richart ruddie – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Bar Complaint Filed Against Lawyers Who Participated In Bogus Lawsuits Targeting Fake Defendants

from the more-water-on-the-grease-fire-that-is-the-reputation-management-business dept

The reputation management tactic of filing bogus defamation lawsuits may be slowly coming to an end, but there will be a whole lot of reputational damage to be spread among those involved by the time all is said and done.

Richart Ruddie, proprietor of Profile Defenders, filed several lawsuits in multiple states fraudulently seeking court orders for URL delistings. The lawsuits featured fake plaintiffs, fake defendants, and fake admissions of guilt from the fake defendants. Some judges issued judgments without a second thought. Others had second thoughts but they were identical to their first one. And some found enough evidence of fraud to pass everything on to the US Attorney’s office.

But Ruddie couldn’t do all of this himself. He needed lawyers. And now those lawyers are facing a bar complaint for assisting Ruddie (and possibly others) in fraudulent behavior. Eugene Volokh has more details at the relocated (and paywall-free!) Volokh Conspiracy.

The Arizona lawsuits… were filed by lawyers Aaron Kelly and Daniel Warner of Kelly / Warner Law, a prominent Internet libel law firm (though some were also linked to Richart Ruddie, Profile Defenders, and a company connected to Profile Defenders).

These two attorneys are now facing a bar complaint because of their actions in the Chinnock v. Ivanski case, another lawsuit with fraudulent legal documents. These were delivered to the court by Kelly and Warner, with their apparent approval of the fraudulent contents. The bar complaint [PDF] details the many falsifications in the lawsuit documents, including the faking of notary public signatures.

[40.] The complaint states Ivanski resides in Turkey and Chinnock resides in Colorado. The complaint states, “[t]he parties purposefully availed themselves of the benefits of Arizona law,” but does not explain how the state courts in Arizona have jurisdiction to hear the matter….

[42.] Respondent Warner knew that Krista Ivanski is not a real person. Krista Ivanski was fabricated to serve as defendant in the matter.

[43.] Respondent Warner knew that Krista Ivanski did not post the 38 allegedly defamatory statements.

[44.] Respondent Warner knew that the 38 allegedly defamatory statements were not posted by the same person.

[45.] Respondent Warner knew that legal action regarding many of the allegedly defamatory statements was barred by the [Arizona one-year] statute of limitations ….

[46.] Alternatively, if Respondent Warner did not know the information in paragraphs 42-45, Respondent Warner failed to investigate the matter prior to filing the complaint.

[…]

[50.] The proposed order is signed by Ivanski and notarized by Amanda Sparks, a notary from Fulton County, Georgia. The Plaintiff’s Verification attached to the original complaint and signed by Chinnock was also notarized in Fulton County, Georgia. According to the complaint, neither Ivanski nor Chinnock reside in Georgia.

[51.] There is no notary in Fulton County named Amanda Sparks. A search performed via the Georgia Superior Court Clerk’s Cooperative Authority notary search shows no notary in Fulton County named Amanda Sparks. The notarization by Amanda Sparks is a forgery.

[52.] Respondent Warner knew that the notarization by “Amanda Sparks” from Fulton County, Georgia, was a forgery or failed to investigate the matter prior to filing the document.

And that’s just the first of two forgeries included in documents in this case. The second forgery also pertains to a fake notary public in yet another state.

54.] The proposed Amended Order For Permanent Injunction is signed by Ivanski and notarized by “Samantha Pierce,” a notary from Colorado. According to the complaint, Chinnock resides in Colorado while Ivanski resides in Turkey.

[55.] There is no notary in Colorado named Samantha Pierce. A notary search performed via the Colorado Secretary of State’s website returns “no records found” for notary Samantha Pierce. The notarization by Samantha Pierce is a forgery.

[56.] The notary ID used by Samantha Pierce is 20121234567. The sample notary seal displayed on the Colorado Secretary of State’s general notary information page uses notary ID 20121234567.

This is not the end of the complaint’s allegations. It also alleges Aaron Kelly’s case (Lynd v. Hood) involved fake notarization and fake defendants. The same goes for Gottuso v. Marks, which was handled by Aaron Kelly and involved a fictitious defendant. And so it continues for several more cases handled by Kelly and Warner. It also details a case handled by this law firm involving Richart Ruddie directly. The connection between Ruddie and the law firm goes beyond falsified documents. In this case, Ruddie was targeting posts critical of the Kelly / Warner law firm hosted at Ripoff Report but pretended the posts targeted Ruddie himself.

The lawsuit filed by Ruddie was fraudulent. Jake Kirschner did not post the allegedly defamatory statements. At least one of the statements was posted by an individual named Charles Roderick.

The allegedly defamatory statements are about Respondent Warner, not about Ruddie as alleged in the complaint.

Ruddie filed a fraudulent lawsuit to remove online criticism of his business associate Respondent Daniel Warner.

Respondent Warner knew that Ruddie filed the fraudulent lawsuit to achieve Respondent Warner’s goal of removing the online criticism without having to prove the elements of defamation.

Multiple violations of attorney rules of conduct are alleged. So far, it’s nothing more than a complaint and is still in need of review by a disciplinary judge. Questions will be raised about Kelly and Warner’s complicity in these fraudulent lawsuit schemes. Kelly / Warner have already released a statement claiming the named lawyers knew nothing about the fraudulent claims contained in the documents they served to the court, nor are they required to. (Emphasis in the original.)

Internet defamation attorneys cannot and will not be held to a higher standard of care than normal attorneys. After a quick reading of the ethical rules, the comments thereto, and a case filed by the Texas Attorney General against a reputation management company, it should be evident to any reasonable person that the old saying, “where there is smoke, there is fire” is not necessarily true in the digital age today.

“An advocate is responsible for pleadings and other documents prepared for litigation, but is usually not required to have personal knowledge of matters asserted therein, for litigation documents ordinarily present assertions by the client, or by someone on the client’s behalf, and not assertions by the lawyer.” ER 3.3 cmt 3 (emphasis added).

_“The prohibition against offering false evidence only applies if the lawyer knows that the evidence is false. [And] [a] lawyer’s reasonable belief that evidence is false does not preclude its presentation to the trier of fact.” See ER 3.3 cmt 8. “[A] lawyer should resolve doubts about the veracity of testimony or other evidence in favor of the client . . . .” Id. Although the firm practices far within and from “the line,” the comments to the ethical rules indicate that “the line” extends rather fa_r.

So, the law firm is claiming to be another victim of a shady reputation management firm engaged in fraudulent lawsuits for the purposes of removing critical posts from the internet. This defensive statement may let readers know just how far attorneys can wander from due diligence without being slapped with sanctions, but doesn’t do much to assure readers the law firm won’t turn a blind eye to sketchy legal paperwork if the price is right. The post also throws some shade at Eugene Volokh and Paul Alan Levy with its final sentence, asking clients to let the law firm know if they are contacted by “alleged ‘reporters.'”

While this plays out, we can expect the flow of bogus lawsuits to continue to slow. These tactics flew under the radar for a few years, but there are multiple private entities actively engaged in tracking down perpetrators. In addition, the issue has gone federal thanks to a Connecticut judge’s decision to forward allegations to the US Attorney’s office. I get that people are often disappointed Section 230 immunity doesn’t allow them to demand delisting of content they personally find objectionable. The problem isn’t with disappointed people, but rather the sketchy reputation management firms that promise (and bill for) stuff they can’t legally deliver.

Filed Under: aaron kelly, daniel warner, defamation, fake lawsuits, libel, reputation management, richart ruddie, takedowns
Companies: kelly / warner law, profile defenders

Paul Levy Hoping To Wake Up Maryland Courts To The Numerous Fraudulent Libel Lawsuits Filed There

from the so-far,-very-little-interest-in-performing-actual-judge-work dept

Something’s rotten in Maryland. Not conspiracy-level rotten, but rotten nonetheless. As we’ve discussed recently, Paul Alan Levy (along with Eugene Volokh) have done a ton of legwork to flush out the perpetrator of several bogus libel lawsuits filed in Baltimore courts, designed for the purpose of “reputation management” (i.e., convincing Google to stop linking to posts someone doesn’t like). The man behind many of these appears to be Richart Ruddie, who runs a reputation management company called Profile Defenders.

As we discussed earlier this week, one of the judges in Baltimore handling one of those cases has refused to fix things and overturn his rubber-stamped order. But there are other, similar cases in front of other judges there as well, and they seem equally unwilling to make proactive efforts to deter this sort of abuse. Because of this, Levy has worked with Myvesta (a company indirectly affected by a bogus libel lawsuit, thanks to bogus delisting orders targeting one of its websites) to file an amicus brief detailing Ruddie’s fraudulent reputation management efforts.

We had several reasons for filing an amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs’ motion to vacate. First, it seemed to us that the motion to vacate understated the extent of the fraud that had been perpetrated on the court — it did not frankly admit that Bryan Levin was an invented name created for the purpose of justifying the consent order, and it did not admit that the consent order sought the plaintiffs’ objective — suppression of critical articles — by the device of suing over allegedly defamatory comments. The motion did not admit that in additional to victimizing the court by the fraud, the person who arranged for the case to be filed was actually victimizing a speaker whose rights are protected by the First Amendment, and the motion did not call the consent order by its proper name — a prior restraint of protected speech.

But the problem goes much deeper than the case Myvesta’s involved in. Ruddie had a lot of extremely sketchy irons in the court’s fire. Levy wants to ensure this case isn’t seen as a one-and-done.

A second reason for submitting the amicus brief was to ensure that the judge not hear this motion to vacate judgment in isolation – we know of a raft of other cases like Smith v. Levin that were filed in the Maryland courts and, in particular, in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City. Some of these other cases also sought relief suppressing other articles on the Get Out of Debt Guy blog, in the apparent interest of other debt relief companies that the blog had criticized. Our brief identifies several other such cases, and Professor Volokh’s research has identified several more.

The filing [PDF] reveals many more details about Ruddie’s scamtastic lawsuits, as well as lawyer Bennett Wills’ apparent participation in the fraudulent filings. (Wills, who works for Ruddie client Rescue One, has claimed he never knowingly engaged in fraudulent behavior.)

[I]t has come to Myvesta’s attention that Bennett Wills has filed two additional “fake lawsuits” in Maryland circuit courts that are comparable to this case. Visionstar, Inc. v. Perez, No. 24C15005743 (Cir. Ct. Balt. City); Cohen v. Wilkerson, No. 06C15070022 (Cir. Ct. Carroll Cy). (Copies of these two complaints are attached). The papers use very similar language, and an investigation conducted by a private detective retained by UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh to assist in his investigation of the phenomenon of fake litigation established that, as in this case, neither of the two individuals who were named as defendants and whose signatures appear on the consent orders live at the addresses shown for them. See attached Declaration of Giles Miller. Moreover, both cases show obvious signs of being fake: the signatures of defendants “Mark Wilkerson” and “Daniel Perez” appear to have been written by the same hand; and the very carefully handwritten signature of “Mark Wilkerson” spells his name as “Wilerkson.”

And in the Visionstar case, the allegation in paragraph 13 about the IP address from which the supposedly defamatory reviews were posted to the Ripoff Report website is a highly implausible. Generally speaking, a subpoena can be issued in connection with a case seeking to identify the poster of an anonymous comment, but that is something that happens after the complaint is filed, not something that can be listed in the complaint. Undersigned counsel has contacted inside counsel for Xcentric Ventures, the company that operates Ripoff Report, and ascertained that his client has never received any subpoena to identify the anonymous author of the reports cited in the Visionstar complaint; that attorney also represented that he checked the IP addresses for the reports cited in the complaint, and that none of them was associated with the address 12.4.33.71 as the complaint alleges.

Levy points out Ruddie’s preferred legal venue is likely due to the fact that his business (what’s left of it) is located in that area. It would be very unlikely for so many defendants to be located in the Baltimore area, given the worldwide nature of the internet, but somehow these plaintiffs keep finding anonymous commenters right in Ruddie’s backyard. (And with record speed, too. In Ruddie’s faux lawsuits, commenters are usually unmasked within a few days of a lawsuit’s filing, all without subpoenas or court orders demanding the identifying info behind IP addresses and pseudonyms.)

Ruddie’s probably not filing any more bogus lawsuits — at least not while he’s under investigation by the US Attorney’s office. But there are likely more fraudulently-obtained court orders out there still needing to be vacated. And, as long as the court appears inattentive, there’s an open invitation for similarly-minded reputation managers to see if they can sneak a few bogus injunction requests past Baltimore judges.

Filed Under: baltimore, defamation, judges, paul levy, reputation management, richart ruddie
Companies: myvesta

Judge Refuses To Fix His Rubber-Stamping Of A Fraudulently-Requested Court Order

from the it's-just-a-little-prior-restraint dept

Over the past year or so, we’ve seen reputation management efforts slide into even shadier territory. Apparently frustrated by Google’s unwillingness to humor bogus DMCA notices, rep management con artists began fraudulently obtaining court orders to get content delisted. The process involved fake defendants, fake plaintiffs, and, occasionally, fake lawyers. In one particular case, it involved forged judges signatures.

Paul Alan Levy of Public Citizen, along with Eugene Volokh (of The Conspiracy), have performed some masterful detective work to uncover at least one of the people behind this new wave of fraudulent delistings. Richart Ruddie, who has already been hit with a $70,000 settlement in one of his bogus libel lawsuits, appears to be reluctant to live up to the terms of the deal he struck with Levy. According to that, Ruddie — who is under investigation by the US Attorney’s office — was to start withdrawing his bogus lawsuits.

As Levy points out in a recent blog post, Ruddie still has open cases in the Baltimore court system. A libel lawsuit featuring irked dentist Mitul Patel and supposed defamer Matthew Chan has yet to be dumped by Ruddie. Unfortunately, the presiding judge — despite being provided with considerable evidence of fraudulent behavior — doesn’t appear to be interested in correcting his rubber-stamping of Patel’s bogus injunction request.

In Patel v. Chan, the very first case in which Ruddie’s involvement in phony consent litigation was discovered, Matthew Chan moved pro se to lift the consent order entered to try to suppress his reviews. That motion was filed on September 1, 2016, and as of the time last month when I began work on our amicus brief, Judge Philip Senan Jackson, who had been hoodwinked into signing the phony consent order, had not yet ruled on the motion — a patently invalid prior restraint was left sitting on the books for nearly eight months after the judge who issued it was informed that there was no basis for his order.

Hey, it’s only a Constitutional violation. I guess it can wait. But it gets worse than simply ignoring the problem. Levy and Chan produced plenty of evidence of fraudulent behavior by Ruddie in this bogus lawsuit — including the use of a bogus defendant, a bogus affidavit signed by the bogus defendant, and a nonexistent physical address (which I guess makes sense, what with the defendant being nonexistent). The other side has produced nothing because it has nothing.

Rather than undo his unconstitutional oversight, the judge has denied Chan’s motion to vacate the judgment, apparently over some filing technicality that appears to be also nonexistent. (Here’s a link to the rule cited by the judge in his denial of the motion.)

Late last week, that situation took a turn for the worse: a one-page order from Judge Jackson denied the motion to vacate on the ground that the affidavit supporting Chan’s motion was not attested in the manner required by the Maryland rules. This ruling is inexplicable – the affidavit was sworn before a notary (see the last page here). I contacted several Maryland lawyers who practice in state court and asked them about this attestation; each told me told me that, as far as they could tell, this was a proper verification of the affidavit. And even if the judge found some defect in the order, there were plenty of exhibits attached to the motion, not to speak of a separate filing by an attorney for Mitul Patel, agreeing that the complaint filed in his name had been submitted to the court without his authorization, and bore a forged signature. Several Maryland lawyers to whom I provided the affidavit shared my reaction – what could Judge Jackson possibly be thinking?

Lots of things come to mind, none of which make Judge Jackson appear qualified to hold this position of power. Maybe the judge doesn’t like hearing he made mistakes. Maybe he’s hoping this will all blow over and he can continue to make the same mistakes in the future. One thing is clear: Jackson’s refusal to address fraud on his own court will ensure his court will be the venue of choice for like-minded fraudsters.

Filed Under: defamation, matthew chan, philip senan jackson, reputation management, richart ruddie

Filing Bogus Lawsuits As Part Of A 'Reputation Management' Strategy Costs Firm $71,000

from the making-the-internet-worse-by-making-the-judicial-system-worse dept

Because abusing the DMCA process only goes so far, some reputation management entities have begun exploiting an inattentive legal system to push lawsuits past judges. In some cases, these suits have featured fake plaintiffs filing bogus libel lawsuits against fake defendants and using a fake affidavit to fraudulently obtain court orders requiring Google to delist URLs.

Those engaged in this fraudulent behavior aren’t likely to get away with it for much longer. Paul Alan Levy and Eugene Volokh managed to track down the person behind one set of bogus lawsuits and get the presiding judge to take a closer look at the bogus documents he was being handed. Pissed Consumer has also been reporting on others using the same MO, and has headed to court to get these suits examined and tossed.

The end of line for supposed reputation manager Richart Ruddie came at the hands of Volokh and Levy, with the judge granting discovery to the defendant after being apprised of the apparently fraudulent filings. Now that Richart Ruddie of Profile Defenders has been exposed, it looks as though he’s given up the fight. Levy reports Ruddie has settled anti-SLAPP claims brought against him and is paying restitution for his reputation mismanagement.

The deal has now been signed, the $71,000 settlement sum has been paid in full, and the settlement agreement filed with the court along with a proposed order under which the Judge Smith would retain jurisdiction to enforce Ruddie’s obligation to move to get the fraudulent state court orders lifted, as well as to ensure that the former customers (that is to say, Smith, Rescue One Financial, and Financial Rescue) cooperate in Ruddie’s efforts in that regard. Their cooperation will likely be needed because they, not Ruddie, were the plaintiffs in the state-court litigation and hence the motions to lift the orders will have to be made in the names of those parties companies. It appears at the moment that the threat of being dragged back into the Rhode Island anti-SLAPP litigation has been sufficient to induce the companies and Smith to allow counsel retained by Ruddie to proceed in their names to get the fraudulent order lifted.

While that helps the defendant and partially takes care of Ruddie’s liability (not to mention acts as a deterrent against future efforts of this sort), it doesn’t do much to deter the other parties listed, who apparently knew Ruddie’s courtroom efforts were shady and may have been fully complicit in the fraud. This settlement leaves them pretty much unscathed. There’s still the possibility more fees are on their way from others involved in Ruddie’s black hat SEO BS. But for now, it’s all in Ruddie’s name.

Levy’s post provides a ton of background info behind the settlement he just collected, including this wonderful paragraph, in which an opposing lawyer claims Levy has an “ethical” obligation to put the opposition’s interests ahead of his own.

Apparently, Hirschhorn [attorney for Richart Ruddie representing him for a criminal investigation brought by the state at the request of Judge Smith] was sharing some of the details of our negotiations, because when Rescue One [Ruddie’s SEO client] lawyer Michael Mallow learned that I was still pursuing his client’s liability for an anti-SLAPP violation, he hit the roof. He demanded that I call him and, when I did, he began yelling into the telephone that it was my ethical responsibility to reach a complete settlement with Ruddie so that his client would not have to produce any documents. He brought Hirschhorn into the call and demanded that I give Hirschhorn a settlement number that included claims against his clients as well as Ruddie. When I explained that I did not have any basis to set a proposed compensatory damages figure because I had not completed a sufficient analysis to specify a number that I felt I could defend in litigation, Mallow said that this didn’t matter and that I should just make up a number so that there could be a settlement. Hirschhorn indicated that he would take a specific number with that disclaimer; when I articulated a number that was considerably higher than what Hirschhorn said he could get from his client, Mallow told me that it was possible that his own client might contribute to the settlement, but “if that happens you will never know.” That is, the deal would be structured to give his client deniability of any responsibility for the fraud.

The whole post by Levy is amazing and should be read in its entirety to get a better grasp on the cast of characters in this courtroom charade. It initially appeared as though Ruddie’s reputation management scheme consisted of filing bogus lawsuits without his SEO clients’ knowledge. That no longer appears to be the case. At least a couple of his clients appear to have known exactly how this was being handled and had zero problem with participating in Ruddie’s fraudulent filings. The settlement may be an attempt to staunch Ruddie’s bleeding, but it’s pretty difficult to pitch reputation management services when yours is swirling the drain.

Filed Under: defamation, fake lawsuits, reputation management, richart ruddie
Companies: profile defenders

Paul Levy Discovers Head Of Reputation Management Company Signed Off On Forged/Fraudulent Court Docs

from the how-the-terrible-have-fallen...-lower...-I-guess... dept

As a result of a federal judge in Rhode Island taking a second look at an order he hastily granted earlier, Paul Alan Levy of Public Citizen has been able to confirm Richart Ruddie — the head of an extremely-sketchy reputation management company — signed off on the forged and fraudulent documents delivered to the court. The documents — a bogus lawsuit featuring the forged signatures of both the plaintiff and the defendant — are apparently just part of Profile Defenders’ reputation management work.

Nice work if you can get [away with] it. File a bogus lawsuit. “Locate” a bogus defendant. Produce a signed admission of guilt and ask the judge to order search engines to delist the offending content. Cash checks. Repeat until caught.

Richart Ruddie has been caught.

While I was at the courthouse in Providence, I had the chance to talk to the clerk’s office and learned the identity of the process service that brought the forged litigation papers to court. The process server, in turn, when informed that he had filed forged papers, had no compunction about identifying the company which in turn had provided those papers and the company on whose account the check to pay the filing fee had been written. The check was from RIR1984 LLC, the very company with which Rescue One Financial had contracted for services to get Steve Rhode’s critical web pages removed from search engine indexes. The individual signer for RIR1984 on the contract is Richart Ruddie, who, as Eugene Volokh and I reported last month, is apparently responsible for dozens of fake lawsuits around the country. And the go-between was “Annuity Sold,” a company with which Richart Ruddie himself has self-identified.

Levy has now moved to vacate the court order and dismiss the complaint. He’s also pursuing legal fees, but something about Ruddie’s character (along with his cast of nonexistent libel lawsuit defendants) suggests this attempt may be fruitless. In any event, Ruddie will likely stop filing bogus lawsuits. But he may also find himself facing a federal investigation for his past misdeeds. From the hearing transcript [PDF]:

THE COURT: […] I am going to have a transcript of this proceeding prepared, and I’m going to order the Clerk to send a copy of the file, all of your filings, as well as the transcript of this proceeding this afternoon to the United States Attorney’s office for them to review because it does appear to me, as I said earlier, just at first blush, that there’s potentially multiple crimes that have been committed, both fraud and potentially forgery. And various kinds of fraud, I think, are in play here, and so I think it is something that law enforcement should become aware of and investigate.

I’m embarrassed that this order, this consent order, was signed, but it shows you just how, you know, in a busy court, how something like this can happen. But I’m, frankly, if everything that’s in here is true, which it appears to be, I’m pretty outraged about it.

That noise you hear in the background is popcorn producers stepping up production. There may be some very interesting developments in the near future. Not only that, but it appears Richart Ruddie isn’t the only one engaging in this sort of fraudulent behavior. Pissed Consumer is also asking courts to take a closer look at some suspicious libel lawsuits that have resulted in delisting of its content — lawsuits that follow the same M.O. as the ones spotted by Levy.

Filed Under: defamation, fake lawsuits, fraud, paul levy, reputation management, rhode island, richart ruddie
Companies: profile defenders

Pissed Consumer Sues Reputation Management Firms Over Their Bogus Lawsuit/Fake Defendant/Takedown Scams

from the well,-here-we-go... dept

In the last few weeks, we’ve written a few posts about Richart Ruddie’s company, Profile Defenders, which appears to be “improving reputations” online by filing bogus defamation lawsuits, finding a bogus made-up “defendant” to “admit” to posting defamatory information, reaching a “settlement” and getting a court order. The whole scheme is about getting that court order, which is then sent on to Google and others (mainly Google). The whole point: if Google sees a court order saying that some content is defamatory, it will de-index that page. That the whole process to get that court order is a total sham is basically ignored. That may be changing. We were just noting that some of Profile Defenders’ cases are in trouble, and at least one has had the court order vacated.

Of course, it appears that Ruddie and Profile Defenders are not the only ones playing this game of judicial fraud. We wrote about a bunch of similar cases back in March that were targeting the online review site Pissed Consumer and some other review sites. At the time, Pissed Consumer had found 11 such lawsuits. In that article, we noted some of the lawyers and firms that appeared to be either involved or benefiting from these cases. And it appears that Pissed Consumer has had enough — and has sued (represented by Marc Randazaa).

You can read the full complaint, which is an interesting read. It goes into great detail on each of the different cases that it’s suing over, but the introduction to the complaint lays out the basics. I’m reposting it in full (minus some citations) here because it’s a good summary:

This case involves a creative solution to a common frustration for many businesses, who do not like negative reviews that are published about them on the Internet. However, removing consumer reviews from the Internet is a difficult process given that they are protected by the First Amendment.

Nevada Corporate Headquarters, has gone to great lengths to attempt to suppress consumer reviews in the past. It has filed at least one SLAPP suit in Nevada seeking injunctive relief to censor those negative reviews. In that case, Nevada Corporate Headquarters suffered a resounding loss when they were hit with an anti-SLAPP order…. They also lost at summary judgment in a SLAPP-back suit. That action resulted in a significant judgment for attorney fees and costs….

Undaunted by these set-backs, Nevada Corporate Headquarters has now conspired with other companies and individuals to create a scam whereby they suppress negative reviews from the Internet, while evading any First Amendment or due process considerations. This scam also allows them to avoid the risk of another anti-SLAPP attorney fee award.

Several other businesses and professionals who have been the subject of negative reviews online have also employed the same fraudulent machinery as Nevada Corporate Headquarters, as a means of removing this content while evading detection and liability.

The scam is not all that complicated. Google will remove search engine results from its well-known search engine if it is provided with a court order determining that the information is indeed defamatory.

However, when Nevada Corporate Headquarters sued consumer review websites in the past, it was severely disappointed. (See Exhibits 1 & 2.) Therefore, they needed to concoct a new censorship scam. So they used a stooge plaintiff, ZCS Inc. (“ZCS”), to sue a stooge defendant, Collins Mattos (“Mattos”).

Defendant Doe Corporations, so called ?reputation management companies,? conceived and organized the scam as an alternative way to remove negative posts in lieu of undergoing an adversarial proceeding. Several other businesses and professionals have contacted these ?reputation management companies,? which have used similar schemes to remove negative consumer reviews about them.

The other conspirators engaged attorneys Mark W. Lapham (“Lapham”) and Owen T. Mascott (?Mascott?) to file sham lawsuits either by the subjects of the negative reviews or by corporations that had no interest in the allegedly defamatory statements, against a defendant who most certainly was not the party that published the allegedly defamatory statements, and the parties immediately stipulated to a judgment of injunctive relief, so the conspirators could provide the order to Google and other search engines, thus achieving the goal of deindexing all pages containing negative reviews.

At first blush, Defendants? scam appears rather brilliant but incredibly unethical. Now that Plaintiff has uncovered and exposed Defendants? unlawful deeds, Consumer Opinion LLC respectfully requests that this Court discipline them for those misdeeds.

The rest of the filing goes into a lot more details about these court orders, obtained under false pretenses.

The actual claims in the case are for unlawful, unfair and fraudulent business practices, abuse of process and civil conspiracy. As we’ve seen in other cases, actually getting lawyers disciplined for such bad behavior is actually fairly rare. But Randazza has a history of being a bulldog about these kinds of things (remember Righthaven?). This should be an interesting case to follow.

Filed Under: court orders, defamation, fake lawsuits, mark lapham, owen mascott, reputation management, richart ruddie, takedowns
Companies: nevada corporate headquarters, pissed consumer

With Interest In Profile Defenders' Questionable Lawsuits Rising, The Lawsuits Start Falling

from the reputation-management dept

Earlier this year, we were among the first to write about the highly questionable practice of “reputation management” companies filing clearly bogus lawsuits against unknown defendants, only to magically have those “defendants” show up a day or two later with an agreement that they had posted defamatory content. The goal of these lawsuits was obvious: get a court order. That’s because many platform websites, including Google, won’t take down or delink content based on a claim of defamation, but will do so if there’s a court order. Of course, filing a real lawsuit has all sorts of problems, including money and actually needing to have a real case. These reputation management lawsuits got around all of that by basically faking defendants, having them “agree” to a settlement admitting to defamation, and getting a court order saying that the content is defamatory. Neat and clean. And total abuse of legal process.

Last month, Public Citizen’s Paul Levy (who has helped defend Techdirt against some legal bullies) picked up on this thread and found evidence of more bogus lawsuits. A few weeks ago, he and famed law professor Eugene Volokh teamed up to reveal more details on a series of such lawsuits, which all seemed to be connected back to a guy named Richart Ruddie and an operation that goes by a bunch of names, but mainly Profile Defenders. It appears that Ruddie/Profile Defenders is not the only one filing these kinds of lawsuits, but he’s been prolific. So far, Ruddie’s only response is a bizarre press release touting his “anti-cyberbullying skills.”

He may want to find a real lawyer though.

Volokh reports that one of the courts that had granted one of Profile Defenders’ orders has now vacated that order. Of course, that might not matter since Ruddie has likely already used it to have content taken down. But, more importantly, the judge in that case is considering another case that looks like it’s another Profile Defenders case. And suddenly, the judge seems a lot more interested in the details.

I?m delighted to report that late last week, the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas vacated the order in one of these cases, Callagy v. Roffman (No. 160603108). The plaintiff?s lawyer told us that the company they used for that case was Profile Defenders, but they had no idea that the defendant in that case was apparently nonexistent (and it?s certainly possible that they indeed had no idea of this).

Also late last week, the same judge scheduled a hearing in Murtagh v. Reynolds (No. 160901262), in which no order had yet been issued; the order scheduling the hearing notes that the plaintiff must present ?strict proof of service? for the case to go forward. I haven?t been able to reach the plaintiff in that case ? or the ostensible plaintiff, as in some cases the plaintiffs have said that they hadn?t authorized a lawsuit, and in some cases the plaintiffs may have been as fake as the defendants, since the only important thing to the filers was to block access to particular websites mentioned in the order, regardless of who the named plaintiffs or defendants had been. I therefore can?t speak with confidence about whether Murtagh was a Profile Defenders case; but the procedural structure of the case is similar to the others I?ve seen, as is some of the legal boilerplate.

That’s not all. A day later, Volokh wrote about another such case that was voluntarily dismissed. In this case, Volokh notes that the reputation management scheme may have been even more nefarious than previously thought. Most of the examples we’ve seen involve trying to remove articles or reviews by claiming those articles are defamatory and then “faking” a “defendant” willing to “settle” and admit guilt in order to get a court order. But in this latest case (and in another one Volokh has seen) it appears that the reputation management operation would try to get a news article to disappear from Google by first submitting a defamatory comment by themselves, and then suing for “defamation” based on that comment (and, then, of course, producing a “defendant” who settles). End result: Google is told to delist an entire article because of a defamatory comment… put there by the “reputation management” firm in the first place:

The article went up in January 2014, but then in July 2016 a comment was posted to the article. (The comment has been deleted in the past few weeks, but the people at the Post & Courier assure me that it wasn?t deleted by them.) And then just a few weeks later, the lawsuit was filed, claiming that the comment was defamatory and that the comment?s author agreed to an injunction ordering the removal of the comment. The plan, I suspect, was to take any such injunction and submit it to Google as a basis for deindexing the whole article (because Google can?t separately deindex the comment). Sometimes this sort of plan has worked.

The comment plays a peculiar role in such cases, I think. In one similarly structured case, for which I have been told what day the contract with the reputation management company (there, Profile Defenders) was signed, the comment was posted immediately after that signing, so I assume that comment was ginned up for the purposes of that lawsuit.

Hopefully, as more judges learn about this scam, it won’t be so easy to pull off.

Filed Under: defamation, eugene volokh, fake defamation lawsuits, reputation management, richart ruddie
Companies: profile defenders

Reputation Management Company Linked To Bogus Libel Lawsuits Now Hyping Its Anti-Cyberbullying Skills

from the loutish-abuse-of-the-legal-system-notwithstanding dept

Fake lawsuits featuring fake plaintiffs filed against fake defendants and hustled past judges to secure court orders demanding delisting by search engines: that’s the new face of reputation management, apparently.

Paul Alan Levy, along with newly-acquired partner Eugene Volokh, have managed to track down the possible perpetrator behind a couple dozen bogus lawsuits filed in recent months. Richart Ruddie and his company, Profile Defenders, appear to be engaging in some illegal activity in order to provide clients with the services they’ve promised them.

Ruddie has refused to comment on the lawsuits or answer questions posed by Levy and Volokh. Instead, he has opted to fight speech with more speech [lol] by issuing a very self-serving press release.

Here’s what Profile Defenders has to say about itself — not in response to any questions, but rather to buff some of the tarnish off its dented armor. It’s not just about “protecting the rich.” [No. Really.] It’s about saving clients from cyberbullying. (h/t Paul Alan Levy)

Reputation management companies like Profile Defenders protect the innocent from the action of cyberbullies who prey on people.

[…]

Fortunately, reputation management companies like Profile Defenders have arrived, and in the war between reputation companies vs cyber bullies they give the innocent a chance to tell their story on the Internet. Co-founder of Profile Defenders, Richart Ruddie, is glad that people are given a second chance after being defamed by cyber bullies that act like new age mobsters trying to destroy good people through cyber bullying.

I assume Levy, Volokh, and others who have covered this slowly-unravelling debacle are the “new age monsters” attempting to destroy “good people” –“good people” who apparently have no problem filing bogus lawsuits and forging signatures, all the while charging thousands of dollars to drag down their clients’ reputations along with their own.

Then there’s this, helpfully pointed out by a commenter (and victim of one of PD’s bogus lawsuits) on Levy’s post. Ruddie’s personal blog contains a post with some enlightening thoughts about journalism.

Writers and journalists typically use their powers for evil and to hurt good people.

And what sort of people are the “good people” hurt by “evil” journalists? Richart Ruddie is, according to Richart Ruddie.

Had one of the nicest compliments this past weekend. A new friend said “Chart do you know why I like you?”

“At the end of the day you’re just a genuine person Richart Ruddie”

You’re not looking for anything from anybody, you are just here to be happy and have a good time and if you can facilitate others to be happy as well then you do your part to ensure all others around you are happy.

Yep. Genuine as fuck. More from Levy:

[I] expect that Ruddie will prove a slippery character – the home page of his “Profile Defenders” web site provides a New York City street address that appears to be phony (a letter I sent him at that address demanding that he preserve relevant documents came back undeliverable), and both the Linked In and Google profiles of Profile Defenders show a Washington, D.C. address that does not exist. Moreover, Florida’s records reveal that Ruddie maintains a stable of many different LLC’s. It may take the investigative resources of a federal or state grand jury or of the Federal Trade Commission to track him and his assets down, and bring him to justice.

Volokh and Levy have uncovered plenty of damning evidence strongly suggesting Ruddie’s company is now in the business of filing bogus lawsuits simply because (a) there’s very little chance any judge will examine these cases closely (and when a judge does, the suit is refiled in another court) and (b) it’s one of the only methods proven to result in delistings of negative reviews hosted by non-parties to the lawsuits. As Levy notes, it may be almost impossible to blow this wide open, much less get Ruddie to answer any questions about these lawsuits on the record. But the reputational damage his company is now causing indirectly to its clients may result in lawsuits Ruddie can’t ignore, filed by aggrieved customers who paid thousands of dollars just to see themselves swept into Profile Defender’s destructive vortex.

Filed Under: eugene volokh, fake lawsuits, paul levy, reputation management, richart ruddie, takedowns
Companies: profile defenders

More Details Uncovered On Bogus Defamation Lawsuits Being Used To Delist Negative Reviews

from the not-helping-with-the-'rep-mgmt-not-a-SCAM'-arguments dept

Paul Alan Levy has gone digging and possibly found one of the entities tied to the bogus defamation suits being used to delist negative reviews. Working with Eugene Volokh of the Volokh Conspiracy (where this article is cross-posted), Levy has discovered even more lawsuits being filed against nonexistent defendants to expedite the removal of content from the web.

There are about 25 court cases throughout the country that have a suspicious profile:

All involve allegedly self-represented plaintiffs, yet they have similar snippets of legalese that suggest a common organization behind them. (A few others, having a slightly different profile, involve actual lawyers.)

All the ostensible defendants ostensibly agreed to injunctions being issued against them, which often leads to a very quick court order (in some cases, less than a week).

Of these 25-odd cases, 15 give the addresses of the defendants — but a private investigator hired by Professor Volokh (Giles Miller of Lynx Insights & Investigations) couldn’t find a single one of the ostensible defendants at the ostensible address.

As Levy and others (namely Pissed Consumer) have noted recently, this practice seems to be on the upswing, along with the hasty creation of bogus “news” sites to assist in the generation of bogus DMCA takedowns targeting unflattering reviews and posts.

The standard M.O. for these bogus defamation lawsuits is described here in yet another case uncovered by Volokh and Levy.

A California newspaper writes a story in 2013 about an elementary school parent who had put fake signatures and falsely attributed quotes on a petition. (The petition was urging the school not to change its gifted education program.) The newspaper quotes the parent as apologizing for her actions.

Two and a half years later, a comment appears on the story: The comment, signed “Robert Castle,” accuses the parent of being prejudiced and taking bribes, though it also says the commenter is drunk and isn’t sure he’s talking about the same person that the story describes.

Then, within a few months, a lawsuit is filed in Shasta County — not where the incident happened — against supposed Shasta County resident “Robert Castle,” claiming the comment is defamatory, and alleging that Castle agrees to an injunction. (The Baltimore, Rhode Island, and California lawsuits share a good deal of legal boilerplate.)

That’s where the story would normally end. Once the injunction is approved, the order is forwarded to search engines for the delisting of the URL cited. This one, however, almost has a twist.

Instead of just granting the injunction, the judge demands that the parties come in for a hearing, noting, among other things, that “there is a purported signature of Defendant Robert Castle” but no proof that such a defendant was served.

If only this had moved forward. But the lawyers filing these bogus suits aren’t stupid. (Or at least they’re not completely braindead.) Like others in the trolling business, these lawyers are greeting pushback from judges as something to be routed around, rather than addressed.

The docket does not report that the hearing was ever held; instead, a similar case is then filed in Los Angeles County, also far from the scene of the underlying incident, with the same plaintiff and the same defendant. An injunction is indeed issued. Yet as best we can tell no Robert Castle lives in Shasta County.

More details have also surfaced in a case Levy is still dealing with — the filing of a bogus defamation lawsuit on behalf of dentist Mitul R. Patel against an unhappy patient. In this peculiar case, both the supposed plaintiff and defendant claim to have had their signatures forged on the court documents used to secure an order to delist content.

Patel’s motion to vacate the bogus lawsuit points a finger at a reputation management firm SEO Profile Defense LLC — led by Richart Ruddie — which Patel alleges filed the suit (and forged his signature) without his knowledge after he signed a contract with it for reputation management services.

Additional details uncovered by Levy and Volokh suggest this isn’t the reputation management firm’s first bogus lawsuit rodeo.

We have likewise obtained confirmation that Profile Defenders, a Richart Ruddie company, was hired by two of the plaintiffs in the other cases that fit the pattern we described in the opening paragraphs.

The earliest case that we could find fitting this general pattern was filed in November 2015 — and it had as the plaintiff R. Derek Ruddie in Owings Mills, Maryland. Richart Ruddie was apparently born in Owings Mills, and Derrek (though with two r’s) appears to be his middle name; the address given in court documents has been associated with Richart Ruddie in various records. And the monthly payments under the reputation management contract signed by Rescue One Financial are to be made to Ruddie’s company at a bank located in Owings Mills.

The defendant in this November 2015 case, true to form, could not be found at the address listed in the court documents. The lawsuit itself succeeded in using a comment, ostensibly derogatory of Ruddie — though it didn’t use Ruddie’s last name — to get a whole RipOffReport.com post deindexed. (The comment was, “Hey Rich whats the deal with this guy you recommended? Does he give you a kick back or something?”) That RipOffReport post was critical of a lawyer, who we assume was the main beneficiary of the November 2015 lawsuit. The lawyer has declined to say whether he had any reputation management agreement with Ruddie.

Ruddie’s Profile Defenders has recently announced a “lawsuit removal service” in a grammatically-challenged press release. (All errors in the original.)

The future of online reputation management is moving into permanent removals. As the best online reputation management company thanks to the highest success rate int he industry Profile Defenders decided that the best future move for their clients was to go beyond just traditional suppression work of pushing down unwanted search results in favor of good ones.

[…]

Jordan a reputation analyst stated that “While we are still the best for suppression we wanted to go above & beyond what our clients wants and needs are and that involved completely removing and getting rid of search results. Most clients are astonished with the end result. Just yesterday we had a client who said he had used 4 other reputation companies and did not think it was possible and he is glad that profile defenders proved him wrong and doing the impossible.” The most common site that we have been able to remove has been Ripoffreport.com. Being the only company that can currently guarantee removals from there has been a boom to our business. While the pricing is not cheap you are certainly paying for what you get.

Ruddie and Profile Defenders have refused to comment on any the allegations nor provided more specifics about the services they offer (which start at $6,000), but the PD website proudly declares the vaguely-defined “service” is a hit — again using grammar best described as “outsourced.”

Reviews on our lawsuit removal service is a top hit from all of our clients. From big time corporations to innocently defamed victims who have suffered from cyber stalkers and anonymous posters who decided to create harmful material about them online have agreed that our service for removing things that are bad or negative about you online is as good as it gets. Our lawsuit service has our internet defamation specialists setup with you for handling the removal of any material that is currently harming you.

What we are able to do for the removal has been nothing short of astonishing to most of our clients. Since anybody can hide behind a curtain and write whatever they would like online on popular consumer advocacy and review websites it is no stopping what appears online at first. That was until we created a service to help facilitate the legal aspect that is needed to have your bad information reviewed. We have to be vague on the details legally until we speak with you and put you in touch with the proper defamation attorney in your locale to handle your case.

For more information fill out the form to the left or give us a call today.

[Not pictured existent: form to the left.]

That’s where things stand now. Some people in the SEO/reputation management business have found a legal loophole that seems to be working for the time being. Pushing unchallenged libel suits through lower courts is likely a low-risk activity, given the existence of more difficult and time-consuming cases sitting on most dockets. Unfortunately, as Levy points out, a case currently in front of the California Supreme Court could make California the bogus lawsuit venue of choice.

[T]he possibility of such shenanigans bears on the Hassell v. Bird litigation that is now before the California Supreme Court: The issue there (see here and here) is whether takedown injunctions can actually be made legally binding on Internet platforms, rather than just being something that platforms choose whether to follow. The questionable nature of many such injunctions is reason to further insist that platforms not be legally bound by them.

DMCA takedowns have always lent themselves to abuse. Now, unfortunately, the judicial system is helping out bad actors in the reputation management business for taking down more content, however inadvertently. This is why people claiming that CDA 230 needs a DMCA-style “takedown” system are wrong.

Filed Under: court orders, defamation, litigation abuse, reputation management, reviews, richart ruddie, takedowns
Companies: profile defenders