, Defendant Edward Magedson sent Plaintiff Raymond Mobrez an e-mail containing the following false statement of fact: We do not remove reports. 205. The true facts are that Reports do, in fact, come down, for substantial sums of money, and after a lawsuit, and that Defendants do write portions of Reports in collaboration with CAP members or parties with whom they have settled a lawsuit. Attached previously hereto as Exhibit 8 is a true and accurate copy of a non-confidential settlement agreement between Xcentric Ventures, LLC, Ed Magedson and QED Media Group, LLC and Robert Russo whereby the parties agree that Defendants will not post any new reports regarding QED Media Group, LLC and Robert Russo, if the contributor of the report can not prove to the reasonable satisfaction of Xcentric that he or she was an actual customer of QED, if not, the report will not be posted. Defendants Counsel has admitted that Reports have, on occasion, been removed from the ROR Web site, including pursuant to the QED Agreement, and that Russo owed significant sums of money to the Ripoff Report enterprise under the agreement providing for such removal. 206. On January 15, 2010 at 2:02 (EST), Defense Counsel for ROR, David Gingras, sent an email to Jan Smith stating that ROR was asked to take down a
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report and said YES. Gingras January 15, 2010 email to Smith is attached hereto as Exhibit 11. 207. Likewise, Gingras stated that he may be able to remove Ms. Smiths Reports per Edward Magedsons approval. 208. On information and belief, reports previously categorized under Suspicious Activities no longer appear on Defendants Web site. On January 17, 2010, a Report about Jan Smith was published and appeared on the ROR Website under the category Suspicious Activities. By April 3, 2009, the entire category of Reports under Suspicious Activities was deleted. 209. In a telephone conversation that took place on April 12, 2010, counsel for Defendants, David Gingras, falsely told or implied to Jan Smith that he had removed a report for a 16 year old girl. 210. In an e-mail to Texas attorney, Kenton Hutcherson, dated October 29, 2009, Defendants counsel, Maria Speth, stated After further reflection, and based on issues beyond compliance with the settlement agreement, Ripoff Report has decided to completely remove report number 510675. It was deactivated yesterday. See Declaration of Kenton Hutcherson attached hereto as Exhibit 12 (including Speths October 29, 2009 email to Hutcherson). 211. On July 20, 2010, during a conference between both parties, counsel for Defendants, Maria Speth, confirmed that two reports concerning Mr. Hutchersons former client, QED Media Group, LLC, were removed on two separate occasions. See Declaration of Daniel F. Blackert, attached hereto as Exhibit 18. 212. The false statements lead those victimized to believe they have very limited courses of action. If they wish to mitigate the damage caused by these reports, they must either pay Defendants to be in the CAP or pay an information technology (IT) consultant to publish alternative online content to repair their reputation via search engines.
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213. Plaintiffs did take such steps. On October 24, 2009, Plaintiffs posted a listing on Craigslist seeking an on site web product developer with SEO skills in order to combat the defamatory reports. advertisement. 214. On March 6, 2009, Plaintiffs paid a Search Engine Optimization consultant eight hundred and ninety ($890.00) dollars in connection with work performed to mitigate the defamatory reports on ROR. 215. Again on March 27, 2009, Plaintiffs paid a Search Engine Optimization consultant six hundred dollars ($600.00) in connection with work performed to mitigate the defamatory reports on ROR. 216. On May 14, 2009, Plaintiffs paid a Search Engine Optimization consultant eight hundred dollars ($800.00) in connection with work performed to mitigate the defamatory reports on ROR. 217. Thereafter, Plaintiffs paid a Search Engine Optimization consultant one hundred dollars ($100.00) in connection with work performed to mitigate the defamatory reports on the ROR Website. 218. Others have expended monies in order to mitigate and/or take down the defamatory posts on the ROR. 219. In or around February 2010, Tina Norris, another victim of the Content Trolling Scheme, paid $600 to Reputation Defender, and SEO consultant, to repair the damage caused in Google search results by the Reports published by the Ripoff Report enterprise in furtherance of the Content Trolling Scheme. 220. Another victim, Kathy Spano and her teenage daughter, residents of the State of California, engaged an SEO consultant on May 18, 2010 for the amount of $3,000 to repair the damage to the teenage daughter caused by the posting of negative Reports in furtherance of the Content Trolling Scheme. 221. Another victim, attorney Laura Snoke, a resident of the State of California, paid $3,500 upfront and $300 a month to maintain her own website and blogs specifically to counteract the presence of the negative Reports in Google
Plaintiffs paid $25.00 to post this
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searches. Nonetheless, clients and prospective clients mention to her the Reports. A true and correct copy of the Declaration of Laura Snoke is attached hereto as Exhibit 26. 222. The Ripoff Report Enterprise also makes these false representations that reports are never removed even if you sue, to intimidate the victims, deflect litigation to the contributors, and reinforce the myth that Defendants are immune, thus causing victims to sit on their rights while the statute of limitations runs, and in some cases, as in Blockowicz, in fact claiming that the statute of limitations for the underlying claim has run. The false statements are intended to, and in many cases do, cause victims to believe they can only exercise legal process directed at the contributors of the Reports to get ultimate relief. Defendants do not disclose that they will disobey any injunction thus obtained. 223. On April 22, 2010, Ms. Spanos teenage daughter currently has a lawsuit pending in Superior Court for the State of California, Riverside County, against Defendant Xcentric doing business as RipoffReport.com, Lombardo v. RipoffReport.com, (RIC 10005777) for damages due to defamation and to prevent new Reports from being published. A true and correct copy of the Riverside lawsuit is attached hereto as Exhibit 20. 224. Likewise, Tina Norris incurred one hundred and thirty-four thousand dollars $134,000 in attorneys fees in obtaining the identity of authors of Reports and in obtaining injunctive relief against the contributor. Nonetheless, The Ripoff Report enterprise continues to acquire and publish new content from the contributor. 225. Another victim of false reports, attorney Peter Mallon, a resident of the State of California, described that he was quoted a price of $2,995 from Quick Rep Repair to commence work on repairing his online reputation. A true and correct copy of the Declaration of Peter Mallon is attached hereto as Exhibit 21. 226. Mallon was advised by the representative of Quick Rep Repair that Defendant Magedson is generally in hiding to avoid service of lawsuits against
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him. See Exhibit 21 at 8. In addition to selling services, such consultants prey upon the confusion, distress and panic induced in subjects of the Reports to compound rumors and speculation about the degree to which the Ripoff Report enterprise will respond to formal legal process or informal requests for help. Myths and rumors regarding the efficacy and availability of court remedies are aggravated and compounded by the legal advocacy published on the ROR Website to its unsophisticated victims. Plaintiffs are informed and believe and thereon allege that counsel for Defendants Xcentric and Magedson, Mari Crimi Speth, of Jaburg & Wilk, will accept service of process for Defendants Xcentric and Magedson. B. Defendants Falsely State That Victims Can File A Free Rebuttal and That Rebuttals Are Effective and Helpful. 227. Defendants also grossly overstate the ability of those targeted to file a
free rebuttal in response to negative Reports and grossly misrepresent the effect of rebuttals as being helpful, rather than harmful. 228. Currently, Defendants made and make the following false statements of fact on their Web site, at all time relevant hereto including specifically on March 4, 2009, on April 3, 2009, June 26, 2009, October 27, 2009: i. report. ii. i. ii. iii. you can write a rebuttal explaining your position. Rebuttals are 100% free, and we strongly encourage you to use If you think a report is fake and/or written by a competitor, Your rebuttal can also demand that the customer post some We offer you the opportunity to file a REBUTTAL to any
this resource since they can be extremely effective. feel free to say so in your rebuttal. form of proof to back up their story.
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iv. v. vi.
Even if a customer wont submit an update, you can write a If you find a complaint has been filed against you, the best If a company has received one or more Ripoff Reports, that
rebuttal stating what you have done to make thing to make things right. thing you can do is to post a rebuttal. business always has the option of posting free rebuttals Attached hereto as Exhibit 13 is a true and accurate printout from RORs website evidencing the above as of July 26, 2010. 229. On May 5, 2009 at 11:48 a.m., Defendant Edward Magedson sent Plaintiff Raymond Mobrez an e-mail containing the false statements: i. ii. Just file a rebuttal . . . the truth shall set you free. You can simply file a rebuttal and explain your side of the
story its free and you dont have to even read any further, just log on and file a rebuttal telling your side of the story, best to not be combative or insulting. iii. storyits free. iv. v. Again, you can file a rebuttal(s) for free. we supply a REBUTTAL feature so that the company reported You can simply file a rebuttal and explain your side of the
has a chance to respond by agreeing, disagreeing, or apologizing and explaining what will be done to fix the issue. (See Exhibit 13) 230. The true facts are that the Ripoff Report enterprise makes it easy to file negative Reports, but make it much more difficult to file rebuttals. 231. A number of people have unsuccessfully attempted to post rebuttals in response to negative Reports about them, including, but not limited to Tina Norris and Jan Smith. 232. Between July and November 2008, Tina Norris and a team of employees attempted to file positive rebuttals to reports about her and her business, TNT Management. Each rebuttal they submitted was in response to a different
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Report. Of their approximately 40 submissions, the Ripoff Report enterprise declined to post approximately half. 233. On January 19, 2010 and January 19, 2010 Jan Smith sent emails to info@ripoffreport.com complaining that rebuttals she has submitted to Reports were not being posted. See Exhibit 19. 234. This misrepresentation that subjects can always file rebuttals creates the illusion that Reports are balanced. It gives the public a sense that both positive reports and negative content can be easily posted. This is not the case. 235. The illusion created by Defendants misrepresentations legitimizes the complaints against Plaintiffs, thereby aggravating the harm done to the targeted business or individual by the Content Trolling Scheme. 236. On May 5, 2009 at 11:48 a.m., Defendant Edward Magedson sent Plaintiff Raymond Mobrez an e-mail containing the following statements of fact: i. shall set you free. ii. story iii. file a rebuttal to the nasty Report about you, state that you had made a mistake in the past and explain how youve contacted (or are contacting if the rebuttal is your sole method of contact) the author of the report to make things right with them. . . We know it works. iv. consumers. v. we supply a REBUTTAL feature so that the company reported has a chance to respond by agreeing, disagreeing, or apologizing and explaining what will be done to fix the issue. vi. file a rebuttal that is pleasant and, if you wish, mention that you support this forum.
Best to respond to the report Just file a rebuttal.. the truth You can simply file a rebuttal and explain your side of the
We encourage you to post a rebuttal explaining your side of
the story, but we have a uniform policy against removing reports posted by
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A true and correct copy of Mr. Magedsons May 5, 2009 at 11:48 a.m. email to Mr. Mobrez is attached hereto. 237. In the May 5, 2009 email, Magedson adverts to his knowledge that the public is finding Reports on search engines with the statement, Consumers are probably finding your business on search engines that would never even know about you! 238. Defendants do not disclose their ulterior motivation for advocating their free, rebuttal service. 239. Filing a rebuttal actually hurts those victimized on the ROR website and in search results more than it helps them. Not only does it do nothing to make the Reports filed less conspicuous, but filing a Rebuttal refreshes Googles search indexing, thereby increasing content and visits for the ROR Website site and Reports. This also raises the page ranking of the negative Report. In other words, filing a rebuttal is likely to drive the negative report up in the search rankings creating a vicious circle of attempting to minimize the harm yet, at the same time, giving these Reports more prominence. 240. Rebuttals act as fresh content, refreshing the Reports with search engines, particularly when Defendants add paid links to advertising the content in the rebuttals. See Exhibit 24, 14-16. 241. Furthermore, rebuttals do not appear in Google search results, if at all, in an intelligible context comparable to the significantly altered Reports published by the Ripoff Report enterprise that are stuffed with positive HTML text about CAP members. 242. Filing a rebuttal also requires registration and acceptance of RORs terms of service, which contain an Arizona venue and choice of law that clause Defendants may invoke should victims realize the effect of the Content Trolling Scheme and wish to exercise their First Amendment right of petition against Defendants in the courts.
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243. The aggravating effect of submitting a rebuttal is well observed. In or about February 2010, Tina Norris paid $600 to an SEO consultant, Reputation Defender, to successfully lower the ranking of the Reports targeting her from number one to number four in Google page rankings. Thereafter, Norris also filed a rebuttal to a Report. After she filed a rebuttal, the Report went back to the number one position, rendering any work done by the consultant useless. 244. Plaintiffs did rely on the false statements on the ROR Website on March 4, 2009 and April 3, 2009 that the best thing you can do is to post a rebuttal. 245. On April 3, 2009, through counsel, Plaintiffs registered with the ROR Website and thereafter posted a rebuttal. 246. Whereas on March 4, 2009, the Google search result for Raymond Mobrez returned a Report as third in page rank, the Google search rank for Raymond Mobrez currently returns a Report as the first in page rank. C. Defendants Falsely State that they have never done anything to cause Google to rank their website higher in the search results. 247. Defendants falsely misrepresent to the public that Ripoff Report has never, ever (not now, and not in the past) done anything to cause Google to rank our website higher in search results than other sites. This quotation appeared on the ROR website on June 26, 2009 and October 27, 2009. 248. ROR makes the following allegations on their webpage: In response to the question I head that the Ripoff Report pays Google to get higher rankings in search results, is that true? the Web site responds, No. This is 100% false. These statements appeared on the ROR website on June 26, 2009 and October 27, 2009.
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i.
For the record Ripoff Report has never, ever (not now, and
not in the past) done anything to cause Google to rank our website higher in search results than other sites. Attached hereto as Exhibit 14 is a true and accurate printout from RORs website dated July 26, 2010 evidencing the above. 249. Ripoff Report has, in fact, done many things to support itself as a business model and cause Google to rank postings higher by circumventing punitive changes in algorithms. The website gives Google special treatment in reports to maintain their high organic Google search authority and favorable ranking. 250. Both Bing and Yahoo have discredited and penalized Defendants website in their search algorithms. 251. However, Ripoff Report has actively written and published titles, disclaimers, and comments to maintain favor with Google. They have changed the meaning of reports concerning Google in substantial ways to achieve that objective. For example, Defendants wrote a disclaimer that this is not google.com the search company on a report posted about Google Adsense. Defendants have changed the name of Sergey Brin, a Google founder, and editorialized about reports on Brin and Larry Evans. 252. The public relies on the false statement as true, and gives greater credence to the illusion that Ripoff Report is a legitimate site if it ranks so highly with common search engines like Google. Furthermore, Defendants place these misleading statements on the Want to Sue Us page on their website. This strategic placement allows them to take advantage of those victimized because it discourages them from asserting their rights. 253. Plaintiffs and others were damaged viewed these false statements and were damaged in money paid to IT consultants, loss of contacts and business opportunities in which they have a recognized property right and directly delayed bringing suit by intimidation.
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D.
Defendants Falsely Present Themselves As Authorities In Internet And Technology Law With Specialized Knowledge Under Circumstances that Transform Legal Opinion Into Actionable Fraud. 254. Defendants mislead the public when they state that they are immune
from legal action, have never lost a case, and present numerous contentions of law as fact. They assert that the Communications Decency Act insulates them from liability in all cases. These statements appeared on the ROR website on June 26, 2009 and October 27, 2009. Plaintiffs viewed these statements on those dates. 255. ROR makes the following claims on their webpage. Plaintiffs viewed these claims on their webpage on June 26, 2009 and October 27, 2009: i. If you are considering sending us a notice or demand (or if you
have already done so), this page is intended to provide you with information that may help you to better understand the situation and your rights, as well as the rights of the people who post reports here. You need to understand that threats against Ripoff Report are not effective, nor will they result in the removal of any reports. Here's why. ii. Because we will not remove reports, Ripoff Report has been sued on many occasions based on the content which our users have created and posted. If you are considering suing Ripoff Report because of a report which you claim is defamatory, you should be aware that to date, Ripoff Report has never lost such a case (with one exception; explained below). This is because of a federal law called the Communications Decency Act or "CDA", 47 U.S.C. 230. Because this important law is not well known, we want to take a moment to explain the law, and to also explain that the filing of frivolous lawsuits can have serious consequences for those who file them, both parties and their attorneys. iii. Because the reports on Ripoff Report are authored by users of the site, we cannot be legally regarded as the "publisher or speaker" of the reports contained here, and hence we are not liable for reports even if they contain false or
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inaccurate information. The same law applies to sites like FaceBook, MySpace, and CraigsList users who post information on these sites are responsible for what they write, but the operators of the sites are not. iv. Based on the protection extended by the CDA, Ripoff Report has successfully defended more than 20 lawsuits in both state and federal courts. Each time, the courts have consistently found that the CDA shields Ripoff Report from any claims seeking to treat it as the speaker or publisher of information posted by a third party. v. vi. You can always sue the author if you want, but you cant sue On April 3, 2008, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an Ripoff Report just because we provide a forum for speech. opinion in a case called Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley v. Roommates.com, L.L.C., 521 F.3d 1157 (9th Cir. 2008). Some people (okay, lawyers, mostly), initially argued that Roommates narrowed the CDA significantly, exposing Ripoff Report to liability even with regard to information posted by third parties. Sorry folks, but since Roommates was decided, other courts have agreed that the facts of the case are unique and the outcome is really limited to those facts. The decision in GW Equity v. Xcentric Ventures cited above specifically discusses the Ninth Circuits decision in Roommates in detail and then concludes that it does not affect our immunity under the CDA. vii. parties. viii. Ripoff Report is not liable for statements posted by a third party, and it has never lost a case involving such statements, so it will not remove complaints even if you sue. ix. Filing a lawsuit will, however, guarantee the removal of one thing -- a LOT of money from your wallet and into an attorney's pocket. Whether or not you choose to post a rebuttal, under the CDA you cannot hold Ripoff Report legally responsible for material written by third
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x.
First, Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and
each state court's rules, generally require that all pleadings, including initial Complaints, must be presented in good faith, after a reasonable investigation into the facts and the law, and not made for an improper purpose such as harassment. What this means in plain English is that if you file a lawsuit which you know contains false claims, or if you sue without first conducting a reasonable investigation as to the law as it may pertain to the facts of your case (such as determining the identity of the author of the report(s) you are concerned about), you and/or your attorney can be subject to serious sanctions at the judge's discretion. Many who have sued settled with us and some have paid some or all of our attorney's fees. Other times we have defended the cases for years running up large legal bills for both sides. Either way, we never paid out a dime in settlement or damages to anyone who has sued us. xi. In addition to penalties a judge may issue, those who would threaten us need to be aware of another law which imposes civil liability on anyone who files a frivolous lawsuit. This claim is known as "wrongful use of civil proceedings" and it is defined by 674 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts as follows: (a) he acts without probable cause, and primarily for a purpose other than that of securing the proper adjudication of the claim in which the proceedings are based, and (b) except when they are ex parte, the proceedings have terminated in favor of the person against whom they are brought. xii. Because Ripoff Report is immune from liability under the CDA for defamation-based and related claims, any suit that seeks to impose liability for the speech of our users is, by definition, an action brought "without probable cause". We encourage the prompt and fair resolution of disputes between Ripoff Report authors and those who are the subject of Ripoff Reports. However, Ripoff Report wants to be clear that it accepts no liability for the speech of its users, and it will vigorously defend any litigation brought against us which seeks to circumvent the CDA. In addition, any suit filed against us without probable cause
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may subject the complaining party and/or their attorneys to liability in the State of Arizona for wrongful use of civil proceedings. We don't mean to sound harsh, but if you knowingly file a frivolous lawsuit against us, regardless of where your case is filed, you and/or your lawyers can be subject to a lawsuit in Arizona in which a jury could, if appropriate, award both substantial compensatory and punitive damages against you. xiii. Finally, you need to be aware that if you file a lawsuit simply to harass us, not only will this not work, it will very likely end up being EXTREMELY expensive for you. Due to the number of meritless cases we have had to defend, Ripoff Report has adopted a very strict policy about lawsuits -- once Ripoff Report is forced to appear in a case, it will not stipulate to a dismissal of the case unless the party who filed the action agrees to pay Ripoff Report's attorney fees. There will be no exceptions. If you conduct a thorough investigation BEFORE you sue and you believe you have a valid case despite the CDA, it is your right to pursue your case and prove it in court. However, once you file a lawsuit, be prepared to either take it all the way to a decision on the merits or pay Ripoff Report's attorney fees because Ripoff Report will not stipulate to a dismissal without compensation. Attached hereto as Exhibit 15 is a true and accurate printout from RORs website dated July 26, 2010 evidencing the above. 256. On May 5, 2009 at 11:48 a.m., Defendant Edward Magedson sent Plaintiff Raymond Mobrez an e-mail containing the following claims: i. Be warned. To those of you who threaten to sue, be prepared
to go the long haul, and, when you want to do a walk away because you realize you cannot and will not win because you filed a frivolous law suit, you will be paying for our legal bills and in some cases and then some, before we will let you out of the case. .. Just ask anyone who has sued us for years. Many of them will not admit to you that they paid us.. but they do.. If you are thinking of suing us, I hope you are personally prepared for this. We are.
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ii.
[T]here have been a lot more legal superior court decisions,
and other lower court decisions some published decisions. ALL IN OUR FAVOR. And We have been sued more than 2 dozen times and never, thats NEVER LOST A CASE. Suing us will only get you more publicity and additional listings on search engines. iii. Anyone thinking of coming after Rip-off Report (filing a lawsuit) will get nowhere and will only, more than likely, get more bad publicity, because the lawsuit is public information. (attached hereto as Exhibit 10 is a true and accurate copy of Mr. Magedsons May 5, 2009 at 11:48 a.m email to Mr. Mobrez.). 257. Many of these contentions appearing on the Want to Sue Ripoff Report? section of Defendants website are either false or opinion wrongly presented as fact or partial truths. Defendants have settled cases and defaulted on cases, which is considered tantamount to an unfavorable resolution. Moreover, Courts have held that CDA immunity does not apply to claims like RICO that do not attempt to hold Ripoff Report as the speaker of third party content. 258. These misrepresentations result in members of the public failing to bring suit in an attempt to assert their legal rights. Many of them feel intimidated from even exploring any legal recourse. Moreover, these statements help to establish the credibility of the site and content appearing on the site, further misleading the public to believe that Ripoff Report is a legitimate website. Plaintiffs viewed these misleading statements and relied detrimentally thereon. 259. Plaintiffs were injured both by the publics perception and in the form of fees paid to IT consultants, loss of business over time and lost contract, both for AEIs business and lost real estate commissions on transactions for Mobrez and Llaneras. 260. If Plaintiffs had known the true facts they would have sued ROR earlier and not delayed in trying to resolve this issue by any means other than a
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lawsuit, thereby taking early action to remedy the erosion in their business and property interests and loss of valuable contracts. E. Defendants falsely state that they do no filter or suppress reports, unlike the Better Business Bureau. 261. Plaintiffs viewed the following statements on the Ripoff Report website on August 12, 2009. The website also currently as of July 26, 2010 contains the following claims: i. Unlike the Better Business Bureau, Ripoff Report does not hide reports of "satisfied" complaints. ALL complaints remain public and unedited in order to create a working history on the company or individual in question. 262. Plaintiffs viewed the following statements on the Ripoff Report website on both June 26, 2009 and October 27, 2009. The website also currently contains the following claims: i. First, this site is most effective when all complaints are maintained and preserved so that over time patterns of truly bad business practices are exposed. If we removed reports after a certain period of time, this would provide consumers with less information to use when evaluating a company. Unlike the Better Business Bureau (which deletes complaints after just 36 months), we maintain a permanent record of all complaints. This ensures that our viewers have more information rather than less. 263. As mentioned above, Ripoff report does not post negative reports about certain businesses, including negative reports about CAP members and reports about CAP, itself and its agents. The public relies on these false statements, giving more credence to the negative reports. 264. Moreover, Defendants will not post positive reports. 265. As set forth above, plaintiffs were injured by fees paid to IT contractors and loss of business and contracts. If Plaintiffs had known the true facts they would have sued ROR earlier and not delayed in trying to resolve this issue by
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any means other than a lawsuit, thereby taking early action to remedy the erosion in their business and property interests and loss of valuable contracts. F. Defendants Mislead The Public When They Present CAP Members As Safe, Reliable, And Trustworthy. 266. Defendants state that they investigate the truth to posts about CAP members. They portray this process as reliable and accurate. Furthermore, they portray CAP members as those businesses that are dedicated to improving their customer service. 267. For example, ROR states: i. Rip-off Report Investigation: John Beck Free And Clear Mentoring of America pledges to resolve complaints & address inquiries from the past, and in the future. Commitment to Rip-off Report Corporate Advocacy Business Remediation & Customer Satisfaction Program. Consumers can feel confident & secure when doing business with John Beck commitment to 100% customer satisfaction fulfilling commitment to provide excellent customer service safeguards for their clients. ii. UPDATE Rip-off Report Investigation: John Beck Pledges To Resolve Complaints. commitment to 100% customer satisfaction Consumers can feel confident & secure when doing business with John Beck. (A true and correct copy of this page of ROR dated July 26, 2010 is attached hereto as Exhibit 16. 268. John Beck is currently being investigated by the Federal Trade Commission. In addition, the FTC, on its website, advises individuals and businesses that John Beck is running a scam and to not to business with him. (A true and correct copy of the aforementioned page is attached hereto as Exhibit 17.
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269. In fact, Defendants conduct CAP investigations strictly through the email and Defendant Ed Magedson is the only one involved in the process. A true and correct copy of portions of the 30(b)(6) deposition of Ed Magedson evidencing the above is attached to the Declaration of Daniel Blackert as Exhibit 18. 270. In fact, anyone can pay to have favorable commentary featured on their reports via joining the CAP. The public relies on these statements when they infer that non-CAP members are not committed to excellent customer service, unlike CAP members. 271. As set forth above, Plaintiffs were injured by fees paid to IT contractors and loss of business and contracts. 272. If Plaintiffs had known the true facts they would have sued ROR earlier and not delayed in trying to resolve this issue by any means other than a lawsuit, thereby taking early action to remedy the erosion in their business and property interests and loss of valuable contracts. FIRST CLAIM FOR RELIEF VIOLATION OF 18 U.S.C. 1962(c) Civil RICO (Against All Defendants) 273. Plaintiffs re-allege and incorporate herein all preceding paragraphs as fully set forth herein. 274. Xcentric and Magedson, both in his individual capacity and as Manager of Xcentric and as Editor of Ripoff Report, and each of them, are persons as defined under 18 U.S.C. 1961(3) and 18 U.S.C. 1962(c). 275. At all relevant times herein, Defendants Xcentric and Magedson were employed by and/or affiliated with Ripoff Report, an enterprise or association in fact enterprise within the meaning of 18 U.S.C. 1961(4) and 1962(c), located in this judicial district and elsewhere in California and other states, which is used to sell goods and services in interstate commerce, and was engaged in
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activities that affected interstate commerce using interstate wire (the ROR Enterprise). 276. Plaintiffs are informed and believe and thereon allege that the ROR Enterprise also comprised an individual named Karen or Karen@ripoffreport.com,, the identity of whom is presently unknown, and other persons presently unknown, including those responsible for writing the So You Want to Sue Ripoff Report portions of the ROR Website and Xcentric and Magedsons law firm or legal team to the extent they committed the predicate acts alleged herein. 277. Defendant Magedson was and is associated with Defendant Xcentric Ventures, LLC, and has control over this enterprise such that he can conduct and participate in its conduct, either directly or indirectly, in the operation and management of the enterprise. 278. Defendants Ed Magedson and Xcentric Ventures, LLC, own, operate, and/or control the Web site located at www.RipoffReport.com (Ripoff Report). 279. Defendants use this Web site as a vehicle to defraud the public. The fraudulent claims made in furtherance of that scheme constitute violations of 18 U.S.C. 1343, particularly where all communications are made over the Internet. 280. Each communication and representation made by the Defendant via electronic mail and web publication constitutes the transmittal by means of wire communication in interstate commerce of signals, sounds, or writings for the purpose of executing or in connection with the aforementioned schemes and artifices to defraud. 281. Defendants knew or had reason to know that these transmissions were in furtherance of executing these schemes or artifices or were incidental to an essential part of these schemes and artifices. 282. As previously described, the communication and representations made by the Defendants are materially false. Defendants made or caused these
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transmissions to be made with the specific intent of defrauding Plaintiffs and others similarly situated. 283. Each of these transmissions furthered the aforementioned scheme and artifices to defraud, which were intended to and did proximately cause injury to Plaintiffs and others in their business or property through its scheme to defraud. 284. Defendants engaged in a pattern of racketeering activity consisting of at least two predicate acts of racketeering by each individual Defendant. 285. Defendant Xcentric engaged in a pattern of racketeering, with the use of wires to facilitate a fraudulent scheme including transmissions through the ROR Website on March 4, 2009, April 3, 2009, June 26, 2009, August 12, 2009, October 27, 2009, and July 26, 2010, and continuing, as alleged above. 286. Defendant Magedson engaged in a pattern of racketeering by in separate emails sent to Plaintiff Mobrez on May 5, 2010 at 11:48 a.m., May 12, 2010 at 6:04 p.m., and July 24, 2010 at 6:31 p.m. and as otherwise above alleged in furtherance, pattern of wire fraud entailed at least two acts of racketeering activity by Defendants, at least one of which occurred within ten years after the commission of a prior act of racketeering activity, and constitute a continuous and related pattern or racketeering as defined in 18 U.S.C. 1961(1) and (5). 287. This pattern of wire fraud entailed at least two acts of racketeering activity by Defendants, at least one of which occurred within ten years after the commission of a prior act of racketeering activity, and constitute a continuous and related pattern or racketeering as defined in 18 U.S.C. 1961(1) and (5). 288. Plaintiffs were the direct and intended victims of the Content Trolling Scheme, and lost valuable business and property interests as a direct result thereby. Plaintiffs, and each of them, have been injured in their business and property by reason of the foregoing violations of 18 U.S.C. 1962(d) as alleged in this claim in an amount to be determined at trial. Plaintiff is also entitled to treble damages, as well as other relief which is necessary and proper, including reasonable attorneys fees and costs, including but not limited to the following:
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a. b. $7,400 to date; c. d. e. f. g. h. i.
Legal fees incurred as a result of litigating the present case in the Costs expended litigating the present case in the amount of Amounts invested in assets, business, goodwill and operations of Rented office space to date: $347,983 Phone and Internet Communications to date: $34,809 Move-in Costs to date: $31,950 Accrued start-up costs to date: $12,500 Miscellaneous expenses to date: $8,900 Amounts expended in traveling to Washington, DC and
amount of $21,700 to date;
Asia Economic Institute, LLC to date of at least:
advocating to representatives and lawmakers for a change in the statute in the amount $2,500 to date j. Salaries or fees paid to SEO Experts, IT consultants, LAMP developers, software licenses, computer programmers and other consultants, contractors and vendors or services to the business of AEI; k. Cost of registering and maintaining domain names and hosting services and servers to host and operate the websites of AEI and AEIs educational, publishing and business missions; l. Real estate transaction broker or license fees and commissions, and other existing and prospective property interests in commercial transactions, on which Mobrez and Llaneras would earn fees, and to which Plaintiffs Mobrez and Llaneras were entitled and were lost by reason of Defendants acts complained of herein; SECOND CLAIM FOR RELIEF VIOLATION OF 18 U.S.C. 1962(d) RICO Conspiracy (Against All Defendants)
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289. Asia Economic Institute re-alleges and incorporates by reference all preceding paragraphs as fully set forth herein. 290. Magedson and other unnamed individuals associated with Xcentric Ventures, LLC, and Ed Magedson, have conspired and agreed to violate 18 U.S.C. 1962(c) by agreeing to conduct an enterprise affecting interstate commerce, directly or indirectly, through a pattern of racketeering activity in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1962(d). The acts in furtherance of this conspiracy are alleged herein. 291. Plaintiffs have been injured in their business and property by reason of the foregoing violations of 18 U.S.C. 1962(d) as alleged in this claim in an amount to be determined at trial. Plaintiff is also entitled to treble damages, as well as other relief which is necessary and proper, including reasonable attorneys fees and costs. THIRD CLAIM FOR RELIEF UNFAIR BUSINESS PRACTICES - CALIFORNIA BUSINESS & PROFESSIONS CODE 17200, et seq.) (Against All Defendants) 292. Asia Economic Institute re-alleges and incorporates by reference all preceding paragraphs as fully set forth herein. 293. Plaintiffs have standing pursuant to California Business and Professional Code Section 17204. 294. Plaintiffs allege violations of California Business & Professions Code 17200 on behalf of themselves and the public (Private Attorney General). 295. Defendants acts and practices as alleged herein constitute unlawful, unfair, and/or fraudulent business practices in violation of Californias Unfair Competition Law, Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code 17200, et seq. 296. Defendants are engaged in unlawful business acts or practices by, among other things:
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296. Defendants have repeatedly and intentionally used their Websites as a scheme t7 obtain money from AEI and other companies by means of false and fraudulent representations made by the Defendant concerning the legitimacy of Defendants Web site. This conduct amounts to wire fraud under 18 U.S.C. 1343. 298. Defendants are engaged in unfair business acts or practices by, among other things: 299. Defendants have engaged in conduct the utility of which is outweighed by the gravity of the consequences to the Plaintiffs and the public. 300. Defendants have engaged in conduct that is immoral, unethical, unscrupulous, and substantially injurious to Plaintiff and the public. 301. Defendants have engaged in conduct that undermines and violates the policies set out in 18 U.S.C. 1962(c) and 18 U.S.C. 1343. 302. Defendants are engaged in fraudulent business acts or practices by, among other things: a. Defendants represent themselves as consumer advocates. However, this description is false and misleading for reasons stated above including: b. Defendants allow users to post personal complaints and air grievances that fall well outside the definition of consumerism. Such complaints include allegations of adultery, sexual assault, and pedophilia. c. Defendants mislead the public into believing they have presented an unbiased description of the targeted business or individual, However, Defendants refuse to publish positive reports concerning these targets and, on occasion, fail to publish rebuttals disputing the allegations contained in the negative report. d. Defendants label businesses or individuals enrolled in the Corporate Advocacy Program as verified safe without investigating the veracity of this statement.
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e. Defendants solicit false and defamatory complaints against Plaintiffs and others so that they may profit from sales of their Ripoff Revenge guidebook and membership in their Corporate Advocacy Program. 303. Defendants statements about products and services offered for sale by participants in the CAP and Verified Safe Program are endorsements within the meaning of Section 5 of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. 45, because consumers are likely to believe such statements reflects the opinions, beliefs, findings, or experiences of a party other than the sponsoring advertiser. 304. Defendants fail to disclose material information that would be likely to influence a consumer regarding the terms of Defendants endorsements and testimonials under the Corporate Advocacy Program and Verified Safe Program. 305. Defendants have failed, and continue to fail, to disclose to consumers in advertising the fact or the amount of material considerations paid to Defendants for endorsing or Verifying Safe a business, in violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. 5, and Federal Trade Commission 16 C.F.R. Part 255.0 et seq. as updated effective December 1, 2009 expressly to issue new Guides that confirm Section 5 of the FTC Act applies to statements on blogs, and Internet communities. 306. Defendants are subject to liability for false or unsubstantiated statements made through these endorsements. 307. Without injunctive relief, the Plaintiffs and others similarly situated will continued to be harmed by the Defendants unlawful, unfair and fraudulent business practices. In addition, Plaintiff is entitled to recover its costs of suit and attorney. FOURTH CLAIM FOR RELIEF
27
COMMON LAW DEFAMATION

28
(Against All Defendants)

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308. Asia Economic Institute re-alleges and incorporates by reference all preceding paragraphs as fully set forth herein. 309. Defendants published defamatory materials on Defendants websites regarding Plaintiffs. 310. The publications contain false and misleading information and have brought Plaintiffs into disrepute among members of the marketplace. In addition, said defamatory comments have harmed Plaintiffs integrity, good-will, reputation, and good name in the community. 311. Defendants knew or should have known that the defamatory posts would cause serious harm to Plaintiffs. Defendants intended that the defamatory posts impact the way the public views Plaintiffs, as well as their business. 312. Defendants knew that the publications included false information or otherwise acted with reckless disregard of the truth or falsity contained in their publications. Further, Defendants refuse to investigate the truth or falsity of such statements to the detriment of Plaintiffs, as well as other businesses and individuals. 313. Defendants publications damaged Plaintiffs business reputation and have prejudiced it in the conduct of its business, and have deterred customers and potential customers from dealing with it. 314. Plaintiffs have been injured in its reputation, business, and property by reason of Defendants publications in an amount to be determined at trial. FIFTH CLAIM FOR RELIEF DEFAMATION PER SE (Against All Defendants) 315. Asia Economic Institute re-alleges and incorporates by reference all preceding paragraphs as fully set forth herein. 316. Defendants published the statements attached hereto at Exhibit 22.
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317. The Reports published by Defendants regarding Plaintiff are false and were published with malice and reckless disregard for the truth or falsity of such stories with intent to injure Plaintiff, its business reputation, and to illegally divert prospective employees from the Plaintiffs employ. 318. Defendants do not verify the truth or accuracy of the stories contained on their websites. Defendants publish the stories and hold Plaintiffs out to the public as a rip-off. 319. The stories published and written by the Defendants contain false information about the Plaintiffs business relationships and falsely allege the Plaintiffs are engaged in criminal conduct. Such statements include that AEI is laundering money, that AEI lie cheat tax fraud, reduce pay illegally, and is a SCAM. These false statements constitute defamation per se under all applicable laws. 320. The false statements of fact published on the Defendants website are unambiguous and when read by the public searching for the Plaintiffs, the libelous nature of such statements are clear. A reasonable person would have understood these statements to mean that Plaintiffs have committed a crime. 321. As a direct and proximate result, Plaintiffs have been damaged in its good name and reputation, has suffered great loss of its goodwill, has suffered diminution in its value as a business entity, has lost prospective employees, and it continue to suffer increasing damages on a daily basis. Defendants defamatory publication entitles AEI to compensatory and punitive damages in an amount to be determined at trial. SIXTH CAUSE OF ACTION FALSE LIGHT (Against All Defendants)
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322. Plaintiffs re-allege and incorporate by reference all preceding paragraphs as fully set forth herein. 323. Defendants statements have placed Plaintiffs in a false light by representing Plaintiffs as scam artists, criminals, racists, unqualified, and incapable of providing a valuable service to the community. It is important to note that Plaintiffs have provided valuable resources for the public and wish to continue to do so. However, Defendants so-called rip-off reports have tainted Plaintiffs business, so much so that Plaintiffs have lost and continue to lose countless business relationships and employees. In other words, the defamatory posts posted on Defendants websites have halted Plaintiffs business. 324. The false light in which Plaintiffs have been placed as a result of the Defendants statements would be highly offensive to a reasonable person in the Plaintiffs position. 325. Defendants knew that the statements were false, or Defendants acted in reckless disregard for the truth or falsity of those statements. 326. As a direct and proximate result of Defendants wrongful statements, Plaintiffs have sustained harm to their business in an amount to be proven at trial. SEVENTH CAUSE OF ACTION INTENTIONAL INTERFERENCE WITH PROSPECTIVE ECONOMIC RELATIONS (Against All Defendants) 327. Plaintiff re-alleges and incorporates by reference all preceding paragraphs as fully set forth herein. 328. AEI had valid contractual relationships with current and prospective employees and had expected relationships with persons who, but for Defendants libelous publications, would have entered into valid contractual relationships.
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329. Defendants knew, when falsely and publicly making these defamatory statements about the Plaintiffs, that Plaintiffs had these valuable contracts and business expectancies. 330. Defendants intentionally and wrongfully interfered with these relationships by knowingly publishing, creating, and soliciting negative, false, and defamatory content in exchange for their own business profit. 331. As a result of the Defendants wrongful conduct, the relationship between the Plaintiffs and its employees has been disrupted. In fact, one complainant claims that he was considering starting a position at this company until he came home and googled his name, and found all these bad reports. The complaint further asserts that as a result of these reports, [he is] going to blow him off. 332. As a direct and proximate results of the foregoing wrongful acts, Plaintiffs have been damaged in their good name and reputation, have suffered great loss of its goodwill, has suffered diminution in its value as a business entity, has lost current as well as prospective employees, and it continues to suffer damages. Plaintiffs have also lost valuable contracts. Defendants tortuous interference with AEIs business relations entitles AEI to compensatory and punitive damages in an amount to be determined at trial. EIGHTH CAUSE OF ACTION NEGLIGENT INTERFERENCE WITH PROSPECTIVE ECONOMIC RELATIONS (Against All Defendants) 333. Plaintiff re-alleges and incorporates by reference all preceding paragraphs as fully set forth herein. 334. AEI had valid contractual relationships with current and prospective employees and had expected relationships with persons who, but for Defendants libelous publications, would have entered into valid contractual relationships.
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335. Defendants knew, when falsely and publicly making these defamatory statements about the Plaintiffs, that Plaintiffs had these valuable contracts and business expectancies. 336. Defendants negligently interfered with these relationships by knowingly publishing and creating negative, false, and defamatory content in exchange for their own business profit. 337. The relationships between the Plaintiffs and its employees were thereafter disrupted by the Defendants conduct. 338. As a direct and proximate results of the foregoing wrongful acts, Plaintiffs have been damaged in their good name and reputation, have suffered great loss of its goodwill, has suffered diminution in its value as a business entity, has lost current as well as prospective employees, and it continues to suffer damages. Plaintiffs have also lost valuable contracts. Defendants tortuous interference with AEIs business relations entitles AEI to compensatory and punitive damages in an amount to be determined at trial. NINTH CAUSE OF ACTION NEGLIGENT INTERFERENCE WITH ECONOMIC RELATIONS (Against All Defendants) 339. Plaintiff re-alleges and incorporates by reference all preceding paragraphs as fully set forth herein. 340. AEI had a valid contractual relationships with current and prospective employees. 341. Defendants knew, when falsely and publicly making these defamatory statements about the Plaintiffs, that Plaintiffs had these valuable contracts. 342. Defendants intentionally and wrongfully interfered with these relationships by knowingly publishing and creating negative, false, and defamatory content in exchange for their own business profit. Defendants intentionally and
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wrongfully caused these employees to breach their employment contracts with Plaintiffs. 343. As a result of the Defendants wrongful conduct, the relationship between the Plaintiffs and its employees has been disrupted. In fact, one complainant claims that he was considering starting a position at this company until he came home and googled his name, and found all these bad reports. The complaint further asserts that as a result of these reports, [he is] going to blow him off. 344. Defendants wrongful conduct is, therefore, a substantial factor in causing Plaintiffs harm. 345. As a direct and proximate results of the foregoing wrongful acts, Plaintiffs have been damaged in their good name and reputation, have suffered great loss of its goodwill, has suffered diminution in its value as a business entity, has lost current as well as prospective employees, and it continues to suffer damages. Plaintiffs have also lost valuable contracts. Defendants tortuous interference with AEIs contractual relations entitles AEI to compensatory and punitive damages in an amount to be determined at trial. TENTH CAUSE OF ACTION INJUNCTION (Against All Defendants) 346. Plaintiffs re-allege and incorporate by reference all preceding paragraphs as fully set forth herein. 347. Defendants have wrongfully and unlawfully solicited, developed, and published on the Websites numerous false and misleading statements of fact concerning AEI and its owners. 348. On or about May 5, 2009, Plaintiff Mobrez requested that defendants remove these false and defamatory statements from the Ripoffreport.com website. Defendants have refused, and still refuse, to remove false and misleading statements after repeated requests by the Plaintiffs.
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349. Plaintiffs have been and will continue to suffer immediate and irreparable damage if Defendants are not enjoined during the pendency of this lawsuit from disseminating or publishing false, misleading, and defamatory comments regarding AEI, Mobrez, and Llaneras. The dissemination or publication of these false, misleading, and defamatory posts continues to impact AEIs business opportunities and dissuades prospective clients from doing business with AEI. 350. Plaintiff has no adequate remedy at law for the injuries being suffered as the Plaintiff will be forced to institute a multiplicity of suits to obtain adequate compensation for their injuries. 351. There is a substantial likelihood that Plaintiffs will prevail on the merits. Defendants have been repeatedly notified to cease and desist disseminating or publishing these defamatory statements concerning AEI and its business, but they have continued to host such statements on their Websites with the understanding that such disparaging acts would be detrimental to the Plaintiffs. 352. Any harm associated with the entry of a preliminary injunction is outweighed by the potential damage to AEIs goodwill and reputation. Defendants will not suffer monetary losses if they are forced to remove the false and defamatory statements regarding the Plaintiffs and to remove references to Plaintiffs from Defendants HTML. 353. Further, the public interest will be served by preventing the dissemination of false and misleading statements about other businesses and individuals. 354. Plaintiffs re-allege and incorporate by reference all preceding paragraphs as fully set forth herein. 355. Plaintiffs further ask the Court to set its application for injunctive relief for a full trial on the issue in this application, and after the trial, to issue a permanent injunction against Defendants from disseminating or publishing false, misleading, and defamatory statements concerning the Plaintiffs.
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ELEVENTH CAUSE OF ACTION DECEIT CALIFORNIA CIVIL CODE 1709, 1710) (Against All Defendants) 356. Plaintiffs re-allege and incorporate by reference all preceding paragraphs as fully set forth herein. 357. Cal. Civ. Code 1709 prohibits willful deception of another with intent to induce a detrimental change in position. 358. Cal. Civ. Code 1710 provides in relevant part that deceitis either: I. The suggestion, as a fact, of that which is not true, by one who does not believe it to be true; II. The assertion, as a fact, of that which is not true, by one who does not believe it to be true; III. The suppression of a fact, by one who is bound to disclose it, or who give information of other facts which are likely to mislead for want of communication of that fact; or, IV. A promise, made without any intention of performing it. 359. Defendants have and continue to violate Cal. Civ. Code 1709 by willfully deceiving Plaintiffs and others with the intent to induce a detrimental change in their positive. 360. As described above, Defendants have violated and continue to violate Cal. Civ. Code 1710(1) by suggesting that: (1) they have not and will not remove reports published on their Web site; (2) that victims have the option of filing a free rebuttal to the negative complaints; (3) that filing a rebuttal has only a positive effect; (4) that Defendants have done nothing to curry favor with Google; (5) that Defendants do not filter or suppress reports; and (6) that members of the CAP have been investigated and found to be safe and secure. At the time these suggestions were made, Defendants did not believe this to be true.
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361. As described above, Defendants have violated and continue to violate Cal. Civ. Code 1710(2) by asserting that: (1) they have not and will not remove reports published on their Web site; (2) that victims have the option of filing a free rebuttal to the negative complaints; (3) that filing a rebuttal has only a positive effect; (4) that Defendants have done nothing to curry favor with Google; (5) that Defendants do not filter or suppress reports; and (6) that members of the CAP have been investigated and found to be safe and secure. At the time these assertions were made, Defendants did not believe this to be true. 362. As described above, Defendants have violated and continue to violate Cal. Civ. Code 1710(3) by suppressing the fact that: (1) Defendants have removed reports; (2) victims of Defendants Web site have been unable to file a free rebuttal; (3) filing a rebuttal gives more prominence to the report on Internet search results; (4) that Defendants have edited reports concerning Google to maintain its good favor; (5) that Defendants will not post positive reports nor will they publish reports concerning members of their CAP; and (6) CAP members are not investigated. 363. Plaintiffs were harmed by these allegations. Had they known the true facts, Plaintiffs would not have hired IT consultants to repair their online reputation and would not have filed a rebuttal with the Defendants. 364. Pursuant to Cal. Civ. Code 1709, Defendants are liable for any damage which was proximately caused to Plaintiffs as a result of Defendants deceit. TWELFTH CAUSE OF ACTION FRAUD (CAL. CIVIL CODE 1572) 365. Plaintiffs re-allege and incorporate by reference all preceding paragraphs as fully set forth herein.
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366. Cal. Civ. Code 1572 provides that [a]ctual fraudconsists of any of the following acts, committed by a party to the contract, or with his connivance, with intent to deceive another party thereto, or to induce him to enter into the contract: I. The suggestion, as a fact, of that which is not true, by one who does not believe it to be true; II. The positive assertion, in a manner not warranted by the information the person making it, of that which is not true, though he believes it to be true; III. The suppression of that which is true, by one having knowledge or belief of the fact; IV. A promise made without any intention of performing it; or V. Any other act fitted to deceive. 367. As described above, Defendants have violated and continue to violate Cal. Civ. Code 1572(1) by suggesting that: (1) they have not and will not remove reports published on their Web site; (2) that victims have the option of filing a free rebuttal to the negative complaints; (3) that filing a rebuttal has only a positive effect; (4) that Defendants have done nothing to curry favor with Google; (5) hat Defendants do not filter or suppress reports; and (6) that members of the CAP have been investigated and found to be safe and secure. At the time these suggestions were made, Defendants did not believe this to be true. 368. As described above, Defendants have violated and continue to violate Cal. Civ. Code 1572(2) by asserting that: they have not and will not remove Reports published on the ROR Website; (2) that victims have the option of filing a free rebuttal to the negative complaints; (3) that filing a rebuttal has only a positive effect; (4) that Defendants have done nothing to curry favor with Google; (5) that Defendants do not filter, change or suppress Reports. At the time these assertions were made, Defendants did not believe this to be true. 369. As described above, Defendants have violated and continue to violate Cal. Civ. Code 1572(3) by suppressing the fact that: (1) Defendants have
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removed Reports, and for substantial sums of money; (2) victims have been unable to file free rebuttals; (3) filing a rebuttal gives more prominence to the Report on Internet search results; (4) that Defendants have edited reports concerning Google to maintain its good favor; and (5) that Defendants will not post positive reports nor will they publish reports concerning members of their CAP. 370. As described above, Defendants have violated and continue to violate Cal. Civ. Code 1572(5) by making false misrepresentations which were intended to lure targeted businesses and individuals into paying to enroll in CAP and otherwise put victims in a helpless, desperate position. 371. As a direct and proximate result of Defendants actions, Plaintiffs will continue to suffer damages. WHEREFORE, Plaintiffs pray for judgment against defendants: 1. For general damages according to proof, including but not limited to the following: a. Legal fees incurred as a result of litigating the present case in the amount of $21,700 to date; b. Costs expended litigating the present case in the amount of $7,400 to date; c. Amounts invested in assets, business, goodwill and operations of Asia Economic Institute, LLC to date of at least: d. Rented office space to date: $347,983 e. Phone and Internet Communications to date: $34,809 f. Move-in Costs to date: $31,950 g. Accrued start-up costs to date: $12,500 h. Miscellaneous expenses to date: $8,900
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i. Amounts expended in traveling to Washington, DC and advocating to representatives and lawmakers for a change in the statute in the amount $2,500 to date j. Salaries or fees paid to SEO Experts, IT consultants, LAMP developers, software licenses, computer programmers and other consultants, contractors and vendors or services to the business of AEI; k. Cost of registering and maintaining domain names and hosting services and servers to host and operate the websites of AEI and AEIs educational, publishing and business missions; l. Real estate transaction broker or license fees and commissions, and other existing and prospective property interests in commercial transactions, on which Mobrez and Llaneras would earn fees, and to which Plaintiffs Mobrez and Llaneras were entitled and were lost by reason of Defendants acts complained of herein; 2. For special damages according to proof; 3. For punitive damages according to proof; 4. For violations of sections 1962(c) and 1962(d) of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), codified at 18 U.S.C. 1962(c) and 1962(d), three times Plaintiffs actual damages; 5. For a preliminary injunction requiring Defendants to remove from the Website any false and defamatory statements concerning AEI or its employees and prohibiting Defendants from later publishing such statements on the Websites; 6. For a permanent injunction requiring Defendants to remove from the ROR Website, both in Reports and in associated HTML, false, defamatory or negative statements or keywords; 7. For prejudgment interest at the legal rate; 8. For costs of suit incurred herein;
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9. For attorneys fees; and 10.For such other and further relief as the Court may deem just and proper. DATED: July 27, 2010 /s/ Daniel F. Blackert By: DANIEL F. BLACKERT LISA J. BORODKIN Attorneys for Plaintiffs, Asia Economic Institute LLC, Raymond Mobrez, and Iliana Llaneras
DEMAND FOR JURY TRIAL Plaintiffs Asia Economic Institute LLC, Raymond Mobrez, and Iliana Llaneras hereby demand a trial by jury. DATED: July 27, 2010
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By: DANIEL F. BLACKERT LISA J. BORODKIN Attorneys for Plaintiffs Asia Economic Institute LLC, Raymond Mobrez, and Iliana Llaneras
EXHIBIT 9
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CaseCase 2:10-cv-01360-SVW 2:11-cv-01426-GMS -PJW Document Document103-1 96-2 Filed Filed 07/31/12 07/27/10 Page Page 101 1 of of 3 242 Page ID #:2409
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Once you send this email string back with the answers to the questions below.. , we will have the agreement to you in a few days.. below should answer any of your questions.. when you fill this out and send this entire email string back,.. ask us anything you like !
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First, just a few comments Once I send you the agreement and you send it back signed with payment,.. we will send you email text so you can change it to reflect your business, .. then we send it out to the people who filed a Report, (even if they are false) .. an email which I sent you a sample in the last email to you.. when I sent you the rates in the previous email.. Then we send you the TEXT outline so you can give us your proposed comments you would like us to use to talk about your company, explaining changes your company has made, and your companies commitment to customer service and to explain about complaints youve received and the changes youve made and other positive comments about your company.. this can also include links to different pages about your company.. Remember, these are commitments you will have to live up to. Once the main Report above is done, then we send you the 250 to 350 words you want us to put in front of the Reports found on search engines.. you can give us your proposed comments you would like us to post.. like this one.. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Blue+Coast+Financial&aq=f&aqi=g8gm1&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai= Any questions, comments or suggestions.. just let us know.. NOTE: if you think you are going to become a member of the program within the next 7 days.. let us know, we will put you on an immediate monitoring for new Reports as a courtesy.. and we will handle them as we would if you are on the program. But, if we do that, you will have to make things right with the complaining customer, as you would be doing when you are on the Corporate Advocacy Program.
========QUESTIONS
for the AGREEMENT============
Please hit your reply button to this entire email and respond under each question, returning this entire email string between us DO NOT
COPY AND PASTE INTO A WORD DOC !! just respond below. DO NOT CHANGE OR ADD TO THE EMAIL SUBJECT BOX!!!
Here are the list of questions below that we need answered so we can work up the Corporate Advocacy Program - CAP agreement. Any information you give to me will NEVER be revealed to anyone - - even if you do not go thru with the program. There is nothing really confidential below to worry about. Put your response under each question. 1) Do you understand the costs of this program?
2) Exact Name of company the contract will be in 3) List other names you may use you need to let us know this now to avoid complaints being caught so you can immediately respond to them! So they do not get posted and we respond to them so you can then respond. 4) Name of person signing the contact and their position. 5) Official address and phone numbers of the company for our use only 6) Address and phone numbers to use for the Report we file about the company 7) Official emergency phone numbers and at least one persons cell number in case of media or government questions. Persons name and Cell # 8) Email address to use for notification of complaints in the Investigative Report we file.. Best to make something new that would go to a specific person handling any issues that come to us by email or by someone trying to post a new Report. We can bcc as many people as you like. Just list those emails here what about SpecialHelp@yourcompanyname.com ??? 9) Email address to notify of any private matter that should be confidential. Include this email in the above to be copied on any complaints? 10) Email address to use to notify the company when a new complaint comes into Rip-off Report. This should be your customer service people, and several executives my want to be copied on these complaints We will always Bcc you on any comments we make back to a complaint, so your company can automatically respond to the customer who tried to file a new complaint. 11) A short 2 or 4 sentence description as to what your company offers in general. 12) How many Reports are there about your company now? 13) List the names and the amount of Reports there are about each name?
14) A short 3 to 5 sentence or more if needed,. Paragraph as to what you feel complaints are about, and what changes your business will make to avoid those reported problems in the future. That can include, change of management/ ownership? Change in customer service?? Etc Include information what your company does better than your competitors?? If you want.. remember, the information in this form is just for us this may help us when consumers email us or call us on the phone about your business. You do understand that ROR is like an extension of your customer service, like no other can ever be... =================================== once you send this back, we will draw up our standard agreement. This is the same agreement weve used since day one with some suggestions over time. it will be signed by us and sent to you as an attachment. We sincerely look forward to assisting you I know this program will help your organization from day one. Like every other business that has signed on to this program.. you will end up saying,. We should have gone with this program years ago.. Consumers really respect Rip-off Report. All CAP member say the program makes things better from day one, even before there were complaints listed on Rip-off Report. Consumers want to see how a business takes care of business If any one of your staff ever receives a comment from a consumer talking about the bad things they see anywhere on the Internet, .. your staff can suggest to them that they call Rip-off Report at 602-359-4357 #5 ..then #1 .. to have them ask us about your business = we get these calls all the time. We will always reiterate your commitments and how youve taken care of past complaints and the changes you have made to avoid any problems in the future.
Remember///
reply to this email, keep sending back the entire email
string.
602-359-4357 /// press #5 //// then #1 about 4 seconds later. Rip-off Report
PO Box 310, Tempe, Arizona 85280
Blue Coast Financial Review | Rip-off Report #412338
http://www.ripoffreport.com/business-consulting/blue-coast-financial/inve...
...by consumers, for consumers ...scams, consumer complaints, and frauds reported. File a report, post your review or experience!
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Report: #412338
Report: Blue Coast Financial

Reported By: (charlottesville Virginia)
INVESTIGATION: Shawn Hull, Blue Coast Financial Commitment to 100% client satisfaction, Feel confident and secure when doing business with Blue Coast. Verified by Rip-off Report Corporate Advocacy Business Remediation and customer satisfaction program. Texas Nationwide
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Blue Coast Financial
Bluecoastfinancial.com Nationwide Texas United States of America Phone: 800-467-2310 Web Address:
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Category: Business Consulting Submitted: Thursday, January 15, 2009

Posted: Friday, April 09, 2010 Victim of this person/company?
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Rip-off Report Investigation: Investigation: Positive Rating and Recognition has been given to Blue Coast Financial for its Commitment to Excellence in customer service. Feel confident and secure when doing business with Blue Coast, verified by Rip-off Report Corporate Advocacy Business Remediation and customer satisfaction program. Editor's UPDATE: Positive Rating and Recognition has been given to Blue Coast Financial Group for its Commitment to Excellence in customer service. Rip-off Report's investigation of Blue Coast uncovers an ongoing commitment to total customer satisfaction and dedication to the success of its advisors. This means that its advisors can expect the company will always work towards finding a mutual and satisfactory resolution to any complaint or concern in an effort to insure that their advisors are successful. The company listens carefully to any concerns of its savings consultants and sees them as an opportunity to refine the business and become more efficient as a company in both the process and services they offer as well as the support they provide. The company does monthly conference calls for all of its advisors and has done national workshops. The company has brought systems in place to proactively contact advisors working with clients. The company's staff is quick in its responses and is readily available for specific needs or questions that come up. All communication is kept in the CRM to eliminate questions on next steps. One top executive of the company stated to Rip-off Report that BCFG's corporate philosophy is based on the premise that they strive to provide both cutting-edge cost saving services as well as full training and support of these services in a multitude of formats that are easily accessible to the advisors." In simpler terms, they are looking for ways to make their advisors more easily successful by implementing cost-saving measures and backing them up with training and support, so they are readily and simply adopted. The company has a high-touch resource center as its platform for training where the advisors can access webinars, conference calls, videos and even certifications on the specific service they may be approaching a client with. Pod-casts and recorded versions of the coaching calls are also on the resource center in case a call is missed. The company has even done national workshops where they have brought all the advisors together for training and relationship building and to meet the staff. The CRM system provided by the company tracks client activity and allows communication between all members of the company that are involved with a particular client, allowing for seamless communication and service. In sum, they provide comprehensive training and tools. Rip-off Report has confirmed that the company takes quality control very seriously. They have constantly put effort into ramping up both their support team and client relation processes over the years. Currently, the company goes so far as to initially provide pre-set, face-to-face appointments for its advisors, training on other critical areas for marketing, and even a closing desk that helps close the clients for its advisors and introduce additional services that are of benefit. By providing initially things like pre-set face-to-face appointments with all the different services they offer, they have created an environment where the company can help the advisor get to his or her clients. It's very much a team consulting environment, from building the relationship with the client, to guiding them through the process of producing savings, so that the advisors aren't left doing it on their own. The company continually strives to do more of the work for the advisor in order to assist them with closing the clients. As one executive said, When our clients succeed, we succeed. It's in everyone's best interest for us to help them. Since the advisor's success is directly related to the activity level of the advisor, the company takes a very proactive approach and active role in helping the advisor present services to the client. As an example, the company recently added an advanced follow-up program to help its advisors collect any paperwork from clients. In addition, the company now calls advisors before and after their appointments and checks in on the activity of the advisor with clients. This way they are aware of any potential issues and can intervene as necessary early on with the advisor. The company is a registered business opportunity and provides disclosure documents to its advisors outlining its responsibilities and those of the advisors as well. Rip-off Report was pleased to learn that the company's past and current approach to business is focused on its pledge to total commitment towards the success of its advisors, from disclosure to training to appointment setting to closure and follow up.
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7/25/2010 8:02 AM
Blue Coast Financial Review | Rip-off Report #412338
http://www.ripoffreport.com/business-consulting/blue-coast-financial/inve...
BCFG recognizes any complaint posted on Rip-off Report (true or not) is an issue that needs to be addressed and if handled correctly can be valuable learning opportunity. With the feedback generated by Rip-off Report's Investigation, they continue to make organizational enhancements allowing their savings consultants a more streamlined approach to problem resolution and a total overall commitment to a positive customer experience. In summary, after our investigation, which included the one complaint that was filed with us, we found 100% total customer satisfaction with BCFG's service and care for the advisor. We then had further discussions with senior management and Rip-off Report is convinced that the company has been and will be committed to quality delivery of services resulting in total customer satisfaction to ensure their advisors' success. We conclude that this company can be trusted. Read about Blue Coast Financial Group.. see their websites and the services they have to offer.. Any business that belongs to the Corporate Advocacy Program has given their Commitment to Excellence and Total Consumer Satisfaction. That's why consumers should feel safe, confident and secure when doing business with a member of Rip-off Report's Corporate Advocacy Business Remediation & Customer Satisfaction Program. ..Yes, a long name for a program that does a lot for both consumers and businesses alike Read about Rip-off Report Corporate Advocacy Business Remediation & Customer Satisfaction Program,..A program that benefits the consumer, assures them of complete satisfaction and confidence when doing business with a member business. this program works. ===================== NOW TO THE ORIGINAL REPORT THAT WAS FILED ===================== Shawn Hull, Blue Coast Financial Promoted as consulting business promises training, support, qualified leads an opportunity to make money consulting with big business on saving tax money Texas Nationwide Dear Editor: Please publish the following post: I would like to retract my original post. I was completely wrong for posting what I did about Blue Coast Financial. When I wrote this complaint I was focused on something completely different than this business and was venting my frustrations which were caused by other things. As a single mother, I have many good days, but also those days when everything seems to be going wrong. It isn't right to just say anything to let out those frustrations, and it isn't fair to a company when those statements aren't the whole story. It is a different story though when you have a company like this that does try and help you succeed. Like any business you should investigate it, but you should be able to get the whole story and know that you have to put in the effort and work it to be successful no matter what the company will do to support you. The company did provide training, support and qualified leads. They had a lot of different types of training. Some of it I did attend and some I didn't as I was focused on something different, not this business and I guess I just had a pre-set opinion. I didn't go on all of the appointments the company set up for me. To be completely fair, the company offered me even more appointments to go on to help me engage in my business but I kept looking to blame somebody else instead of taking ownership of my own business. The company still stuck with me even though I wasn't fully committed to do what needed to be done. The staff kept calling me and tried to get me started, but I really never got my business started. The company did not mislead me and I know of no history of the them misleading anyone. I just felt that way because I never got it running and blamed someone else. I regretted my decision to post as I should have acted professionally and approached the company directly with any concerns. So, for what it's worth, I did sell my business to somebody else and I wouldn't have sold it if I felt there was any problem that somebody else would experience. I never thought about how my post would affect other business owners clients and that is one reason I wanted to clear this up; it's not fair to the company or them. After my post rip off report investigated the company and that made me think about what I was actually doing. I would like to apologize to the company and staff that tried to help me make this business successful. I know I should have just worked harder at it, but now I'm on to my next chapter. Donna Charlottesville, VA
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7/25/2010 8:02 AM
EXHIBIT 10
Case 2:10-cv-01360-SVW Case 2:11-cv-01426-GMS -PJW Document Document 96-24 103-1 Filed Filed 07/31/12 07/27/10 Page Page 131 1 of of 31242 Page ID #:2596
Exhibit A
Public Spam Report: Google Your Honeymoon with Rip Off Report has ...
http://www.97thfloor.com/blog/public-spam-report-google-your-honeym...
View our ranking cloud Services Blog Clients About Contact 3 Sites, One Guy and 669,670 Reasons to Go to SMX West Rip Off Report is Still Indexed and Quick 97th Floor Updates 01-15-08
Public Spam Report: Google Your Honeymoon with Rip Off Report has to Stop
*Update* New links at the bottom to some really good cases against Rip Off Report Before You Jump to any conclusions, I am not saying sites that warn consumers of true scams and rip offs are bad, I think they are very very good. I love the Internet because it levels the playing field for small businesses and individuals to compete with big business. Before the Internet that was impossible. However, I do not think that there should be a place in Googles search results for a company that does nothing to scan or proof read their User Generated Content and that also blatantly spams and violates Googles TOS. This Brings me to the current marriage of Google and Rip Off Report. I am sure you are all familiar with Rip Off Report, it is by far the largest database of complaints about businesses, individuals and pretty much anything on the planet from religion to government all the way to Racist remarks. Rip Off Report has been accused of all sorts of shady things, racketeering, black mail and rip offs. I am not going to get into the lawsuits against its owner Ed Magedsonon or any of the many allegations of what appears to be shady practices. What I am going to get into is how they are being leveraged to manipulate Googles search results and how Google is fueling their questionable business. Rip Off Report thrives off of ranking in Googles search results, I would say that the only reason they are so popular is because of the relationship they have with Googles search results. According to Compete.com Rip Off Report receives roughly 606,439 referrals from Googles search results each month. I bet you wish your site got that many referrals from Google each month, in fact I would say most sites on the net dont. From October 2007 until now (Jan 2008) those referrals have come from 5,761 different search keywords. Again this is according to Compete. I was curious about how Yahoo and Live treat Rip Off Report in their search results. I dont think that you will find the results surprising as Google can tend to favor and love certain domains where as Yahoo and Live dont play favorites as often. I ran a ranking report on the first 89 keywords that Compete said where their top referring search terms. Here are the results you can download the PDF here
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As you can see Google is definitely treating Rip Off Report different than Yahoo and Live. Live has dropped them from their results all together, so applauds all around for them. Something I found surprising was Yahoo has almost twice as many pages indexed (676k +) as Google, but ranks virtually nothing whereas Google pretty much ranks every single post in its index in the top 20. Let Me Get to the Meat: First Im going to lay out how they are very much violating Googles Webmaster Guidelines. For those of you that arent familiar with them you can view the page here, Like I showed above Rip Off Report thrives, and virtually exists only because of Googles treatment of it. Look at what they say on the home page to encourage posting with them, By filing a Ripoff Report its almost like creating your own web site ..And, its FREE. Your Ripoff Report will be discovered by millions of consumers! Search engines will automatically discover most reports, meaning that within just a few days or weeks, your report may be found on search engines when consumers search, using key words relating to your Ripoff Report. They flat out say, we get your crap indexed and ranked in the top ten in a matter of days. That is music to the ears of a shady employee that just got fired. 1.)Technical Guidelines from Google: Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that dont add much value for users coming from search engines. If you search for Rip Off Reports search results pages in Google by doing this site:ripoffreport.com intitle:search results it will bring back only the search results pages that are currently indexed in Google which on my results shows 49,400. That is a lot of pages that shouldnt be in Googles index. If you dont think this is a big deal read this article from Search Engine Land and the main post from Matt Cutts of Google. 2.)Quality Guidelines - Specific Guidelines Section: Dont create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content. Subdomains - w3.ripoffreport.com Exact replica of Rip Off Report over 2,000 pages indexed in Google. Domains - www.badbusinessbureau.com Exact Replica of Rip Off Report over 17,000 pages indexed in Google.
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7/27/2010 12:38 PM
Case 2:10-cv-01360-SVW Case 2:11-cv-01426-GMS -PJW Document Document 96-24 103-1 Filed Filed 07/31/12 07/27/10 Page Page 138 8 of of 31242 Page ID #:2603 3 Google Cached Links of the same exact post on all 3 domains, there are thousands of cached Duplicates. 1Cached on Jan 11, 2008 2 Cached on Jan 6, 2008 3 Cached on Jan 6, 2008
They are definitely up for Spammers of the Year. 3.) also from Quality Guidelines - Specific Guidelines Section Dont load pages with irrelevant keywords. There was even a recent post attacking us Check out the title tag, 97th Floor It Is Better On Top Spy With Firefox 97th Floor social media scam spyware tracked users scam 97th floor firefox social media Internet Internet They mention 97th Floor 3 times, Firefox 2 times, scam 2 times, social media 2 times then Internet Internet at the end. Common sense tells me that isnt the way Google would like title tags to be written. If I was Matt Cutts and I followed Rip Off Reports logic to title tags, my title tag would be like this compared to the original. Original Title: Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO New Title based off of Rip Off Report Style Optimization: Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Matt Cutts, Google Google and SEO Matt Cutts, Gadgets Internet Internet Do you think the person that wrote the title for the post about our Social Media for Firefox ext. wanted it to rank in the top ten of Google? It was written on Jan 7, 2008 and indexed and in the top 10 of Google on Jan 8, 2008. Rip Off Report can I hire your spammer seo? Most of the posts in Rip Off Report are totally stuffed full of keywords both in the Title and the body, it is so blatant it is a joke. This stuff makes BMW Germany look like a saint. The validity of these posts are what brings me to my last points. They State on their Homepage, While we encourage and even require authors to only file truthful reports, Ripoff Report does not guarantee that all reports are authentic or accurate. Doesnt that contradict itself? I know that it is virtually impossible to guarantee that user generated content can be 100% reliable, but we all know the trouble that sites like Myspace and Facebook get into when things slip through the cracks, why should Rip Off Report be any different. What, they require that they post truth by putting it in the TOS, but never policing or following through. Here is how I know that the post about our Social Media tool is 100% crap or written by a brain dead idiot. It reads, Install 97th floor social media attachment for firefox and get tracked.
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7/27/2010 12:38 PM
Case 2:10-cv-01360-SVW Case 2:11-cv-01426-GMS -PJW Document Document 96-24 103-1 Filed Filed 07/31/12 07/27/10 Page Page 139 9 of of 31242 Page ID #:2604 Way to go, database user infoWhatever would that before.
Nice way to use your add-on -build your business at others expense. 97th floor claims it was an error. Pretty big oversight. 97th floor catches it after it could be to late for most users who downloaded it. Social media firefox cheaters. Good luck next time. 97th floor ripoff - tried to scam and now caught? Tmx wpb fl west palm beach, Florida U.S.A. First of all is that even English? Second here are the facts. There are only 3 sites that posted that I may be trying to spy on people with my new Fire Fox tool. Seo Scoop, Ekstreme, and Sphinn which was a link to the story on Ekstreme. All the stories had updates within 24 hours stating that the bug had been fixed and that I handled it well and that we were in the clear and that it was a super sweet tool. So all of the sudden a post gets added to Rip Off Report on Jan 7th 2008 about 5 months after I released the tool, and it says I am a scammer and all this stuff, but the only places the writer could of gotten the content were from sites saying, Updated, 97th Floor is in the clear. So this was a blatant post to damage my companies Rep. and to rank in the top Ten for my name. As he even admits in the first post that we clam it is an error and that it was a big oversight so he read all the posts saying we fixed it and that it was a mistake, but posted it anyways. I wander if it is because on of our biggest keyword referrals from google to us is Rip Off Report Look at the rebuttal which was posted a couple hours after the first post was made, Tmx wpb fl west palm beach, Florida U.S.A. 97th floor Upon further review, the social media extension is legitimate. It has been modified and was a true and correct error. Will download again and continue to use. The guy says he loves the tool and that he is going to use it again. The time frame is so close to the original post that it makes me think did he post it, wait to get the email that it is live, and then go post the rebuttal, all as an opportunity to make it look real and to have an excuse to use the term, 97th Floor a couple more times. It just doesnt make sense to me. Sergey Brin and Larry Page are in Rip Off Report and it is still bed buddies with Google? Go to Google and type in Sergey Brin California you will see around number 8 this post(dont worry Sergey No Followed that for ya). Claims that some guys named Sergey Brin and Larry Page where drunk and picking up teenage girls in a coffee shop in California. I am sixteen years old and I met Sergey Brin in a coffee shop in Santa Monica. Sergey started talking to me and my friend and told us that he was a big shot in computers or something. He wrote down his first name and cell phone number and asked me to give him a call the next day to go out. My friend left because she had to go meet her mom. I stayed because I was bored and Sergey
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7/27/2010 12:38 PM
Case 2:10-cv-01360-SVW Case 2:11-cv-01426-GMS -PJW Document Document96-24 103-1 Filed Filed 07/27/10 07/31/12 Page Page 10 140 ofof 31 242 Page ID #:2605 bought me a milk shake. He really knows how to talk to a girl. He told me that he can get me in at any concert for free. His friend Larry arrived, and him and Sergey had to go. When I called his cell phone the next day, a message came in: This is Sergey Brin, please leave a message. Thats how I knew what his last name is. When he called me back I asked him about the free tickets but he said that he wanted to see me to give them to me in person. I had a bad feeling about it, especially when I spoke to my friend the next day and she said this guy wants something. He is like thirty or even maybe older!
When i talked to him I told him I was sixteen and he said: I dont kiss and tell. He you want we can meet in a hotel, have a nice time and Ill bring the free tickets. Then he said: Have ever had Vodka? I thought I would talk about this guy here because he is way too old to want to go out with me. I am a virgin, I dont drink, and I am not meeting nobody in a hotel! PeaceMeredith Beverly Hills, California U.S.A. Then there is an update, I forgot to say that Sergey Brin was trying to hit on bothe my friend Maria and me at the coffe shop. He is really gross! His friend Larry introduced himself as Larry Page. Sergey Brin really smelled of liquor. BAD!! Larry seemed sober but he kept on looking at my boobs and my friends. Then Sergey Brin was asking if they were real, and it made me laugh because he was funny. I think he was really drunk. At some point he poured something out of a tiny bottle in a paper bag in his cup of coffe. That was after my friend left. He asked me if I wanted some. I didnt wanna sound like a loser but I said no. I had a bad feeling about the whole thing. Then like I said I talked to him on the phone the next day, but I did not make a date. He called me the next day and a few times after that. Sergey Brin sounded really drunk again! Larry Page sound like the same old pervert, but he didnt try nothing, because his friend saw me first I think and my friend left. Anyway he is too old for me that Sergey Brin! He said he drives a really nice car and wanted to take me for a spin but I was afraid of what hed try to do to me in the car. Thank you for reading this. Meredith Beverly Hills, California U.S.A. Then Merediths friend Maria Velasquez pipes in (but it was posted by Meredith) I was there what a creep this Sergey Brin and his friend Larry Page My name is Maria Velasquez. That Sergey Brin guy is really creepy. My friend and I was at the coffe shop in Santa Monica and that Sergey Brin Guy and his friend Larry Page wanted to pick us up. I left because I had to meet my mom. I told Larry Page no can do. I think he liked my friend Meredith better because he kept on looking at her boobs. They were trying to impress us because Sergey said that him and Larry Page worked for a big computer company or something. Larry got mad at Sergey when he took a phone call and said Larrys last name over the phone to someone. He said Page is here with me, you wanna talk to him? Thats how we
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Case 2:10-cv-01360-SVW Case 2:11-cv-01426-GMS -PJW Document Document96-24 103-1 Filed Filed 07/27/10 07/31/12 Page Page 11 141 ofof 31 242 Page ID #:2606 knew the other guys last name. Sergey Brin was just too drunk to care anyway. Im not even seventeen yet and those two are way too old for me or Meri. I LOVE JLO!
LOL, I LOVE JLO. You cant make this crap up. So to sum up an extremely long post, Rip Off Report is spamming Googles index, and Google is currently letting them get a way with it. They know this and so do their users and as a result thousands of peoples lives are being ruined due to blatant lies and and made up stories. Again I am a lover of the Internet and as messed up as Rip Off Report maybe there is a place on the internet for lies and junk, that is the beauty of the net we all have a voice. However there is no place for this whatsoever in Googles search results. P.S. All Links to ROR are Happily No Followed I Love JLO *Update Rand at SeoMoz is backing us up, and he brought up another TOS violation that ROR is engaging in. Read the post to get the full details but, it looks like ROR is not putting No Follow on Paid links and advertisements. Also great post by Andy Beal and Distilled And a new post diving head first into the legal side of ROR by Sarah Bird who is in charge of legal at SEOmoz If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed, or follow Chris Bennett on Twitter and make sure you check out our free analytics product BLVD Status and Social Media for FireFox Which is used by more than 500,000 marketers
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Posted in Reputation Management // (85 Comments) Mat Siltala, January 15th, 2008 at 10:06 pm this crap has been going on for far to long with ROR and Google needs to practice what they preach.
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7/27/2010 12:38 PM
Case 2:10-cv-01360-SVW Case 2:11-cv-01426-GMS -PJW Document Document96-24 103-1 Filed Filed 07/27/10 07/31/12 Page Page 12 142 ofof 31 242 Page ID #:2607
Mark Pilatowski, January 16th, 2008 at 2:04 am
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There are plenty of examples of garbage sites that blatantly violate Google Guidelines ranking well on tons of terms in Google. Some of the industries I watch are totally polluted with crap. Sites with enough links can avoid almost any penalty or filter in the Google algorithm. No matter how much they say content is king it is a distant second to links. On top of that Google does not care about quality content, as you point out. Just throw out some garbage content, get some links, and you are on you way to the top of Google. The problem is that they are still better than any of the alternatives. Until someone can develop a search engine that can actually identify quality content we are stuck with the current batch of engines.
Chris Bennett, January 16th, 2008 at 6:01 am Mark, I agree that one of the biggest flaws with Googles algo is too much domain trust. I understand the concept, but it seems to many sites get away with muder while others are slapped for stealing candy.
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randfish, January 16th, 2008 at 6:34 am This is really fascinating stuff, Chris, and Im impressed by the detail youve gone through to find the violations. Im going to write about this on SEOmoz - and I think theres plenty to follow up about here, too. The search results for Rip Off Report suggest a pattern of extremely suspicious behavior.
Chris Bennett, January 16th, 2008 at 3:13 pm Rand, Thanks for backing me up on this. For some reason the post didnt show up as a track back so here is a link for anyone that hasnt read it. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/chris-bennet-on-rip-off-report
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Tom, January 16th, 2008 at 9:44 am Nice post Chris. Its very interesting to see just how big the gap is between Google rankings and the other search engines. Google really needs to stop placing so much weight on such a dodgy site, especially since they are profiting from it.
jameszol, January 16th, 2008 at 1:37 pm Im glad you wrote this - and happy that Rand picked it up at SEOmoz. Small and large businesses lose a ton of money because RoR undoubtedly takes the minority that gets ticked
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While a bad review here and there typically doesnt hurt too much (and might even help) if you can get it burried or mixed with good reviews - at least you get a good picture of the true satisfaction levels when a small business garners and publishes (without discrimination) customer reviews. Not so with RoR. Its all about accentuating the negative - it could make a very interesting business model case studyespecially when it crashes and burns - negativity almost always has a short life span.
Chris Bennett, January 16th, 2008 at 3:49 pm It is on Sphinn http://sphinn.com/story/23332 and Stumble http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/www.97thfloor.com/blog/public-spam-report-google-your-honeymoonwith-rip-off-report-has-to-stop/
Josh Garner, January 16th, 2008 at 3:51 pm Well, what can I say? I Love JLO. Gee golly, I wonder if all that nasty stuff about Sergey and Larry is true. Seriously, I know celebrities have been known to make stupid mistakes, but these guys arent movie stars. They are likely just baaaaaarely smarter than that. Im just trying to figure out what the JHole who wrote this would have to gain from it. Maybe Linkbait, but there wouldnt be anything to gain. Oh on another note. I was in a coffee shop this weekend, and some guy tried to pick me up. Williamfence? No Gate. Yeah.William Gate. He tried to wow me by saying he was some big shot at some computer company. After sniffing white powder (I think it was baby powder, Im a virgin so I dont know much about this stuff) he answered his phone. He was talking to some Steve guy, and said, You dont F with William Gate. Thats how I knew his name. I Love Brittney Spears
Robert C., March 30th, 2008 at 2:10 pm OMG that is hilarious :)

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Michael (Its Bad Business), January 16th, 2008 at 4:55 pm Thanks for this report! It clarifies a number of complaints that Ive noted and added many more to what I was aware of. Maybe your report will spur Google to action. I understand that your site is focused on Google and SEO, but my site is all about business ethics and this issue is important from that side, too.
The Ripoff Report and Online Reputation Management | RepGuardian, January 16th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
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James (Dolphin Promotions), January 16th, 2008 at 5:18 pm Excellent post. I definitely agree that Google gives to much weight to trusted domains, Wikipedia is obviously the worst one for this, but at least there are less reputation issues with it than RoR.
Rip Off Report - Reputation Management - Negative Press | Matt Lerche, January 16th, 2008 at 5:28 pm [] has posted a good write up about the Rip Off Report . Going deeper, hes referencing this post by Chris Bennet posted today. Very good []
Mark Barrera, January 16th, 2008 at 7:40 pm Thanks for your great write up. I have dealt with numerous companies who have dealt with this site and the extortion practices of the owner. I hope that your coverage can help Google to take some type of action against this site and the damage it is doing to many reputable companies such as your own as well as the damage that is done to the SERPs.
Mike Munz of Higher Images, January 16th, 2008 at 7:52 pm Great post! I recently wrote a similar article refering to online reviews and there validity. The entire web has become infested with (b.s.) reviews and reports. Action by the big 3 is needed asap. I have many clients trying to fight off #1 SERP bad reviews that have come from competitors or companies like ripoff report.If you know of any ways or techniques to thwart this please email me at mike AT higherimages.com. I am seeking true help for this epidemic.
How to fight negative reviews. | Internet Marketing & Technology, January 16th, 2008 at 9:27 pm [] here it is, the topic I have so coveted Online Reviews. I can credit a great article by 97th Floor :Google Your Honeymoon with Rip Off Report has to Stop, for the []
Extorso via resultados do Google - Marketing de Busca, January 16th, 2008 at 11:51 pm [] entrada no 97th floor, Chris Bennet denuncia a rip off report, um site que alegadamente d voz a cidados descontentes com empresas e os seus concidados (via []
Matt McGee, January 17th, 2008 at 1:22 am If it helps even a bit, I put it on Mixx:
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links for 2008-01-17, January 17th, 2008 at 1:31 am [] Public Spam Report: Google Your Honeymoon with Rip Off Report has to Stop First Im going to lay out how they are very much violating Googles Webmaster Guidelines. For those of you that arent familiar with them you can view the page here, (tags: blog Google Management Reputation SEO spam) []
Seo Design Solutions, January 17th, 2008 at 6:19 am I agree, it is a rather obvious contradiction indeed (interlinking of URLs, duplicate content, etc.) The Rip Off Reports site is clearly outside the search engine guidelines there. Despite the fact that the mishap with the plug in occurred, a lie is never true. Im sorry to hear that your reputation is being compromised by a dose of bad press. Its unfortunate that such a medium (that was designed with good intentions) has been exploited by disgruntled types who use it for reputation management smear campaigns & negative SEO.
Chris Bennett, January 17th, 2008 at 6:43 am Seo Design Solutions, It is definitely lame that someone posted something that is absolutely false about our company, but the reason for this post is to show the unfair positive treatment Google gives ROR, and the shady seo violations that ROR is blatantly doing to spam Googles index. Im not worried about a comment that looks like it was outsourced to someone that barely knows the English language.
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Underarock, January 17th, 2008 at 12:52 pm Nice article. Spend some time looking at the depositions in Federal court and you see clearly that ROR feeds information to other sources so that information can be fed back to ROR with the claim that Ed did not make the post him self. The same depositions will show that there were some untruths told. You will also see that ROR attorneys claim moneys paid to the Corporate Advocacy Program are earned for the investigations that ROR has to conduct in spite of state statutes that bar charging money for investigations unless one is licensed to conduct investigations. That statute has criminal penalties. The statute is designed to protect clients from incompetent or greedy investigators that can not, will not deliver a good product. Anyone that brings things like this to the publics attention gets much distorted information spread about the world as you have seen first hand.
Online shake-downs: help persuade Google to ban ripoffreport | Distilled blog, January 19th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
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Jordan Kasteler, January 20th, 2008 at 8:10 am Ive heard of cases where companies have paid upwards to $10k to pull claims off of Rip Off Report. What a crime.
Cheryl Roberts, January 21st, 2008 at 1:37 am Lets educated your readers and confirms some facts so all our crystal clear. For those readers that do not think Google and Rip Off Report are bed partners you need to realize that they are and this is factual. We are a company that has 1 fraudulent rip off report made up by Ed himself. It was indexed on page 2, 29th position UNTIL we filed a notice of Copyright Infringement with Google demanding they remove the Rip Off Report about us from their browser. Within 4 hours time after they acknowledged receipt of the Infringement notice, the Rip Off Report moved up to the NO. 1 position on page 1 under our business name key word search. This occurred within 6 hours time. Google also deleted our 2 web sites indexed which held the no 1 and no 2 spots on the first page which allowed Rip Off Report to move into the 1st position. THIS HAPPENED WITHIN 6 HOURS TIME after Google received our demand for removal letter. We have written our Congressman and US Senator as well as notifying 141 Newspapers and News Channels of what occurred because this is just plain wrong, dirty, immoral and criminal.
Peter Johnson, January 21st, 2008 at 6:11 pm I am commenting anonymously because we also confirm that what Cheryl says is true. GOOGLE AND ROR ARE BEDFELLOWS. We have been fighting to push down ROR for awhile. The typical technique involves creating positive pages at different domains; microsites, social networking sites, etc. and driving links to them to push ROR down. We were undertaking the strategy quite nicely; until, we did a little research like Chris has done and saw all the SEO violations ROR is using -basically spamming the index. Well, we figured Google would want to know about the violations so we submitted to Googles spam reporting tool. Our BIG mistake was that we did it from our Google webmaster account. Ever since then, Google given ROR so much power for our brand keywords its unbelievable. They are on the 1st page in spite of the fact that they are not in the top 100 for MSN, Yahoo or Ask. The ROR listing outranks other pages containing higher keyword density for our brand and higher pagerank. We contacted googles legal department as well to no avail. Everyone please we have to do something about this many very good companies are getting hurt here. Heres what I propose 1. start a campaign to get as many people as possible to submit to the google spam report it cant come from companies that are being effected, but needs to come from SEO savvy people who care about the internet. https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en 2. contact as many large companies as possible, many of whom arent even aware of the damage to their reputation by ROR & Google. To get a list, go to ROR homepage and look at the list at the bottom. Some major companies, like ADT Security (owned by multibillion$$ Tyco have Google page 1 listings:
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3. lets get as many stories as possible of the favorable treatment of ROR by Google. If in fact Google does give ROR blantantly favorable treatment, Google is no longer acting as a non-biased tool, but they are in fact taking EDITORIAL LICENSE. If thats the case, the lose their legal protection. Google could be liable for damages, just as if the NY Times prints libelous or slanderous information. These cases have never worked against Google because of the fact they maintain an algorithmic set of rules that applies to everyone, but if their rules are waived for sites they favor for reasons outside fo the algorithm, all of a sudden thats editorial. Look at this lawsuit: http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2007/04/google_sued_for_2.htm A large homebuilder, RSA enterprises names ROR and Google in a lawsuit. {http://www.rsahomes.com/} As Mr. Goldman points out, Google is unquestionably covered by 47 USC 230 for this content, and there is no way the plaintiff can get around the statutory immunization BUT USC230 doesnt apply if its proven Google has used editorial license! If a suit like this was even heard by a judge, it would be massively damaging to Google because it could be possible that they would have to reveal their secret algorithm in discovery. How cool would that be? Ive personally been hoping that an open source alternative to Google would gain some traction like Nutch: http://lucene.apache.org/nutch/ (but thats another story; search should be open) Either way, we can defeat ROR if we work together. Follow 1-2-3 above and get as many people on board as possible. ~Peter
(Comments wont nest below this level) Cheryl Roberts, January 22nd, 2008 at 3:30 am
Heres what blows our minds, Google, being the monster company they are, is associating with Ed Magedson WHY WHY WHY?? Its like OJ Simpson representing Pepsi. Why would Google want this association but they seem to want it. Also, WHY is there not one listing on Rip Off Report about GOOGLE? Come on, Google is a monster and we all know its not possible that one client, customer would have a complaint about GOOGLE but its true, not one ROR Complaint listed. AND heres the frosting on the cake, if you search on the google browser for Ed Magedson or Rip Off Report, you will see Google is removing negative postings about Ed and Rip Off Report which is clearly noted at the bottom of the pages removed under digitial millenium act several times about Ed. Now GOOGLE does not remove anything and its when Pigs Fly to they yield and remove something. Also GOOGLE tells us you have to wait until the next crawl cycle to get anything removed, we cant remove anything either Well this is a lie. Google intentionally removed our indexed web pages which held the no 1 and no 2 spots for 4 months straight. Once google received our complaint and demand for removal of ROR within 6 hours they removed our two indexed web sites and pushed the ROR posting into the No 1 position in their place
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amberto, January 21st, 2008 at 8:22 pm I am so happy that you guys are talking about this. Our company was recently victimized by ROR and we too have been trying (to no avail) to get the report removed. My favorite part about this scam is that even the author cannot remove a post. I guess your words become the property of ROR once you put them on their site.
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Peter Johnson, January 22nd, 2008 at 4:10 pm Here is a posting about Google. Lets drive as many links to it as possible. Notice that the title is keyword stuffed. Heres another idea the secret to getting Rip Off Reports to rank higher is to have the company name listed in the long list at the bottom of ROR. A link there will drive listings up.
If any of you feel youve been wronged by Google, which it sounds like you have, put a negative posting on ROR under the name Google Adwords. Google Adwords is their cash cow. Its where they get all their money. Be sure to put Google Adwords in your title. Once there are 5 listings live on ROR, submit Google adwords to editor@ripoffreport.com, requesting that Google Adwords be added to the list on the ROR homepage. Then well see if Google is full of it or not because that link should drive a page 1 listing for ror under the keyword Google Adwords. Be sure to also put popular phrases in your titles like Google Advertising. Now of course, Im only advocating this for those of you who have actually had business problems with Google Adwords. For example, have you ever tried to get customer service from them and not been able to. According to ROR, that make them a rip off. You get my point. Lets expose this sham for what it is a way to force companies to spend more on adwords to counteract the negative publicity of ROR. To answer your question, Cheryl, thats why Google so heavily favors negative publicity. Because then companies have to spend more money advertising their own brand name. http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/265/RipOff0265422.htm
Cheryl Roberts, January 23rd, 2008 at 1:46 am Well our sister in law is a producer for MSNBC and we have been promised an hour episode on the Google Rip Off Report connection as well as focusing on what Google did to us and of course Ed Magedson and Rip Off Report scams. Google is not going to like this News Report at all particuarly being an hour episode so stay tuned
Chris Bennett, January 23rd, 2008 at 2:13 am Cheryl and Peter Thanks for your comments, this is really interesting and compelling stuff. I am surprised we havent heard anything from Google at least on SEOmozs blog where they have commented on things before. Cheryl please keep us posted on that episode with MSNBC, I would love to have a heads up to tell our readers and the SEO community about it. If MSNBC needs an SEO to interview saying that Rip Off Report is spamming Google you know who to call
Cheryl Roberts, January 23rd, 2008 at 11:40 pm We have a meeting with a State Senator on Friday and US Senator on Wednesday next week on these matters. We are so glad they agreed to meet with us. AND, both Senators were aware of Ed Magedson and Rip Off Report as well as allegations concerning Google associations with Rip Off Report. We will get this out there and shame Google for their behavior
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[] getting some serious push-back from people in the reputation management / SEO industry (Rand, Chris, []
The Rip Off Report Guy, January 28th, 2008 at 1:40 am Great News Everyone. We need to do something about this website. I started a blog about this at http://theripoffreport.blogspot.com/ I hope others will start blogs and start talking about this issue. Can www.97thfloor.com Start a page about what we can do to fight the ripoffreport.com
A friend, January 29th, 2008 at 4:32 am Hey, Chris. Youre not the only SEO with a page 1 listing on google for ROR. Seems ROR trumps all you SEOs (or maybe Googles just totally off their rocker) They really NEED to wakeup. There is something wrong when anyone can anonymously create a posting about someone and get it on page 1 in Google within a day. If ROR were called Fair Forum or something that would be one thing, but the very title of the site automatically presumes rip off, so the listing itself is enough to create FUD - fear, uncertainly and doubt in the minds of potential customers. WAKE UP SEO COMMUNITY! There is NO good side to ROR. http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=t&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GFRC_en___US210& q=John+andrews+seo
Chris Bennett, January 29th, 2008 at 4:46 am That Sucks John Andrews got mentioned, I am a big fan of his blog, and he is definitely legit. That post is so ridiculous too, it has nothing to do with him being a rip off it is a blatant attempt to spam Google.
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Zach Kral, January 30th, 2008 at 3:47 am I have personally taken up this cause for a company that has been an exceptionally postive part of my life. Rip Of Report is the number 2 rank when googling www.psiseminars.com, and the comments and feedback on ROR that comes up is generally from people who cannot take responsibility for their own actions or who clearly have an agenda. For myself and a group of graduates, our only solution was to create a whole site highlighting the positive results from the company and its causes instead of the negative: www.psivoice.com
How to Deal with a Ripoff Report Listing, January 30th, 2008 at 8:01 am [] this blog entry, we are looking at the widely discussed Ripoff Report and steps you can take to Deal with a Ripoff Report Listing, welcome []
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Cheryl Roberts, February 1st, 2008 at 3:09 am
Will someone educate us on a matter concerning Ed Magedson, Rip Off Report. How does Ed and Rip Off Report keep the hundreds if not thousands of negative reports about them off of Google? If you type in Key Word Rip Off Report they are virtually clean with a few exceptions? Now, if Ed and Rip Off Report did not author all the hundreds of complaints against them HOW DO THEY GET ALL THE COMPLAINTS REMOVED FROM THE GOOGLE BROWSER?? Because your not suppose to be able to remove a written complaint if you are not the author of the complaint? Why are they the exception and who is assisting them in keeping Rip Off Report key word search free of what must amount to thousands of complaints agaisnt rip off report? No one else can seem to do this so why are they getting away with this? Our guess is Google must be working hand in hand with Ed and Rip Off Report to reduce and remove a great percentage of complaints written about Ed and ROR from being seen in Google browser under keyword searches?
January 08: Best Search/Marketing Posts Small Business SEM, February 1st, 2008 at 7:08 am [] Chris/97th Floor: Public Spam Report: Google Your Honeymoon with Rip Off Report has to Stop []
Darryl G, February 8th, 2008 at 6:28 pm Googles goodie-two-shoes image is starting to crumble fast. No one stays at the top forever. Once their image begins to curmble, they keep missing financial projections as last time, and the typical situation where their success gets in their own way will being happen. Google is digging its own grave by cozying up with the scam operation Rip Off Report.
jimm, February 23rd, 2008 at 6:13 pm I Downloaded the entire Ripoffreport website in both 2006 and 2007 and the report about Larry Page and Sergey brin was not there. This is a typical tactic of Ed Magedson. I submit he wrote the report in an effort to gain some leverage against google in the event they ban him. Which everyone hopes they will.
Bob Kirchman, February 25th, 2008 at 5:17 pm Its ironic, really, how my company Kirchman Associates ended up getting slammed on this website. Four years ago we were facing extortion attempts by those phoney phone directories who would call and tell you that you already were signed up for a recurring charge of always just under $400, but if you payed them once they were back like a bad penny wanting their next installment. I fought back, and as a result some of them put up some pretty outrageous charges about me. My existing clients know how ridiculous the claims are. The same poster seems to have posed as two victims and carries on a rather lame comment lovefest session. My regular clients know that only
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Having been in business for 23 years helps, but it would be really nice to see this whole affair put to rest. I contacted the ROR and explained that this was not only false, but malicious information. I was told that I could write a rebuttal! I appreciate what you are doing to help small companies like mine. Many Thanks!
brian, March 7th, 2008 at 4:34 pm Ok, I am in the same boat as you all. I created a free carpooling website and bought a domain for it, not knowing that the previous domain owner had 2 ripoff reports in it. It is hard to rip someone off when your service is free. I then decided that I could replace the results with positive results so I spent 3 months filling up my results with good stuff pushing the ripoff report to the 3rd page. Then I decide to go to the webmaster report tool and submit it as spam. Now, the ROR is SECOND for my search results. This is so not fair. What can I do?? Does paying ROR get the page off of the net?
Bob Kirchman, March 10th, 2008 at 2:31 am Brian, I have never tried to pay the Corporate Advocacy Program. I am not sure I have a great deal of trust where someone wont simply take down posts that are clearly false, malicious, and or irrelevant. I do think Will Critchlows Campaign to Get ROR Out of the SERPS has a better chance of solving the problem. Your service is free and primarily marketed to a very local audience so a little positive PR from you should be more than enough to deflect ROR damage. As you say: It is hard to rip someone off when your service is free.
Bob, March 10th, 2008 at 11:38 pm I wont say anything about my company (because clearly google is against any company that speaks out against ror). I will say that submitting a Spam report about ROR through the Google webmaster program caused ROR to rank on page 1 for our site too and its impossible to remove. This in spite of the fact that there are dozens of sites ranked lower than ror with our brand in the title tag and higher PR than the ror listings. If google is using spam reports through the webmaster program to boost ror listings, they are violating the FTCs guidelines for clear and conspicuous disclosures. Their spam reporting form gives no indication whatsoever that reporting a link could actually lead google to conclude that the reported link deserves a higher ranking, but that appears to be whats going on. Google is concluding that if a company reports an ror listing then that company is trying to manipulate the index, so theyll actually boost the ror listing. If that is googles intent, then they are obligated by guidelines set by the ftc to say something to the effect of we discourage companies from reporting negative press to this spam index because it may result in the negative press receiving a higher quality score in the google index. They are actually suckering webmasters into hurting their own results with their coy We appreciate your taking the time to help us improve our service for your fellow users around the world. By helping us eliminate spam, youre saving millions of people time, effort and energy.
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Case 2:10-cv-01360-SVW Case 2:11-cv-01426-GMS -PJW Document Document96-24 103-1 Filed Filed 07/27/10 07/31/12 Page Page 22 152 ofof 31 242 Page ID #:2617 Never mind the fact that Chris has proven that ror is spamming the index. If ror wasnt spamming, google might have a leg to stand on, but since ror is spamming, webmasters are being totally lied to when they submit spam reports only to see google boost the rankings of the listing that are submitted.
Heres a totally different angle for a legal mind since Google doesnt disclose the real use of the spam reports, would it be possible to say that the report itself is the intellectual property of the person who submits the report? Since the person doing the reporting has done the research, it is in fact the reporters intellectual property. They are giving Google permission to use it for 1 reason and google is using it for a completely contrary reason. Therefore Google does not maintain protection under 47 USC 230 http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/47/230.html, because IP claims are exempt. Google has liability for the damages that result from their misuse of the webmasters own intellectual property. Look bottom line is ror cannot be touched directly. Legal channels are a waist of time. Theyve already been ordered to pay millions and they wont pay and just hide. If someone ever find Ed, hell just file bankruptcy and reincorporate. There are no assets there to grab. ISPs have shut them down and theyve just gone offshore. THE ONLY angle here is to get Google to do the right thing and follow Microsoft and Yahoos lead. In spite of the do no evil crap, Google will act in their own self interest and if they feel they are violating an FTC rule or their 47 USC 230 protection is in jeopardy. Only then will their little love affair with ror will come to an end. Of course, enough pressure at conferences might make shame them into action. Bravo SEO community. Keep the pressure on!
Bob Kirchman, March 11th, 2008 at 1:17 pm The old Journalists Code of Ethics might be a good model for Google to apply when handling sites like Rip Off Report. Yahoo and MSN have already shown us how to self-govern their own search engines. The SEO community should indeed keep the pressure on and spotlight practices such as Index Spamming that should be addressed directly.
Chery Roberts, March 11th, 2008 at 5:21 pm Do not trust Google, its well established that if you complain to Google abuse or Google legal about ROR, you will notice immediate punishment in the form or a premier listing of the ROR posting. Its our belief that google abuse dept is constructed of young adults as they do not appear to be mature seasoned adults. I do not think they look forward to the liability their actions can cause their employer (Google) by playing games with companies that write to them about google abuse Googles reputation is really suffering and its going to harm their bottom line for sure
Bob Kirchman, March 12th, 2008 at 7:21 pm Cheryl, I think it will take no less than someone like Sarah Bird, Esquire to get through to Google. If a RICO suit against Rip Off Report is successful, it would not look good for a search engine to be giving them preferential treatment, would it? Dont Be Evil
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Chery Roberts, March 13th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
FYI for your readers, we have a fake company we posted in limited publications just to trap ROR and it worked. This company does not exist and was used as bait only to reel in Ed Magedson and ROR and guess what IT WORKED! We have a posting with a complaint! Now isnt that something? Proof poz that ROR and Ed Magedson are the worst and yet Google runs them and promotes them.
Bob Kirchman, March 14th, 2008 at 2:17 pm Cheryl, That is amazing! Of course, not THAT surprising when you consider who were dealing with. Do you think complaints to the FTC would be effective?
Fred, March 16th, 2008 at 2:41 pm Hey, Chris. Please share with the rest of us how you got your ror removed from the google index? check out info:www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/297/RipOff0297911.htm in google isnt this listing the one that originally inspired this crusade and now its gone from the google index. I doubt Google did that, but maybe Im wrong. More likely Ed did it to get the SEO community to back off. I notice that Chris isnt pushing the ROR stuff much anymore. Could that be because he got what he wants and now the rest of us can just fend for ourselves? thats no accident. anyone have any theories on why that is?
Mr. Nezzer , March 19th, 2008 at 4:46 am Thought all you SEOs would like to know that youre terrorists: http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/03/rip-off-report.html I think you guys are afraid, personally because since the ROR lawsuit threats: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/ripoff-report-responds-you-be-the-judge youve totally backed off. Didnt know the SEO community would give up so easily. Or Maybe it wasnt Ed. Maybe Matt Cutts told you your whole thing was a sham and SMX West and you just dont want to admit it?
Chris Bennett, March 19th, 2008 at 5:14 am
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I am so busy, you will see I have only posted a couple times since this post. This is an extremely busy time for us. This post has been read by thousands of people and there is not much more I can do. It is in the hands of Google. I am assuming they know about the post as it was all over the place.
Chris Bennett, March 19th, 2008 at 5:27 am Fred, Also we did not do anything to the post, I have not talked to anyone at ROR, I have seen a lot of posts get de-indexed when there is only one post. As far as not pushing ROR stuff anymore I have only done 3 posts in the entire history of this blog I have never made it a habit to talk about ROR. It is actually the contrary.
Cheryl Roberts, March 19th, 2008 at 5:08 pm ANYONE, and I mean anyone that believes anything Ed or ROR says or promotes needs serious couch time in a Phyciatrists office. ROR is nothing but an extortion scheme run by a group of folks that are former carnival operators by trade. The problem with ED and ROR is they are not very smart and easy to trip up and catch. We posted a fake company to trap Ed and ROR and had an office pool going for the time period it would take Ed and ROR to write a complaint to post about our fake company. The Pool was up to $400 and one of our staff members guessed two weeks and won the money.
ROR is Just Wrong, March 20th, 2008 at 12:15 pm Chris Google does not seem to listen to us. We are the same people that create webpages and put adsense on our pages, we are the people that love google and this is how we are treated. Chris I think that what we are all saying is that we want to know what we can do next to help get rid of rip off report. You have created a blogpost that thousands have read and thousands are looking for you to tell us what to do next. We are only good if we create action as a group. You do great work keep it up. I hope everyone has send in their responses to the below link. This has been the media outlet we are all looking for. Send them everything: links, emails, blog posts. http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/03/rip-off-report.html
Jeff Jones, March 20th, 2008 at 8:10 pm Wanna bet that Ed has emailed the crockpots in his database to get them to post on this link:
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Case 2:10-cv-01360-SVW Case 2:11-cv-01426-GMS -PJW Document Document96-24 103-1 Filed Filed 07/27/10 07/31/12 Page Page 25 155 ofof 31 242 Page ID #:2620 http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/03/rip-off-report.html
NO WAY normal wired readers are this favorable to ROR (or even care that much) and NO Way that many would post so quickly. Either that or Eds posting them himself. PLEASE, PLEASE get the focus back on GOOGLE and off of ROR. Thats a total distraction. The focus needs to be on GOOGLE to treat ROR like any other site and NOT like the second coming with greater trust than WIKIpedia. The google anti-spam team is taking editorial license with the abnormal trust ranking which exposes GOOGLE to liability! There will always be small-time criminals, but when reputable business assists them, theres a problem. Focus on Google and their use of editorial to ARTIFICIALLY (beyond the normal algorithm) boost ROR. Kind of like when the Police help the Mob
Sheila Talbert, March 21st, 2008 at 6:50 pm Google is protecting ROR & Ed Magedson without a doubt. We have worked to prove our belief. We have posted over 88 negative reports about ROR and stuffed it with keywords and NOT 1 Posting shows up on ROR in Google. 88 Negative Reports and not 1 shows up on Google. Now, it doesnt take a genius to realize what is going on. Google is filtering out negative reports agaisnt ROR. We cant believe this. Google works with ROR and protects them and this is proof poz.
Jenna, March 21st, 2008 at 6:50 pm If youre a Google shareholder, tell them that you dont appreciate the undue risks theyre taking with your money by unnecessarily exposing the company to liability. Tell Google to give ROR a normal trust ranking like everybody else, not an artificially high ranking. ROR is NOT WIKIpedia! Its at the least a biased source of information and at the worst a criminal extortion enterprise. Tell Google to Stop Doing Evil. Google Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043 United States - Map Phone: 650-253-0000 Heres Googles investor relations contact: http://www.google.com/support/investors/?contact_type=other&submit=Continue
Marty, March 28th, 2008 at 3:41 am Heads Up Chris
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Case 2:10-cv-01360-SVW Case 2:11-cv-01426-GMS -PJW Document Document96-24 103-1 Filed Filed 07/27/10 07/31/12 Page Page 26 156 ofof 31 242 Page ID #:2621 Ed is trying to push your top spot listing under keyword search ROR down with bs postings to lower position. Slam this thief Chris and keep it up in top position for all to see.
That thing you see floating in your toilet, thats Ed and its time to flush the toilet
Murray Peterson, March 30th, 2008 at 2:35 am Hey, Everybody. Check out Seth Godins post over on Wired. Really good stuff there. We should make sure to send this on to Matt Cutts and others at Google. Chris, Id love your comment. http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/03/rip-off-report.html#comment-108738858
Robert C., March 30th, 2008 at 2:43 pm When is the show?

Charlene, March 31st, 2008 at 1:08 am We are one business that is fed up with Google and allowing a criminal group (ROR) to prey on consumers. Google must stop allowing ROR to spam and spam and spam. This is not right. No other group is allowed this and receives such a high trust ranking. We are putting together a group of businesses that has fallen victim to fraudulent postings from ROR and carried on Google We are preparing a large scale protest at Google locations and invite the media to take note of these protests. This has to end and end now. If your fed up with Google allowing this to continue join our cause and assist with this protest being planned.
RankRover , April 5th, 2008 at 4:44 pm What is rediculous is that Ed Magedson has been removing the last comment I made on my ripoffreport and placing it back after google refreshes the listing. I buried this ripoffreport through reputation management a couple times, and when Ed notices what I have done, he refreshes the listing to make it look like something is new. My ex-partner in a business venture wrote a fake report against my company saying I was a spammer, and ad bomber. He also attacked me because I post a couple web design and seo ads on Craigslist every now and then.
Fred Williams, April 10th, 2008 at 6:04 pm I have seen the same thing as RankRover. Anytime our ror listings in Google start to drop, Ed will change the title and refresh the listings. In changing the title, hes also changing the title tags, fooling Google into thinking its new content. Very spammy. Chris, do you have any insight into Googles side of this argument? I cant for the life of me figure out why they dont slap ROR for the spamming.
Tony Roscoe, April 22nd, 2008 at 6:47 pm
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Case 2:10-cv-01360-SVW Case 2:11-cv-01426-GMS -PJW Document Document96-24 103-1 Filed Filed 07/27/10 07/31/12 Page Page 27 157 ofof 31 242 Page ID #:2622 Chris
Ed is pushing your honeymoon with google listing down to the bottom of the 1st page. Keep it at the top as it needs to be seen and Mr. Slime ball is trying to push it back
Debbie, May 4th, 2008 at 12:54 am I found this blog through a search. I, for the life of me, could not understand why ROR reports kept showing up at the top. As a result, I did a GOOGLE search and came up with this site. Anyway, to businesses worried about RORs, most people at this point know that most of the reports on ROR are fake. I, myself, had a FAKE report posted about me on ROR. When the person came back and admitted it was fake, the report was allowed to stay. From that point on, I knew that the site couldnt be trusted. I used to refer and use ROR as a research site for legal complaints and general consumer complaints. Now, I advise against ROR and only recommend Amazon.com and Epinions.com. I know nothing can be done about ROR, other than discourage people way from the site, but I still have disappointment. 5 years ago I gave to the site because they claimed they were a consumer advocacy site; that clearly is a lie to get money to operate the site and slander people. I also am disappointed in GOOGLE for their decision to spotlight the lies told on ROR. Now, I have noticed that businesses are advertising on ROR. I definitely would not buy anything from a business that supports a site like ROR.
Tina Bradbury, June 27th, 2008 at 7:15 pm The company I have been employed at for 12 years had an ex-employee who broke into my employers home and robbed them for over $6000 worth of items. The owner pressed charges and in doing so the ex-employee threatened to post on ROR if the charges were not dropped. The company refused to be blackmailed and have been paying for it since 2005. The owners faxed to Ed the Police Theft Report to prove the intent of the poster and he asked for $5000 to remove it. Yet, another case of blackmail!! My empolyer has suffered through this slander and has spent $20,000 trying to fight it. They lost the fight and opened up under another name. Why does Google allow companies like this to be harrassed, put out of business and loose money? My employee could have easily posted the theives name on ROR but choose not to do this. What can be done to remove these postings? Can anyone help?
Reply here
andrew, May 11th, 2008 at 12:08 pm If you were a victim like i was we need to show GOOGLE how easy it is to slander. Please write fake posts about google founders execs and there wives. This will have to make them think about how this could effect people and maybe then take it off thier search results.
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Chris Bennett, May 26th, 2008 at 11:40 pm Andrew,
I am not cool with anyone writing anything false about anyone online. Why stoop to the same level as those that exploit ROR? I know it is super frustrating, and not fair to you, but the Google execs may not know about this at all, and it could be engineers that are aware. Regardless of who is aware writing false articles about someone else is not something I would recommend. In the long run I think you would regret it, and you would be exactly the same as those leveraging ROR.
Reply here
Debbie, May 27th, 2008 at 12:42 am Andrew, ROR is not legally liable but YOU as the poster are liable. If you post a malicious lie about someone, they could sue you. Most people arent suing the people because there is still no guarantee that the report will be removed if you prevail in the lawsuit against the person. The court has jurisdiction over the complainor, not necessarily ROR.
Reply here
Sell your Google stock NOW! It will be worth pennies! - WebProWorld, May 18th, 2008 at 9:01 pm [] because we handle reputation management for our clients. See a thread at 97th floor about it at ? Public Spam Report: Google Your Honeymoon with Rip Off Report has to Stop My argument is very much solid. On top of the facts stated I also have screenshots of reports that []
Sell your Google stock NOW! It will be worth pennies! - Page 2 - WebProWorld, May 19th, 2008 at 3:47 pm [] Null. Please check Googles technical guidelines for the following information posted at ? Public Spam Report: Google Your Honeymoon with Rip Off Report has to Stop : 1.)Technical Guidelines from Google: Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search []
Bad Press Removal, May 20th, 2008 at 2:18 pm Have you noticed that the Sergey Brin report was changed to Soney Bonoi? Also, they forgot to change one instance of the name Sergey Brin and I got a screenshot. Then I got a new screenshot yesterday when that one instance was also changed to Soney Bonoi. And that is not the only report I got a screenshot of that was changed. I got another one where I took screenshots of the google result which showed conflicting information.
asdf , June 9th, 2008 at 8:48 pm And while you are at it, report Encyclopediadramatica.com for defamation. Its not a satire website as they call it themselves.
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Case 2:10-cv-01360-SVW Case 2:11-cv-01426-GMS -PJW Document Document96-24 103-1 Filed Filed 07/27/10 07/31/12 Page Page 29 159 ofof 31 242 Page ID #:2624 Coward, June 16th, 2008 at 9:42 am
The names have been changed! - All References to the name Sergey Brin have been changed to Soney Bonoi
Get Page One, August 5th, 2008 at 7:30 pm OMGI love JLO too! Just wanted to point out that even with the name changed to Soney Bonoi, ROR has now been elevated to #1 for that Google query. Looks like it just keeps getting worse. Just how much love is Google gonna give those guys? Also, is changing the name within the post even LEGAL? I think editing the name admits knowing the report is malicious, but they leave it up because it ranks well. Even if Google isnt ticked, Sergey should be.
Isaac, August 7th, 2008 at 7:21 pm Freedom van lines is a victim of this web site. We have 500 customers a month,few have complaints. We are very sorry about that and we would like to give a refund to all of them
Emma, August 16th, 2008 at 2:29 pm Isnt Googles model statement Dont Be Evil? If thats the case, how can they continually justify being in a partnership with someone like Ed Magedson and ROR?
Online Reputation Management to Remove a Rip Off Report, October 9th, 2008 at 4:56 am [] example, Chris Bennet of 97th floor produced a well written article called Google, Your Honeymoon with Rip Off Report Has to Stop. Through the detailed research a pattern of egregious activity can be seen. The research breaks []
Ripoffreport.com Petition request for Google.com - Disciples of Tech, November 3rd, 2008 at 4:20 pm [] I am posting this petition below, but first I encourage you to do your own research. Do a search on Google you will find a ton of information on Ripoffreport.com and their unfair practices. Have a look here this is a really good posting. 97thfloor.com []
steves Blog Blog Archive didier grossemy : Have you read something about me?, December 26th, 2008 at
10:09 am
[] stories to catch my eyes in the last few months was this expos from Chris Bennet at 97th Floor Google, Your Honeymoon with Rip Off Report Has to Stop. Looking through Chris detailed research into the practices of the website and perusing some []
Report on Rip off Report Commercial Investigations, Inc., May 12th, 2009 at 10:13 pm [] http://www.97thfloor.com/blog/public-spam-report-google-your-honeymoon-with-rip-off-reporthas-to-st []
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EXHIBIT 11
Case 2:10-cv-01360-SVW -PJW Document Document103-1 173 Filed 11/01/10 1 of 21 ofPage Case 2:11-cv-01426-GMS Filed 07/31/12Page Page 199 242 ID #:4859
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DANIEL F. BLACKERT, ESQ., CSB No. 255021 LISA J. BORODKIN, ESQ., CSB No. 196412 Asia Economic Institute 11766 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 260 Los Angeles, CA 90025 Telephone (310) 806-3000 Facsimile (310) 826-4448 Daniel@asiaecon.org Blackertesq@yahoo.com lisa@asiaecon.org lisa_borodkin@post.harvard.edu Attorneys for Plaintiffs, Asia Economic Institute, LLC Raymond Mobrez, and Iliana Llaneras UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT CENTRAL DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA ) ) ) ) ) ) Plaintiffs, ) ) vs. ) ) XCENTRIC VENTURES, LLC, an Arizona LLC, d/b/a as BADBUSINESS ) ) BUREAU and/or ) BADBUSINESSBUREAU.COM ) and/or RIP OFF REPORT and/or ) RIPOFFREPORT.COM; BAD ) BUSINESS BUREAU, LLC, organized ) ) and existing under the laws of St. ) Kitts/Nevis, West Indies; EDWARD MAGEDSON an individual, and DOES ) ) 1 through 100, inclusive, ) ) Defendants. ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ASIA ECONOMIC INSTITUTE, a California LLC; RAYMOND MOBREZ an individual; and ILIANA LLANERAS, an individual, Case No.: 2:10-cv-01360-SVW-PJW NOTICE OF MOTION AND MOTION UNDER RULE 56(f) TO DENY OR TO CONTINUE DEFENDANTS MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT TO CONDUCT FURTHER DISCOVERY; DECLARATION OF LISA J. BORODKIN AND CERTIFICATION OF COMPLIANCE WITH LOCAL CIVIL RULE 7-3 Judge: The Hon. Stephen V. Wilson Date: Place: November 29, 2010 312 North Spring Street Los Angeles, California 90012 Courtroom: 6
Memo of Points and Auth. Pls Rule 56(f) Motion
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TO ALL PARTIES AND THEIR COUNSEL OF RECORD: PLEASE TAKE NOTICE that on November 29, 2010 at 1:30 p.m. or at any other time as this Honorable Court may deem proper, Plaintiffs will and hereby do move this Honorable Court for an Order under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(f) (1) denying Defendants Motion for Summary Judgment on all claims in this case or, in the alternative, (2) continuing Defendants Motion for Summary Judgment to allow Plaintiffs to conduct necessary discovery to oppose Defendants Motion for Summary Judgment. The Motion for denial or continuance of Defendants Motion for Summary Judgment under Rule 56(f) is based on the grounds that: Plaintiffs have identified a likelihood that controverting evidence exists as to material facts in Defendants motion for summary judgment, specifically material facts 18-20 and 22-25 in Defendants Separate Statement [DN-146]. Good cause exists as to why such evidence was not discovered or obtained earlier in the proceedings, because discovery was bifurcated and stayed as to the non-RICO causes of action and has not been reopened on the state law claims, and Defendants rely on the declarations of witnesses such as Ben Smith, Amy Thompson, Kim Jordan and Lydia Craven whom Plaintiffs had not had an opportunity to cross-examine. Plaintiffs propose to obtain evidence sufficient to defeat Defendants motion for summary judgment through the Declaration of James P. Rogers, written discovery and/or depositions of Justin Crossman, Scott Cates, Ben Smith and/or the Lavidge Company, the continued deposition of Edward Magedson and Xcentric, cross-examination of Ben Smith, Amy Thompson, Kim Jordan and/or Lydia Craven, and/or voluntary statements from third-party witnesses with firstMemo of Points and Auth. Pls Rule 56(f) Motion -210-cv-1360-SVW-PJW
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hand knowledge of facts involving the Defendants use and offers to sell custom written computer code and meta tags to make subjects of Reports appear in a more favorable light on Google searches; The facts expected to be gained from such discovery will suffice to defeat the pending motion for summary judgment because they would controvert the assertions in Defendants statement of material facts 5, 7, 18-19 and 22-25, 28-31 and 33 showing that Defendants actively play a large role in determining what appears on Google search results about subjects of Reports such as Plaintiffs, that servers do not automatically and generically generate the HTML computer code and meta tags that determine how subjects of Reports appear on Google searches in accordance with generally accepted search engine optimization practices, that Defendants falsely or misleadingly advertise themselves to be a neutral consumer complaint forum when they are in fact a for-profit business seeking to make money from paid endorsements and advertising, and that Defendants mislead the public regarding the degree to which Defendants are willing to alter or suppress Reports, which has a harmful effect on Plaintiffs. No discovery has been taken on the state law causes of action that remain in this action. Previously, Defendant Magedson refused to answer questions regarding (1) how the Corporate Advocacy Program and Verified Safe programs work; and (2) failed to identify witnesses, employees of Defendant Xcentric, and computer coding contractors and consultants with knowledge of Defendants advertising, computer coding and business practices of selling paid meta tags that influence Google search results and the circumstances under which Reports may be deactivated, suppressed, delayed, redacted or disclaimed.
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Plaintiffs have a reasonable basis for believing the information sought exists. Defendants provided Plaintiffs with the so-called Second Questionnaire on which Plaintiffs seek to examine Defendants. Plaintiffs also believe relevant documents and testimony exists based on voluntary interviews with Magedsons former personal assistant, James Rogers, describing Defendants efforts to market and sell the Corporate Advocacy program and Verified Safe program. Plaintiffs are also aware that Defendants have represented to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals that they do in some cases comply with court orders to take down Reports, but Defendants have refused to describe such circumstances to Plaintiffs absent formal discovery. Plaintiffs have made diligent efforts to avoid the delay in hearing Defendants motion for summary judgment by (a) requesting that Defendants voluntarily describe their policies as to when they are willing to remove, deactivate or redact names from Reports so as to avoid negative inferences from the public regarding the significance of a Report; (b) propounding written requests for production of document on June 22, 2010 narrowly tailored to address Defendants meta tag practices, which Defendants reused to respond to based on the discovery stay entered in this case on June 24, 2010; (c) requesting that Defendants voluntarily agree to consolidate the hearing on the motion for summary judgment with this motion under Rule56(f) ; and (d) attempting to arrange an in-person meeting with James Rogers on three occasions October 23, 25 an 28, 2010; (e) requesting Defendants attorneys to stipulate to the accuracy of the oral statements made in argument to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals on September 29, 2010 that Defendants have complied with Court orders; and (f) otherwise attempting to mitigate the harm caused by Defendants by requesting voluntary disclosures to the public or to suspend Defendants from engaging in further search engine optimization practices affects Plaintiffs pending the resolution of this case.
Memo of Points and Auth. Pls Rule 56(f) Motion -410-cv-1360-SVW-PJW
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Plaintiffs are amendable to the Court hearing on November 1, 2010 in light of the Courts order stating that such a hearing would be useful. However, Plaintiffs simultaneously request consolidation of additional hearings on Defendants motion for summary judgment with the proposed November 29, 2010 hearing on this motion to continue a determination on summary judgment pending Plaintiffs request to take discovery. Plaintiffs believe this Rule 56(f) motion is timely under Ashton-Tate Corp. v. Ross, 916 F.2d 516, 520 (9th Cir. This Motion is based on Federal Rule of Procedure 56(f), this Courts inherent authority, the attached Memorandum of Points and Authorities and Declaration of Lisa J. Borodkin, the pleadings, papers and proceedings in this action, and such other matters as the Court deems proper. This motion is made following the conferences of counsel on October 7, 2010, October 22, 2010. DATED: November 1, 2010 Respectfully submitted, By: /s/ Lisa J. Borodkin DANIEL F. BLACKERT LISA J. BORODKIN Attorneys for Plaintiffs Asia Economic Institute LLC, Raymond Mobrez, and Iliana Llaneras
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MEMORANDUM OF POINTS AND AUTHORITIES 1. Preliminary Statement This may seem seems like a complicated case, but it is not. There is no real dispute about the technology itself. Defendants admit that the declaration of Plaintiffs computer coding expert, Joe Reed, is accurate. See Ex. 25 to the First Amended Complaint [DN-100-6 at 24-50, DN-100-7 at 1-11); Declaration of Lisa J. Borodkin (Borodkin Dec.), at 3, Ex. 1 Transcript of Sept. 20, 2010 at 9:11-14 (the way he describes the process is accurate.); (the way Plaintiffs expert describes it, that's the way it actually happens.); id. at 9:19-20. There, however, a dispute over what Defendants do. Defendants claim everything happens automatically or that every act complained of was committed by users or by Google. Defendants have argued that even if they did take the actions or made the misrepresentations alleged, that these actions and misrepresentations could not have caused Plaintiffs injuries. Plaintiffs have not had an opportunity to take discovery to prove that Defendants deliberately and consciously committed the acts complained of, rather than these acts happening automatically or by the users, or Google. No discovery has been taken on the state law claims in this case. Discovery has been stayed since the order bifurcating discovery on June 24, 2010. Plaintiffs are entitled to take such discovery before Defendants are granted summary judgment. Good cause exists for Plaintiffs to believe that discovery would yield relevant evidence sufficient to defeat Defendants motion for summary judgment. Therefore, this motion should be granted. 2. Legal Argument A. Plaintiffs Are Entitled to an Order Denying Defendants Summary Judgment under Rule 56(f) In Order to Take Discovery. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(f) provides in part:
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If a party opposing the [summary judgment] motion shows by affidavit that, for specified reasons, it cannot present facts essential to justify its opposition, the court may: (1) deny the motion; (2) order a continuance to enable affidavits to be obtained, depositions to be taken, or other discovery to be undertaken; or (3) issue any other just order. Fed. R. Civ. Proc. 56(f) (emphasis added). Where . . . a summary judgment motion is filed so early in the litigation, before a party has had any realistic opportunity to pursue discovery relating to its theory of the case, district courts should grant any Rule 56(f) motion fairly freely. Burlington N. Santa Fe R.R. v. Assiniboine & Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Reservation, 323 F.3d 767, 773-774 (9th Cir. 2003) (reversing district courts denial of discovery under Rule 56(f) where Tribes made showing that it had basis for believing facts to defeat summary judgment existed but had no opportunity to develop the record). This is exactly the case here. [T]he Supreme Court has restated the rule as requiring, rather than merely permitting, discovery where the nonmoving party has not had the opportunity to discover information that is essential to its opposition." See Metabolife Int'l v. Wornick, 264 F.3d 832, 846 (9th Cir. Cal. 2001), quoting Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 250 n.5, 106 S. Ct. 2505, 2511, 91 L. Ed. 2d 202, 213 (1986); see also Burlington N. Santa Fe R.R., 323 F.3d at 773. This motion is timely because it is made before the hearing on Defendants motion for summary judgment. The hearing for Defendants motion for summary judgment is November 1, 2010 at 1:30 p.m. A Rule 56(f) motion must be made prior to the summary judgment hearing." Biggs v. Wilson, 1993 U.S. App. LEXIS 20777 (9th Cir. Aug. 12, 1993) at *4, quoting Ashton-Tate Corp. v. Ross, 916 F.2d 516, 520 (9th Cir. 1990). This motion is made prior to that hearing.
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Plaintiffs have met their burden under Rule 56(f) entitling them to denial or continuance of Defendants motion for summary judgment: [P]arties opposing a motion for summary judgment must make (a) a timely application which (b) specifically identifies (c) relevant information, (d) where there is some basis for believing that the information sought actually exists. Blough v. Holland Realty, Inc., 574 F.3d 1084, 1091 (9th Cir. 2009) (internal quotations omitted). Hearsay is acceptable. See Simas v. First Citizens' Fed. Credit Union, 170 F.3d 37, 46 (1st Cir. 1999) ([R]eliance on hearsay is not, per se, a dispositive defect under Rule 56(f)). Plaintiffs have met this burden through the attached attorney declaration showing that specific, relevant information exists. B. It is Likely Discovery Would Yield Evidence to Oppose Defendants Claim that All HTML Code and Meta Tags Are Generated Automatically In Defendants summary judgment motion, they contend in three different places that Xcentrics servers automatically generate HTML code and meta tags for every page on their website. See Defendants Statement of Facts (DSOF) [DN-146] 18, 19, 23. Plaintiffs have good reason to believe this is not true. Defendants servers do not automatically generate HTML code and meta tags for every page on their website. Defendants have created an entire business model around selling custom, manually-inserted HTML code and meta tags to those who want to pay under the pretext of the Corporate Advocacy Program, Verified Safe Program or otherwise. See First Amended Complaint, Exhibit 3 at 2 [DN-100-1 at 11] ([L]ook at the beginning of the reports that are listed on the search engines. You will see about 250 words injected into the beginning of the Report with your stated commitments.). Plaintiffs have good reason to think that James Rogers, Ben Smith, Justin Crossman, Scott Cates, and others at a company called Lavidge will be able to
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describe how the HTML and custom meta tags sold by Defendants are manually inserted into the code for Reports. See Borodkin Dec. at 5-8. C. It is Likely Discovery Would Yield Evidence to Refute Defendants Claim that all Meta Tags Are Generated from Content Contributed by Third-Party Users In Defendants summary judgment motion, they contend that [e]very report page includes meta tags based on unique keywords supplied from the author and other words used by the author. See DSOF [DN-146] 22. Defendants have also argued to the Court as that the conduct that Plaintiffs complain of is a process by which the user inputs the content not Ripoffreport, id. at 9:20-21, or that It's not something that the [Ripoff Report] website does, it's something that -first of all, that Google does by searching the website, id. 8:7-9. Plaintiffs have good reason to believe this is not true. Throughout the First Amended Complaint and in the record are detailed descriptions of the fact that Defendants will write and manually insert 250 to 350 words into HTML code and meta tags themselves or together with the subjects of Reports under certain circumstances. This content may also be supplied by the subjects of Ripoff Reports. See First Amended Complaint 160-165 and Ex. 25 at 16-23. An example is the agreement between Defendants and QED Media. See FAC, Ex. 8, DN-100-2 at 22-23 (Xcentric will update the titles of Reports[s] . . . by injecting the following words into the beginning of the title: Notice: This report is false and fake . . . the title tags will automatically update) (Xcentric will insert into the beginning of the body of Report[s] . . . up to 250 words of content provided by QED) Plaintiffs have good reason to think that James Rogers, Ben Smith, Justin Crossman, Scott Cates, or someone else at a company called Lavidge will be able to describe how the HTML and custom meta tags sold by Defendants are manually inserted into the code for Reports. See Borodkin Dec. at 9. In addition, during the
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meet and confer process, Defendants attorney conceded, We sell meta tags so what? See Borodkin Dec. at 15. D. It is Likely Discovery Would Yield Evidence to Refute Defendants Claim that Mr. Magedson has No Control Over How Google or Any Other Search Engine Decides to Rank Content In Defendants summary judgment motion, they contend that Defendant Magedson has no control over how Google or any other search engine decides to rank content. See DN-145 at 6:15-17; DSOF 31. It appears that this contention is a response to Plaintiffs allegations that Defendants misrepresent to the public that: Ripoff Report has never, ever (not now, and not in the past) done anything to cause Google to rank our website higher in search results than other sites. FAC 123, DN-96 at 32. Plaintiffs alleged two separate ways in which this statement was false that Defendants have engaged in extensive search engine optimization (SEO) practices, see FAC at 100-120, and Defendants redaction or disclaiming Ripoff Reports about Google, Google AdWords, and Googles founders, see FAC at 121-137. The true facts are that Defendants have created and designed their website to make the Google search results as prominent and damaging as possible, because they understand how devastating negative Google search results can be to a business. See, e.g., First Amended Complaint, Exhibit 3 at 2 [DN-100-1 at 11] (See the listings below and how they look on search engines you will see Ripoff Report on the first pageSee how other Corporate Advocacy Program member listing look on search engines.) Plaintiffs have good reason to think that James Rogers, Ben Smith, Justin Crossman, Scott Cates, someone at a company called Lavidge will be able to
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describe the active steps that Defendants have taken to optimize search results of Reports and make them as prominent and damaging as possible, and that Defendants deliberately designed their business to monetize their ability to change these damaging results and rankings to good ones. See Borodkin Dec. at 10-13. E. The Emergent Facts that Would be Yielded in Discovery Would Influence the Outcome of the Summary Judgment Motion Defendants have argued that Plaintiffs claims lack legal and factual merit. Briefly, the discovery sought by this motion matters because this case seeks to hold Defendants liable for their own conduct, not the speech of others. This is an unfair business practices and misleading advertising case under California Business and Professions Code 17200-17210, and a business torts case for interference with existing and prospective economic advantage. The third cause of action in the First Amended Complaint, Unfair competition under California Business and Professions Code 17200 et seq., gives a remedy to any person who has suffered injury in fact and has lost money or property as a result of the unfair competition. See Bus. And Prof. Code 17204. In this case, Plaintiffs do have standing and their have suffered an injury in fact, lost money and property. All that is required under Californias unfair business practices or misleading advertising claim is that members of the public are likely to be deceived. See Morgan v. AT&T Wireless Services, Inc., 177 Cal. App. 4th 1235, 1253 (Cal. App. 2d Dist. 2009) (The UCL outlaws as unfair competition any unlawful, unfair or fraudulent business act or practice and unfair, deceptive, untrue or misleading advertising. . .The scope of the UCL is quite broad. . . . a business practice need only meet one of the three criteria to be considered unfair competition.)(citing McKell v. Washington Mutual, Inc., 142 Cal. App. 4th 1457, 1471, 49 Cal. Rptr. 3d 227, 239 (Cal. 2006). Defendants citation to Birdsong v. Apple, Inc., 590 F.3d 955, 959 (9th Cir. 2009), does not show that Plaintiffs lack
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standing. There, the plaintiffs were found to lack standing because they alleged only a potential, theoretical loss of hearing from use of headphones by people other than the actual plaintiffs. Walker v. Geico Gen. Ins. Co., 558 F.3d 1025, 1027 (9th Cir. 2009), is totally inapposite. In Walker, the plaintiff was an auto body shop owner who did not have any out-of-pocket losses and the Court held he was not entitled to an injuction forcing auto insurers to paid higher prices for auto body work. In this case, there is a real injury in fact and money paid out of pocket. Plaintiffs and others identified in the First Amended Complaint paid money out of pocket to reputation repair specialists as a result of Defendants false and misleading advertising. See FAC at 213-218 (Plaintiffs payments); FAC 219 (Tina Norris paid $600); FAC 220 (Kathy Spano paid $3,000); FAC 221 and Ex. 26 (Laura Snoke paid $3,500 upfront and $500 a month). The reason such people pay this money is that they are harmed by Defendants passing themselves off as a neutral consumer advocacy business. The Reports and Google results seem legitimate and are very prominent on Google. If the public knew the truth that Defendants are willing to sell custom meta tags that will make Google search results about subjects of Reports favorable then the mischief caused by Defendants indiscriminate refusal to enforce their Terms of Use would be lessened. If the content were posted by the authors at their own websites, they would not have the authority or prominence in Google Rankings that Defendants website has. They caused Plaintiffs injuries because the people who see Google search results about Plaintiffs think they are bad. And they do not tell the full story that Defendants willfully turn a blind eye to violations of their Terms of Service, that Defendants will sell meta tags that turn Google search results from bad to good. Defendants actions are and have been harmful to Plaintiffs. As long as Courts and the public are misled as to the actual facts, the shame of having a
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Ripoff Report in Google search results is much worse than it would be if Defendants gave proper and fair disclaimers. The discovery that Plaintiffs seek is therefore relevant to oppose Defendants motion for summary judgment. Defendants argue this case is an effort to squash free speech and censor Defendants. It is not. Plaintiffs would love to settle this case and engage in a robust discussion of Defendants business. The problem is that Defendants have a history of suing anyone who criticizes them in the press blogger Sarah Bird, the Phoenix New Times, a reporter even the reporters source and the sources spouse. Thus, even people who know the truth about Defendants are frightened and intimidated from speaking out, because they cannot afford to get sued. Defendants say that Plaintiffs should sue the authors, not them. However, Defendants actively seek to hide the identity of authors and will not cooperate with court orders against the authors, anyway. Plaintiffs agree that they have a remedy against the third-party authors of the original Reports about them, and have named such third-parties as John Doe defendants. However, it is necessary to join Defendants on those claims if Plaintiffs want Defendants to be bound by any orders of this Court granting relief. Defendants have taken the position in other cases, notably Blockowicz v. Williams, 09-cv-3955 (N.D.Ill.) (now pending on appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit after the oral argument on September 29, 2010) that if Defendants are not joined as parties in a defamation case, they will not have had notice and an opportunity to be heard, and therefore are not bound by a Court order to take down the defamatory Reports. In other words, it would do no good to sue John Does if Defendants will not cooperate with any takedown orders against the John Does. Plaintiffs have requested Defendants attorneys to stipulate to the accuracy of the following colloquy with the Honorable Judge Diane P. Wood on September 23, 2010: "The Court: And you flout all of these Court orders, I take it? For the 30 orders you're talking about, you have refused to comply with.
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Ms. Speth: Your Honor, we have complied with Court orders against our client. We have not complied with Court orders in cases in which we are not a party. We're not a defendant, had no opportunity to be heard, and were [sic] not applicable to us because we're not aiding and abetting the actual author of the report." See Borodkin Dec. 18. Plaintiffs requested Defendants to stipulate to the accuracy of that quote and to explain whether Defendants should be kept in this case on the defamation claims or not. Defendants refused to answer. See Borodkin Dec. 18 and Ex. 4. Defendants response was to file an anti-SLAPP motion, DN-154, and two Rule 11 sanctions motions. DN-157, DN-158. Defendants refusal to tell people whether they should be sued or not leaves subjects of Reports in an awful predicament. If Plaintiffs dont include Defendants, they will not get any relief, because Defendants do not enforce their Terms of Service even in the face of Court Orders. If they do include Defendants, Defendants claim that Plaintiffs are suppressing their First Amendment rights, trampling on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and file Rule 11 sanctions motions. However, all of this is unnecessary. This case can be disposed of without implicating the defamation laws or the Communications Decency Act. All that is needed is for Defendants to make disclosures that describe what their business really is. If the public knows that Defendants compile Reports and rebuttals so they can sell advertising, meta tags, and endorsements, then the victims will have relief. If the victims knew the truth that Defendants redact names, update or disclaim Reports for money or after litigation (even if Defendants do not take down such Reports) then subjects of Reports might choose to try to persuade Defendants to redact their names so that they do not appear in Google searches. But they rely on Defendants statements that Reports never come down and
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therefore file rebuttals, which do not help and only give Defendants website more authority. Finally, if victims knew the truth that filing a rebuttal will not make Google search results more favorable but that it will push the bad Reports about them higher in Google rankings then they would not follow Defendants advice to post rebuttals, but they would ignore the bad reports and perhaps use that time and money to work with an online reputation repair specialist to post good things about them on the Internet that will eventually push the bad Reports to the bottom of Google search results over time. Subjects of Reports do not realize that Defendants need fresh content constantly in order to bring traffic to their website and sell advertising. In light of this known phenomenon, Defendants insistence that subjects file a rebuttal is the first step in getting Defendants to identify the author of a Report is an unfair business practice. It is not required by Mobilisa and it arguably does the subjects more harm than good. 3. Conclusion For the foregoing reasons, this motion should be granted in its entirety. DATED: November 1, 2010 By: Respectfully submitted, /s/ Lisa J. Borodkin DANIEL F. BLACKERT LISA J. BORODKIN Attorneys for Plaintiffs, Asia Economic Institute LLC, Raymond Mobrez, and Iliana Llaneras
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DECLARATION OF LISA J. BORODKIN AND CERTIFICATION OF COMPLIANCE WITH LOCAL CIVIL RULE 7-3 I, Lisa J. Borodkin, declare: 1. I am an attorney at law, duly admitted to practice before all the courts of the State of California and this Honorable Court. I am co-counsel of record for Plaintiffs Asia Economic Institute LLC, Raymond Mobrez and Iliana Llaneras (Plaintiffs) in this action. I have first-hand, personal knowledge of the facts set forth below and, if called as a witness, I could and would testify competently thereto. 2. This Declaration is made in support of Plaintiffs Motion (1) Under Rule 56(f) To Deny Or To Continue Defendants Motion For Summary Judgment To Conduct Further Discovery. 3. Attached hereto as Exhibit 1 is a true and correct copy of the Reporters Transcript of the September 20, 2010 proceedings before this Court by Ms. Deborah K. Gackle. 4. Plaintiffs have been diligent in attempting to discovery relevant evidence in this case. On June 22, 2010, Plaintiffs served Requests for Production of Documents relevant to Defendants meta tagging and HTML coding practices. On July 22, 2010, Defendants served a Response to Plaintiffs Request for Production, a copy of which is attached as Exhibit 2, which refused to identify or disclose any documents on the grounds of the discovery stay entered on June 24, 2010. 5. On or about October 6, 2010, I spoke for the first time with James Rogers, who said he was the former personal assistant for Defendant Edward Magedson, about some of Defendants business practices. 6. From October 2, 2010 to the present, I have had several discussions with Mr. Rogers that lead me to believe that there is discoverable evidence relevant to defeat Defendants pending motion for summary judgment.
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7.
Mr. Rogers told me that he has extensive knowledge of the Corporate
Advocacy program and wrote many of the emails relating to it, sometimes using the email address rorlegaldirectory@ripoffreport.com 8. Mr. Rogers told me that there were several computer programmers that are knowledgeable about the overall design of the website than those identified by Defendants earlier. According to Mr. Rogers, the RipoffReport.com website was programmed by Scott Cates, who is a current or former employee or affiliate with a company called Lavige, and who has his own company. Other programmers used by Defendants include Eric Skelling and Stephen at Lavige. According to Mr. Rogers, Scott Cates has knowledge of the specific instructions that Defendants gave every time they changed their website, including the complete reorganization of the server directories in between the time this action was filed and today. These witnesses would have knowledge that would contradict Defendants evidence on the Motion for Summary Judgment that everything is done automatically. According to Mr. Rogers, Ben Smith, the declarant used by Defendants on their summary judgment motion, does not do the programming but is an IT salesman and Mr. Magedson refers to Ben Smith as the salesman. 9. Mr. Rogers told me that Justin Crossman would have knowledge of the Defendants practice of manually changing HTML code and meta tags, which would contradict Defendants evidence on their motion for summary judgment. Mr. Rogers told me that he was aware that he and Justin Crossman have information that would contradict Defendants representation that Mr. Magedson has no control over how Google or other search engines rank content. Mr. Rogers told me that Defendants hired and paid consultants to improve Google rankings according to generally accepted search principles and have taken steps to improve their visibility and ranking on Google. Specifically, Mr. Rogers attended a meeting with a search engine optimization specialist in or about June or July 2010 named Marcus.
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10.
Mr. Rogers told me he was assigned to be the project manager for the
Verified Safe Program. Among other things, he sent me the draft Power Point Presentation attached hereto as Exhibit 3. He explained that he prepared this draft Power Point presentation to try to get customers for the Corporate Advocacy Program and Verified Safe Program according to Defendants instructions. Among other things, the Power Point presentation in Exhibit 2 states, WE CAN BRING YOU TO THE TOP OF THE SEARCH ENGINES LIKE NO ONE ELSE CAN. BY VERIFYING YOUR BUSINESS AS A SAFE AND SECURE BUSINESS, TO DO BUSINESS WITH, and THE POSITIVE REPORT ON YOUR COMPANY WILL GO THE TOP OF THE SEARCH ENGINES, WITH LINKS TO YOUR BUSINESS TURNIG[sic], CONVINCING CONSUMERS TO DO BUSINESS WITH YOU. This is all stated under the title Once a Ripoff Report is filed, it will never, ever disappear . . . 11. 12. Also among the Rip-off Report Services to be offered in the Google Search Page 1. Mr. Rogers has indicated his willingness to sign a declaration and presentation in Exhibit 2 are Positive Introduction
testify to this Court regarding the above. Plaintiffs arranged with Mr. Rogers to have him meet with me for an in-person interview in Los Angeles, and had purchased airline tickets for him from Phoenix to Los Angeles for October 23, 25 and 27, 2010. However, for various reasons, Mr. Rogers was unable to board any of these flights. 13. The evidence that I expect to obtain after the granting of this Rule 56(f) motion would be testimony and documents from Mr. Rogers explaining Defendants efforts to make money from the Ripoff Report website but also to disguise many things that they were doing. 14. Mr. Rogers told me that Defendant Magedson has failed to keep emails and other evidence relevant to active litigation. Mr. Rogers stated that sometimes Magedson will get a new laptop, lose emails, and say that the loss of
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emails was a good thing and a bad thing. Mr. Rogers said that when Mr. Magedson gets a new laptop during an active case he will say good thing that one was damaged in transport. Mr. Rogers said that Defendants took many extraordinary steps to disguise their business transactions or avoid creating evidence, such as paying programming consultants using aliases, registering cell phones in the names of independent contractors, Mr. Rogers and others; and using email addresses that could not easily be traced to the Defendants, including legaldirectory@ripoffreport.com, rorlegaldirectory@gmail.com, jrhappygolucky20@gmail.com for Mr. Rogers to communicate with Mr. Magedson and vice versa. 15. As soon as I learned of Mr. Rogers, the next day, October 7, 2010, I called Defendants attorney, Maria Speth, and asked if Defendants would stipulate to a Rule 56(f) order allowing discovery or stipulate to consolidate hearings on such a motion with Defendants pending motion for summary judgment. I also told her that Mr. Rogers had told me that her colleague, Adam Kunz, had visited Mr. Rogers at his house the night before and that Mr. Rogers had conveyed to me that he felt harassed and pressured. Ms. Speth asked me the relevance of his testimony. I explained that if people knew that Defendants sell meta tags, then the harm from having a Report might be lessened. Ms. Speth said so we sell meta tags so what? Ms. Speth did not consent to allow discovery, consolidate the hearing on this Rule 56(f) motion or otherwise to resolve this case. 16. On or about October 22, 2010, I received a telephone call from Defendants attorney David Gingras. We again spoke about the possibility of avoiding this motion but his proposal that I fly to Phoenix the next day, Saturday, October 23, 2010 to do a joint deposition of Mr. Rogers, did not seem feasible. Plaintiffs had already purchased an airline ticket for Mr. Rogers for October 23, 2010.
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17.
I had hoped to have interviewed Mr. Rogers and to have his signed
declaration in hand by the time Plaintiffs made this motion. Unfortunately, Mr. Rogers did not make it on his flight on Saturday, October 23, 2010, nor on the flights Plaintiffs purchased for Mr. Rogers on Monday, October 25, 2010 or Thursday, October 28, 2010. Each time, I have rearranged my schedule to try to interview Mr. Rogers. 18. In addition to the above, Plaintiffs would also like to have time to obtain a transcript of the September 23, 2010 hearing on oral argument in the appeal in Blockowicz v, Williams before the Seventh Circuit. I asked Defendants counsel to explain their position on statements in that oral argument suggesting that Defendants should be made parties in defamation cases, and to stipulate to the accuracy of a quote I retrieved from the Seventh Circuits audio replay. Defendants counsel refused. Attached as Exhibit 4 are emails between me and Defendants counsel. 19. Later, on October 22, 2010, I again asked Defendants counsel, David Gingras, whether they have taken down Ripoff Reports pursuant to court orders. Mr. Gingras told me I should look at a case involving George S. May. This is a Northern District of Illinois case, George S. May v. Xcentric, (N.D. Ill. 04-cv6018), which was settled after two orders finding the Defendants in contempt of a temporary restraining order. I told Mr. Gingras on October 22, 2010 that when I last checked the Ripoff Report website for George S. May, it still had a statement that Ripoff Report planned to appeal the order, and that that statement seemed no longer timely. I also told Mr. Gingras that with the proper disclosures we could probably settle this case. 20. With the Plaintiffs permission, I am advising this Court that my cocounsel, Daniel F. Blackert, has become completely unresponsive to calls from Plaintiffs and from me for over a month. We have not been able to get a call, email or text message returned from Mr. Blackert since before Labor Day weekend. The
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last thing Mr. Blackert did was to file declarations on the Motion for Reconsideration describing the vivid, graphic threats made to him by Defendants counsel, David Gingras. These described how Defendants wanted their business to be like a castle, and that they would surround it with heads on pikes of those who challenged them. Mr. Blackert told me that he was very deeply disturbed by these remarks. I was present for these remarks. 21. At Plaintiffs request, I have called the police and looked for Mr. Blackert at his house. I did not find Mr. Blackert, but I found his roommate and landlord, who assured me that he hears from Mr. Blackert every week or so. I had also previously been in contact with Mr. Blackerts girlfriend, but have not received return calls from her for over a month, either. Periodically, I send Mr. Blackert emails that go unreturned. He has not updated his address with the State Bar. 22. The significance of this is that Mr. Blackert was the General Counsel and intended to be lead counsel for Plaintiffs in this case. Mr. Blackerts disappearance has caused all of his work to fall on my shoulders. I apologize for the late timing of this motion and for other papers in this action. I believe some of this is caused by excusable neglect. If this case is set for trial, I anticipate bringing in a special trial counsel to help with the trial. I respectfully request that this Court not punish the clients for attorney neglect. I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the State of California and the United States of America that the foregoing is true and correct. Executed this 1st day of November, 2010, in Los Angeles, California. /s/ Lisa J. Borodkin Lisa J. Borodkin
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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT CENTRAL DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA ---
THE HONORABLE STEPHEN V. WILSON, U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE PRESIDING
ASIA ECONOMIC INSTITUTE, LLC, et al.,
) ) ) Plaintiffs, ) ) vs. ) ) ) XCENTRIC VENTURES, LLC, et al. ) ) Defendants. ) _______________________________)
No.
CV 10-1360-SVW
REPORTER'S TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2010
_____________________________________________________________ DEBORAH K. GACKLE, CSR, RPR United States Courthouse 312 North Spring Street, Room 402A Los Angeles, California 90012 (213) 620-1149
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, CENTRAL DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA COURT REPORTER DEBORAH K. GACKLE
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APPEARANCES OF COUNSEL:
For the Plaintiff:
ASIA ECONOMIC INSTITUTE BY: LISA J. BORODKIN 11766 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 260 Los Angeles, California 90025
For the Defendants:
LAW OFFICES OF DAVID S. GINGRAS BY: DAVID S. GINGRAS 4072 E. Mountain Vista Drive Phoenix, Arizona 85048 JABURG & WILK BY: MARIA CRIMI SPETH 3200 North Central Avenue, Suite 2000 Phoenix, Arizona 85012 602-248-1000 Fax: 602-248-0522 Email: mcs@jaburgwilk.com
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LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA; MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2010; 1:40 P.M. - - - - -
THE CLERK:
Item 1, CV 2010-136-SVW, Asia Economic
Institute, et al. v. Xcentric Ventures, LLC, et al. Counsel, please state your appearance. MS. SPETH: Ventures. MR. GINGRAS: Good afternoon, Your Honor. Dave Maria Speth for defendant Xcentric
Gingras on behalf of defendants Xcentric Ventures and Ed Magedson. MS. BORODKIN: Borodkin for plaintiffs. THE COURT: you take the lectern. Let me first ask Ms. Borodkin -- would It appears that the RICO claim is no Good afternoon, Your Honor. Lisa
longer at issue if the court denies the motion for reconsideration because the court did grant partial summary judgment on the extortion predicate act, and then in reviewing the pleadings for the hearing today, the plaintiff, while given leave to amend regarding the other predicate act, wire fraud, has abandoned that claim. So it appears that the RICO claim is no longer at issue. If that be the case, you're seeking to remand the case
to the state court, correct? MS. BORODKIN: Your Honor, we wanted to; however,
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defendants indicated they believed there's diversity jurisdiction and on that ground, we felt we were not able to make a motion to remand. THE COURT: jurisdiction? But what is the nature of the diversity
In other words, you're a California party is
the defendant a nonCalifornia party? MS. BORODKIN: I understand that defendants contend
that the defendants are domiciliaries of Arizona. THE COURT: I see. And the defendant is Xcentric
Ventures, Bad Business Bureau and Edward Magedson, right? MS. BORODKIN: THE COURT: Correct.
In your view, are they separate
defendants or just parties that are all under one defendant umbrella? MS. BORODKIN: Mr. Magedson is a separate defendant
from Xcentric Ventures, LLC. THE COURT: questions. You can take the lectern. What is Mr. Magedson's domicile? MS. SPETH: Your Honor. THE COURT: MS. SPETH: What about Xcentric Ventures? Xcentric Ventures is an Arizona LLC whose He is a resident of the state of Arizona, Let me ask the defendants a few
only member is a Nevada corporation.
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THE COURT: MS. SPETH: THE COURT:
Bad Business Bureau the same? There is no such entity, Your Honor. All right. Back to you.
So there are a variety of state-based actions that you're alleging other than the RICO claim. Can you just, in a Unfair business
summary way, describe the state-based actions:
practice, intentional and negligent interference with prospective economic advantage. I mean what is the unfair
business practice other than that which you've described in your RICO effort? In other words the outline of the case
doesn't change; we're just sort of trying to fit it into different categories. The outline of the case is that the defendant has this site where it posts complaints about businesses, and then it has a program where it engages those businesses who have experienced adverse comments to enter a program that the defendants have whereby the site will include an explanation or positive comments. The defendant, as I understand it, has no control or no legal obligation to filter what is posted. for the moment. Just accept that
If that be the case, how could the defendant
be liable for intentional or negligent interference with prospective business opportunity? MS. BORODKIN: Your Honor, plaintiffs are focused
especially in the amended pleading on conduct of the
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defendants, not of contributions of third parties.
So the
conduct that the amended pleading focuses on falls into a number of categories: One is the defendants' purposeful
encoding of the HTML, which is the computer code that's not visible at first sight on the website but that has the effect of extending certain statements into Google searches primarily. So what we're alleging is that they offer to change what they put in the HTML computer code behind the scenes for a price. We allege that they're not transparent with the general
audience with the website, that people are not aware that that's an option that they offer. THE COURT: of what option? MS. BORODKIN: That they'll offer to change the HTML And -People are not aware
Stop for a minute.
so they can change the Google results. THE COURT: In other words -- I'm sort of translating
this into my own thinking -- that when a complaint is made and it's posted on the defendant website, the software, which enables the complaint to get onto the defendants' software, is somehow manipulated so that the negative comment is more accessible on a Google search than would be otherwise? MS. BORODKIN: Generally, yes.
Our expert has submitted a declaration and report saying most people's point of entry to these reports is not by navigating to their website. They do a Google search for
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somebody's name, they see the preview, which is the small snippet of text. They make a judgment based on that. They may
or may not click through to defendants' website, but the software or computer code that you're referring to is code that defendants write. They offer to change that so that if -They offer to change that to whom? They offer to people who inquire about
THE COURT:
MS. BORODKIN:
the Corporate Advocacy program and to people with whom they've become in legal disputes. THE COURT: see. Oh, I see. So you're saying that -- I Is that the same
What is the unfair business practice?
thing? MS. BORODKIN: The unfair business practice
derivative of their failure to inform the public that this is the basis on which they will offer to change somebody's Google results. They have basically endorsements. We feel they're
independent violations of the FTC Act where they will verify safe certain advertisers, possibly participants in the Corporate Advocacy Program. It's not based on an independent evaluation as far as we can see, it's based on their membership in the CAP program, and the implication is damaging to others who are not members of the programs because it implies that they're not verified safe or that they're ripoffs. THE COURT: How do you respond to that?
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MS. SPETH:
Your Honor, there is two issues that One is she has said that there's The issue is very
Ms. Borodkin has raised:
something going on with the HTML code. simple, Your Honor.
If someone posts something on the website
that is automatically -- then there's going to be a title tag that's created as a result of the input of the user, that will allow it to be searched by Google. It's not something that the
website does, it's something that -- first of all, that Google does by searching the website, and secondly that is -THE COURT: That's the point. I mean the plaintiff
contends that what is presented to a Google searcher is not something that the defendant enhances or manipulates, it's just the by-product of the posting by the defendant, and the plaintiff -- at least as I hear it today -- contends that that's not so, that they have some expert who will say that the code is prepared or constructed in a way that enables the Google searcher to contact that negative information more readily than otherwise. MS. SPETH: Neither their complaint nor their expert
says such a thing, Your Honor. THE COURT: But let me -- well, how do you intend to Do you think that they're
address these state law claims? susceptible to summary judgment? MS. SPETH:
Yes, Your Honor, under the Communications
Decency Act and everyone is -- perhaps as to the fraud claims,
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and the fraud claims they lack both reliance and they lack any causation to their damages -THE COURT: Forgetting for the moment the first
amendment type of defense, why would that type of defense necessarily control if what the plaintiff says is true, that you're manipulating the code to emphasize the negative information posted on your website? Wouldn't you have to deal
with that by way of attempting to establish that the code writing argument that the plaintiff is offering has no substance? MS. SPETH: Your Honor, we don't disagree with the
plaintiff's expert and the way the plaintiff's expert -- we disagree with his opinions, but the way he describes the process is accurate; and the process is exactly what Your Honor described in the beginning of your comments. The process is
that there is a template, a software code, and when the user inputs the user's information, that's the information that creates the tagging for the title tag. That's the way plaintiff's expert describes it, that's the way it actually happens, and that is a process by which the user inputs the content not Ripoffreport. And so
under the Communications Decency Act -- and this very issue has been decided by other federal judges, Your Honor -- under the Communications Decency Act, Ripoffreport is only responsible for what they input.
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Honor. merits. am?
THE COURT:
Are other federal judges as capable as I
MS. SPETH:
I don't think as capable as you, Your
They made these decisions after full briefing on the
THE COURT: MS. SPETH: THE COURT: MS. SPETH: independently. THE COURT: summary judgment? MS. SPETH:
Federal judges are not fungible. I do know that, Your Honor. Some are better than others. I welcome you to look at this issue
Well, then, are you going to file the
We did move for reconsideration on our We already filed it, Your Honor,
motion for summary judgment.
and then we moved for reconsideration on it; and the only reason that Your Honor didn't decide it was because you bifurcated and you wanted to hear the RICO claims first. THE COURT: That is true.
So now you're saying that it was briefed but not addressed. MS. SPETH: Exactly. At this point we've asked the
court to address the remaining claims to -THE COURT: fully briefed? MS. BORODKIN: It is not. It was not on notice. We Have you responded to the -- yes. Is it
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had no meet and confer.
Plaintiffs were relying on the court's
statements in the order of July 19th that their motion for summary judgment was inappropriate inasmuch as the case had been bifurcated. THE COURT: way. Why don't we do it, then, in a cleaner
Why don't you refile a summary judgment motion and do
that by the end of the week, Monday. MR. GINGRAS: Your Honor, if I might, that raises a
question because I'm not sure what complaint we would be addressing. There is a first amended complaint, which is the I think they moved for leave to
current operative pleading.
file a second amended complaint, which has neither been granted nor denied. THE COURT: What would the second amended complaint
contain that the first amended complaint doesn't? MS. BORODKIN: another point? Could I be heard, Your Honor, on
We respectfully disagree with the entire This theory has never been
characterization of the precedent. raised.
No federal court has addressed search engine
optimization practices -THE COURT: You know something? Obviously this is
just an opportunity for the court to get some sort of preview. I have not consider the matter, and certainly I won't until it's briefed. That's why I asked if it was briefed.
Now, if the plaintiffs file a summary judgment motion
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on the state claims, what is the operative complaint? the first amended complaint or the second amended -MS. BORODKIN: I understand.
Is it
Today we are here on a
motion under Rule 15 to amend the pleadings to permit the filing of a second amended complaint. The difference between
the second amended complaint is that omits the RICO wire fraud claim. This was done in response to a Rule 11 motion. THE COURT: Why don't we just do this -- I mean all
the skirmishing about the complaint -- I mean you know the complaint is -- no one sees the complaint. see the complaint. The jury doesn't
So why don't we just agree to strike the
RICO claim from the first amended complaint and let that stand? MS. BORODKIN: With respect to our motion to amend
the pleadings, plaintiffs have wanted to do that, and we would be amenable to that; however, we did file the motion for reconsideration on the extortion claim. THE COURT: Let me make it simple: The motion for
reconsideration is denied.
The motion to strike the RICO claim That is the
from the first amended complaint is granted. operative complaint.
So then file your summary judgment motion with that as the pleading, and file it by next Monday. And then set up the schedule, Paul. THE CLERK: Yes, Your Honor.
Filing of the motion will be September 27th; the
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opposition will be due October 4th, the reply will be due October 12th, hearing will be November 1st at 1:30. THE COURT: are on the agenda. Now, there are some other matters that
Apparently the defendants believe that the
plaintiff breached a confidentiality agreement by describing the nature of the settlement talks, but while a breach of the confidentiality attached to settlement talks is serious and an ethical matter, the plaintiff, perhaps mistakenly, but arguably, raises the matter as sort of a similar conduct kind of argument; isn't that true? MS. BORODKIN: THE COURT: In other words, you're saying --
Yes, we were threatened.
You view that as a threat. It was a threat.
MS. BORODKIN: THE COURT:
Not as a settlement discussion.
And, frankly, in this context, it's not worth the court's while to parse that out. flags, all right? No penalty. Thank you, Your Honor. So let's just pick up all the
MS. BORODKIN: THE COURT:
Thank you.
We'll see you on the appointed date. MS. BORODKIN: THE COURT: We have a hearing on October 4th.
Yes, thank you.
(Proceedings concluded at 1:55 p.m.) - - - - -
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C E R T I F I C A T E
I hereby certify that the foregoing is a true and correct transcript from the stenographic record of the proceedings in the foregoing matter.
September 23, 2010 __________________________ Deborah K. Gackle Official Court Reporter CSR No. 7106 __________________________ Date
Case 2:10-cv-01360-SVW Case 2:11-cv-01426-GMS -PJW Document Document 103-1 173-3 Filed Filed07/31/12 11/01/10 Page Page234 1 ofof 6 242 Page ID #:4909
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Gmail - FW: Xcentric Ventures adv. Asia - Stipulation
https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=0d9198f21b&view=pt&q=david...
Lisa Borodkin <lborodkin@gmail.com>
FW: Xcentric Ventures adv. Asia - Stipulation

Lisa Borodkin <lborodkin@gmail.com> Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 9:51 PM To: Lisa Borodkin <lborodkin@gmail.com> Cc: Maria Crimi Speth <mcs@jaburgwilk.com>, Daniel Blackert <blackertesq@yahoo.com>, "<david@ripoffreport.com>" <david@ripoffreport.com> Maria and David, This confirms that we met and conferred yesterday from approximately 12 to 1 p.m. on a proposed set of motions: 1. Your contemplated motion for summary judgment to be heard on November 1, 2010 2. Plaintiffs' contemplated motion under Rule 56(f) to permit discovery on the state law claims. I suggested that we consolidate the hearings on this and the motion for summary judgment 3. The timing of the pending Rule 11 motion and refiling with a second Rule 11 motion, possibly to be heard on November 1, 2010. We did not discuss the merits of the second Rule 11 motion. With respect to the first Rule 11 motion, I noted that you failed to file Exhibit A and I also drew your attention to the 9th Circuit case of Sneller v. City of Bainbridge Island, 606 F.3d 636, 639 (9th Cir. 2010) (reversing imposition of Rule 11 sanctions). Where a Rule 11 motion is directed to less than all claims in a pleading, filing a motion under Rule 15 to amend the pleading to eliminate the challenged claim within the 21-day safe harbor period constitutes withdrawal of the claim under Rule 11(c)(2). See Sneller v. City of Bainbridge Island, 606 F.3d 636, 639 (9th Cir. 2010)(Filing a motion for leave to amend the complaint under Rule 15 thus constitutes effective withdrawal because it is the only procedure available under the rules to withdraw individual challenged claims)(citing Hells Canyon Pres. Council v. U.S. Forest Serv., 403 F.3d 683, 687-88 (9th Cir. 2005)). Therefore, if you refile your first Rule 11 motion, I expect you will revise it to conform with Sneller to eliminate any arguments based on the wire fraud RICO claim that was effectively withdrawn by Plaintiffs' Rule 15 motion. With respect to your questions yesterday about the discovery Plaintiffs would seek in a contemplated Rule 56(f) motion, I imagine it will have a great deal to do with your clients' policies and representations about the circumstances in which they will remove or redact names from reports. I have listened to your representations in the oral argument in the Seventh Circuit today in Blockowicz v. Williams, particularly with respect to your stated policy. You had a colloquy today in which Judge Wood asked you the following and you gave the following answer: "The Court: And you flout all of these Court orders, I take it? For the 30 orders you're talking about, you have refused to comply with. Ms. Speth: Your Honor, we have complied with Court orders against our client. We have not complied with Court orders in cases in which we are not a party. We're not a defendant, had no opportunity to be heard, and were [sic] not applicable to us because we're not aiding and abetting the actual author of the report." First, I would ask you to stipulate to the accuracy of that quote. It is about halfway through your argument, at the following link: http://www.ca7.uscourts.gov/tmp/1C1A9U2L.mp3 If you will not stipulate to the accuracy of that quote and others, I will seek an extension of time so that we can get a properly authenticated copy of the official written transcript. Second, Plaintiffs would seek discovery on the circumstances you referred to in today's oral argument in which you "have complied with Court orders against our client."
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10/29/2010 11:52 PM
One of the representations on your clients' website is: "As explained above, one thing you can't do is to sue Ripoff Report. Sorry, but the law just does not allow this. You can always sue the person who wrote the report if it contains false and defamatory information about you. Of course, you should talk to an experienced lawyer in your area if you are unsure about your options." We have certain allegations in the pleadings about both the factual and legal accuracy of that advice. One of the areas of discovery Plaintiffs have under the state law claims is why do you tell people they can "always sue the person who wrote the report" if you do not disclose that your client will not comply with a court order unless they name your client as a defendant. Another is to identify the cases in which your clients have complied with court orders against them. Finally, I would ask why you think a claim against your client is per se frivolous when your client has complied with court orders against them? I would appreciate your answers to the above before Monday. Lisa
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2 of 2
10/29/2010 11:52 PM
Lisa Borodkin <lborodkin@gmail.com>
FW: Xcentric Ventures adv. Asia - Stipulation

David Gingras <david@ripoffreport.com> Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 7:10 AM Reply-To: david@ripoffreport.com To: Lisa Borodkin <lborodkin@gmail.com> Cc: Maria Crimi Speth <mcs@jaburgwilk.com>, Daniel Blackert <blackertesq@yahoo.com> Lisa,
Based on your comments below, in addition to the MSJ which Judge Wilson ordered us to file, I intend to bring a new anti-SLAPP motion as to the fraud-based claims in the FAC. As your comments expressly state, those claims seek to impose liability on Xcentric for its public speech regarding matters of substantial public importance such as its opinions on the law, its analysis of the CDA, and its policies and conduct regarding removal of reports. Although Judge Wilson denied our first anti-SLAPP motion because he did not believe the reports about your clients involved matters of public concern, since that ruling you have substantially broadened your theory to include Xcentrics speech on legal issues which are undeniably matters of substantial public importance. As such, your new fraud claims implicate the anti-SLAPP law and are subject to another special motion to strike.
Please let me know when you are free to meet and confer on the new anti-SLAPP motion.
David Gingras, Esq. General Counsel Xcentric Ventures, LLC http://www.ripoffreport.com/ David@RipoffReport.com
PO BOX 310, Tempe, AZ 85280 Tel.: (480) 668-3623 Fax: (480) 248-3196 From: Lisa Borodkin [mailto:lborodkin@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2010 9:52 PM To: Lisa Borodkin Cc: Maria Crimi Speth; Daniel Blackert; <david@ripoffreport.com> Subject: Re: Xcentric Ventures adv. Asia - Stipulation
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10/29/2010 11:53 PM

103-1 - Exhibits To Judicial Notice

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103-1 - Exhibits To Judicial Notice

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Case 2:11-cv-01426-GMS Document 103-1 Filed 07/31/12 Page 1 of 242

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Communications Law > Federal Acts > Communications Decency Act

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IT IS SO ORDERED. Dated: October 26, 2011 /s/ Edward M. Chen

EDWARD M. CHEN United States District Judge

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First Amended Complaint - 1

while the reports themselves are referred to as Rip-off Reports or Reports.

First Amended Complaint - 7

Cloaked in the false disguise of a consumer advocate, the Ripoff

First Amended Complaint - 11

The Ripoff Report enterprise uses instrumentalities of interstate

First Amended Complaint - 13

First Amended Complaint - 14

First Amended Complaint - 16

In Definitions of the Copyright Act, a transfer of copyright ownership

Websites Facebook,4 Craigslist,5 Roommates.com6 and most

you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sublicensable, royalty-free,

you automatically grant . . . to craigslist an irrevocable, perpetual, non-

Instead, Ripoff Reports restricts subjects wishing to defend

First Amended Complaint - 19

Purchasing this book is actually Step Two in following the ROR

First Amended Complaint - 21

First Amended Complaint - 22

HTML determines not only how a web page is formatted to a viewer,

First Amended Complaint - 23

The underlying business model of such search engine companies is

First Amended Complaint - 24

An entire business of "search engine optimization" or SEO has

Fathom. (July 23, 2010).

Thus, Defendants conduct herein must be viewed not only in terms of

First Amended Complaint - 26

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First Amended Complaint - 28

First Amended Complaint - 29

First Amended Complaint - 30

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First Amended Complaint - 33

First Amended Complaint - 37

First Amended Complaint - 40

An example is shown below, for Ripoff Reports advertiser,

the following statements of fact through the ROR website:

request which claims to be from the original author of a report. ii.

203. On May 12, 2009, Defendant Edward Magedson sent Plaintiff

ii. iii. iv. v. vi.

First Amended Complaint - 48

First Amended Complaint - 49

Plaintiffs paid $25.00 to post this

First Amended Complaint - 52

First Amended Complaint - 53