WebProNews

Tag: extortion

  • PSA: Cybercriminals Preying On Nest Users With ‘Sextortion’ Scheme

    PSA: Cybercriminals Preying On Nest Users With ‘Sextortion’ Scheme

    Following reports of connected security cameras, such as Ring and Nest, being targeted by hackers, scammers are preying on people’s fears with a “sextortion” scheme, according to CNBC.

    The scam relies on “social engineering,” or the ability to convince an unsuspecting victim do something they wouldn’t normally do, through the use of charm, guilt, shame or authority. The scammer has usually done enough research and has enough information and half-truths to make the scam seem credible.

    According to CNBC, IT security firm Mimecast saw “a huge spike in the new tactic, with more than 1,600 scam emails intercepted in just a two-day period from Jan. 2 to Jan. 3.”

    When describing this particular scam Kiri Addison, head of data science, said “this one is a bit different. It stood out, because it’s really convoluted in a way. It starts out with a single email saying ‘we’ve got some nude photos of you.’”

    The email will include a link to a website showing Nest footage from an innocent area the person could have visited, such as a bar or restaurant. The idea is to make the person believe they’ve been monitored and recorded over a long period of time, in any number of situations, making it more believable they may have been recorded in a compromising position.

    Ultimately, the victim is walked through the process of establishing a bitcoin wallet and paying the scammers $500 to keep their photos and videos from being released on porn sites. It’s important to understand there aren’t actually any photos or videos.

    As CNBC points out, “if you receive a sextortion email, the best thing you can do is ignore it.

    “Although internet-connected cameras and smartphones can be hacked, this is a very rare event. It’s practically non-existent for such a hack to be combined with an extortion demand.”

  • Business Courts Negative Reviews As Middle Finger To Yelp

    You’ve heard the claims before. If reader comments are any indication, many of you have even lived them. They’ve never been proven, but time and time again, small businesses accuse Yelp of “extorting” them by holding positive reviews hostage until they pay for advertising.

    Do you believe Yelp is really guilty of this practice, or is it just a myth? Tell us what you think.

    Writing this story couldn’t feel much more like beating a dead horse, because it never really gets anywhere, but the claims just don’t stop. Yelp denies them, and businesses call B.S. It’s a never-ending cycle without a resolution in sight.

    So why are we talking about it this time? A restaurant in Richmond, Califonria – Botto Italian Bistro – has taken matters into its own hands. Rather than just complaining about this alleged “extortion,” they launched a campaign to get negative reviews, which has led to increased attention and business for the restaurant, while also shining a spotlight on such claims against Yelp.

    According to The Associated Press, the restaurant launched the campaign after getting “several aggressive sales calls from Yelp that they perceived to be veiled threats.” It’s the same basic plot that businesses have been talking about for a long time now.

    According to that report, business has benefited from the campaign, and the restaurant says it’s the best marketing idea it’s had, adding a big middle finger in the form of a “Thanks, Yelp!”

    Last month, Yelp emerged victorious from a lawsuit dealing with extortion claims, though the reason the company won did little to quell existing suspicions. Yelp certainly took the opportunity to gloat about its victory on its blog, saying:

    For years, fringe commentators have accused Yelp of altering business ratings for money. Yelp has never done this and individuals making such claims are either misinformed, or more typically, have an axe to grind––whether businesses upset that Yelp will not remove reviews they don’t like, or unscrupulous internet marketing “experts” trying to make a buck off of honest business owners with dubious reputation management schemes.

    In 2010, a few businesses took these conspiracy theories to court and filed several class actions against Yelp — all of which were dismissed in Federal court. Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of these cases with their ruling in Levitt v. Yelp. Examining the businesses’ best facts after several attempts, the court found no extortion or any other wrongdoing by Yelp. The Court also dismissed as implausible some plaintiffs’ claims that Yelp authored negative reviews about them as part of a plot to obtain ad dollars. Instead, the Court noted that the facts only showed that the reviews were likely from actual customers, noting that “Yelp is a forum for consumers to review businesses, and huge numbers of consumers do just that.”

    We are obviously happy that the Court reached the right result, and saw through these thin attempts by a few businesses and their lawyers to disparage Yelp and draw attention away from their own occasional negative review. We at Yelp are moving on, and focusing on our core mission––connecting people with great local businesses.

    Meanwhile, various reports pointed out that the reason for the case’s dismissal didn’t really prove that Yelp wasn’t engaging in the things it was being accused of.

    As Nathaniel Mott of PandoDaily put it at the time, “The court’s decision was based less on Yelp’s innocence in the common sense of the word and more on the fact that these businesses never had a ‘right’ to positive reviews in the first place. Yelp isn’t necessarily innocent — it’s just not guilty in a way the appeals court cares about.”

    As Courthouse News Service described the outcome of the case, “Yelp’s alleged conduct cannot be called extortion because its ‘manipulation of user reviews, assuming it occurred, was not wrongful use of economic fear, and, second, … business owners pled insufficient facts to make out a plausible claim that Yelp authored negative reviews of their businesses,’ the three-judge panel found.”

    While it was certainly a legal victory for Yelp, it didn’t go very far in improving the company’s reputation or easing accusations and suspicions.

    Yelp is also dealing with a class-action suit filed by shareholders who alleged the company sold over $81 million in stock while misleading them about the legitimacy of reviews.

    Botto Italian Bistro’s campaign probably isn’t doing a lot to help Yelp’s reviews look more legitimate. The campaign is alluded to quite a bit throughout the reviews currently residing on the restaurant’s Yelp page. The one that’s showing at the top as of the time of this writing even claims to have written an actual legit review only to have it deleted by Yelp. It says:

    Now that the restaurant has gained some attention from its campaign, it will be interesting to see if other businesses follow suit. It doesn’t make a business look very good online for those unaware of the situation, but if enough others started doing it too, it could be even worse for Yelp’s own reputation, and it seems like that would please quite a few disgruntled businesses.

    Something tells me another legal battle isn’t too far off.

    Was this a smart move from the restaurant, or is it just going to negatively impact it in the long run? Share your thoughts in the comments.

    Image via Yelp

  • Faye Grant’s Attorney Lashes Out At Stephen Collins Over Accusations Of Blackmail

    The controversy surrounding actor Stephen Collins and his alleged pedophilia has escalated with accusations that wife Faye Grant blackmailed him to get more money. Grant has lashed out at Collins’ camp through her lawyer, Martin Singer, who claims that the actor and his attorney Mark Vincent Kaplan are making “false and fabricated statements about Faye Grant to try to justify Collins’ conduct.”

    Kaplan is reportedly claiming that Grant repeatedly threatened Collins with the audio recording she made at one of their 2012 therapy sessions together, where Collins admitted he had sexually abused young girls. He supposedly accused Grant of threatening to leak the recording to media if Collins did not pay her “millions of dollars more than that to which she was legally entitled.”

    According to Daily Mail, Singer sent a letter to Kaplan on Friday threatening to take legal action for his comments. “It is malicious and outrageous that you would choose to spread defamatory lies accusing my client of supposedly engaging in extortion,” wrote Singer. “You are well aware of the fact that my client never used the tape at all in the dissolution proceedings. To the contrary, after your client refused to obtain treatment within a few months of the taping, my client gave the tapes to the NYPD and the LAPD.”

    Grant, 57, is also an actor and was married to Collins for 27 years before they divorced in 2012. It is believed that the secret audio recording she made of their therapy session in which Collins admitted his pedophilic tendencies was made in that same year.

    According to the New York Daily News, Grant had reached out in July 2012 to one of Collins’ victims after finding out about what he did. “I can only imagine the scars created from an adult behaving that way towards you,” Grant wrote in an e-mail to the woman. A source close to the NYPD told the publication that the victim was apparently a relative of Collins’.

  • Yelp ‘Extortion’ Suit Dismissed, But Suspicions Remain

    Yelp has emerged victorious from an extortion lawsuit, but the reasons why have done little to quell existing suspicions about its business practices.

    Various lawsuits have been filed against Yelp over the years, accusing the company of extorting small businesses by hiding positive reviews and showing negative ones in order to get businesses to pay for advertising. Beyond the lawsuits, there are many Internet comments alleging the same thing, and similar stories also told in the media.

    None of this has ever been proven, however, and like others before it, a class action suit in California has been dismissed. The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal from a lower court in the case of Levitt v. Yelp, citing a lack of evidence.

    Is the dismissal of this case sufficient to put accusations and suspicions to rest? Tell us what you think.

    Marketing Land shares the legal document:

     

    Yelp, of course, took to its blog to inform the world about the dismissal. Senior Director of Litigation Aaron Schur writes:

    For years, fringe commentators have accused Yelp of altering business ratings for money. Yelp has never done this and individuals making such claims are either misinformed, or more typically, have an axe to grind––whether businesses upset that Yelp will not remove reviews they don’t like, or unscrupulous internet marketing “experts” trying to make a buck off of honest business owners with dubious reputation management schemes.

    In 2010, a few businesses took these conspiracy theories to court and filed several class actions against Yelp — all of which were dismissed in Federal court. Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of these cases with their ruling in Levitt v. Yelp. Examining the businesses’ best facts after several attempts, the court found no extortion or any other wrongdoing by Yelp. The Court also dismissed as implausible some plaintiffs’ claims that Yelp authored negative reviews about them as part of a plot to obtain ad dollars. Instead, the Court noted that the facts only showed that the reviews were likely from actual customers, noting that “Yelp is a forum for consumers to review businesses, and huge numbers of consumers do just that.”

    We are obviously happy that the Court reached the right result, and saw through these thin attempts by a few businesses and their lawyers to disparage Yelp and draw attention away from their own occasional negative review. We at Yelp are moving on, and focusing on our core mission––connecting people with great local businesses.

    While Yelp obviously considers this a victory, some in the media have pointed out that the reason for the case’s dismissal doesn’t really prove that Yelp hasn’t engaged in some of the things it’s been accused of.

    As Nathaniel Mott at PandoDaily puts it, “Yelp’s extortion charges have been dropped, but that doesn’t mean the company’s innocent.”

    “Others have pointed out, however, that the court’s decision was based less on Yelp’s innocence in the common sense of the word and more on the fact that these businesses never had a ‘right’ to positive reviews in the first place,” he writes. “Yelp isn’t necessarily innocent — it’s just not guilty in a way the appeals court cares about.”

    Courthouse News Service reports:

    Yelp’s alleged conduct cannot be called extortion because its “manipulation of user reviews, assuming it occurred, was not wrongful use of economic fear, and, second, … business owners pled insufficient facts to make out a plausible claim that Yelp authored negative reviews of their businesses,” the three-judge panel found.Emphasis added.

    “In sum, to state a claim of economic extortion under both federal and California law, a litigant must demonstrate either that he had a pre-existing right to be free from the threatened harm, or that the defendant had no right to seek payment for the service offered,” wrote Judge Marsha Berzon for the three-judge appellate panel. “Any less stringent standard would transform a wide variety of legally acceptable business dealings into extortion.”

    Yelp also faces a class action suit from its own shareholders who have alleged that the sold over $81 million in stock while misleading them about the legitimacy of reviews.

    On that note, the company just issued a new round of Consumer Alerts, revealing that it busted some businesses bribing reviewers through messaging on Yelp itself. In another blog post, Yelp wrote:

    For example, imagine you were considering using Atticare, a home cleaning company in New Jersey, or JCA Mechanical Plumbing & Heating in New York City, each of whom were the subject of private messages through Yelp offering money or gift cards in exchange for reviews on Yelp. Or if you decided to buy a car from Hooman Nissan in Long Beach, CA, where an employee was caught sending messages to Yelp users offering Clippers tickets in exchange for a 5-star review and even requested including his name in each review. In Las Vegas, Yelp’s detective team found that more than 50 reviews for towing company AAA Anytime INC came from the same IP address, indicating that someone may have been trying to goose their rating. And what’s worse, this is the third time we have warned this particular company about their behavior with a Consumer Alert. Those 50+ new reviews have been submitted since their last alert in February of this year.

    If nothing else, this seems to suggest that Consumer Alerts do little to deter businesses from engaging in this kind of behavior. Yelp said itself that this was the third time one business was slapped with an Alert, and that it found over 50 new questionable reviews just since February. It might, however, deter businesses from using Yelp’s messaging to try to get fake reviews.

    Here’s one of those “private” messages Yelp shared on its blog:

     

     

    “These businesses may actually be providing great products and services, but that’s really what their Yelp rating should be based on, not fake reviews,” writes Yelp’s Rachel Walker. “That’s why Yelp goes to such lengths to protect consumers from this behavior in the first place and inform them of it as well. The good news is that Yelp’s team caught this behavior. We just think consumers have the right to know what’s happening behind the scenes when deciding what businesses to patronize.”

    Interestingly, Union Street Guest House managed to escape any consumer alerts in this round. As you may recall, last month the hotel came under fire after it was discovered that it had a policy to charge wedding parties for any negative reviews left by guests in attendance.

    A Yelp spokesperson told WebProNews at the time, “For 10 years, Yelp has existed as a platform to alert consumers of bad business behavior such as this.”

    To our knowledge the hotel’s Yelp page has never carried one of Yelp’s official consumer alerts, though Yelp did remove a number of negative reviews that were left by people who learned about the hotel’s policy and retaliated. There are still plenty of negative reviews on the hotel’s page, including those mentioning the controversial policy. One even makes a point to say in the review that they’re using a 2nd Yelp account to leave the comments.

    Do you believe Yelp holds positive reviews hostage to get businesses to advertise? Do you believe they misled shareholders about review legitimacy? Share your thoughts in the comments.

    Image via Yelp (Flickr)

  • ‘Millionaire Matchmaker’ Bachelor Arrested For Extortion

    Adam Winters who appeared in an episode of Bravo’s Millionaire Matchmaker, has been arrested for purportedly extorting $5 million from a nuclear facility.

    In a February episode of Millionaire Matchmaker, Winters was described as a millionaire CEO from Beverly Hills. He is a Tennessee native who relocated to Los Angeles after establishing a shipping company. According to reports, the 25-year-old CEO is now broke and cannot even afford to pay for a lawyer.

    Winters was arrested on Friday for attempting to extort money by threatening to expose documents that he claimed contain negligent procedures at a nuclear facility located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Based on the complaint, Winters went after the company that operates the Y-12 National Security Complex, which is in charge of manufacturing and maintaining parts for nuclear weapons.

    In a May 8 email addressed to the company, Winters allegedly wrote that he possessed more 1,200 slides that consist of “documentation on how much radiation was used on animals and contamination of plants.” Winters ended the email by saying “You have 48 hours to respond before they go to auction. Contact info is below.”

    Upon learning of the email, DOE agents went undercover to investigate the issue. One of the agents spoke to Winters on the phone and Winters talked about a former lawsuit wherein residents claimed that pollution from Oak Ridge was damaging their properties.

    On May 20, Winters met an undercover agent and showed him some of the slides. Winters said that he did not know how much they were worth. “It ain’t worth leaking them out. It’s not worth the headache. I would rather give them to you and be done with it,” he said. Afterwards, he asked for $5 million which he later reduced to $2.5 million after the undercover agent told him his original asking price was “not feasible.” He then gave his bank information to the agent.

    Winters is scheduled to appear in court for a preliminary hearing on June 6.

    Image via YouTube

  • Justin Bieber Caught Telling Yet Another N-Word Joke

    Justin Bieber seems to be making headlines for the wrong reasons…again. Another video of Bieber has surfaced, and this time, he is shown singing a parody of his own song entitled “One Less Lonely Girl.”

    In the video, Bieber sang about the KKK. He replaced the lyrics of his song, and sang, “If I kill you/ I’ll be part of the KKK. There’ll be one less lonely n****.” The video was said to be taken when The Biebs was just 14 years old.

    “There’ll Be One Less Lonely N—–” By Justin Bieber 

    According to reports, the video has already been viewed 203 million times on YouTube. Just this week, another video came out with Bieber telling a racist joke. Bieber apologized and said, “I’m very sorry. I take all my friendships with people of all cultures very seriously and I apologize for offending or hurting anyone with my childish and inexcusable behavior.”

    In his statement, Bieber also said that at the time the video was taken, he didn’t realize that what he said wasn’t funny and that his actions were signs of ignorance. “Now that these mistakes from the past have become public I need to apologize again to all of those who I have offended.”

    In this video, Justin Bieber tells us why black people are afraid of chainsaws.

    Bieber’s camp told TMZ that the Bieber wanted the video out in the public “because he wants to own what he did.”

    Bieber also claimed that people have been trying to extort him over videos that have been recently leaked. He stands firm and says that he will not be shaken and he wants people to see the videos, so that he can accept responsibility for his actions.

    Ever since the videos leaked, Bieber has been facing backlash from his fans. A source close to TMZ said, “People need to see this. Normal kids in society do not make these kind of jokes. He is protected by a network of staff, but the camera doesn’t lie.”

    Image via YouTube

  • Holly Ann Grigsby Pleads Guilty for Killing Spree Involvement

    Holly Ann Grigsby pleaded guilty on Tuesday to taking part in a campaign that involved the kidnapping, robbing and murdering of four victims in three states–one of which was Oregon. She did tell the judge, however, that although she was guilty it wasn’t of killing any of the victims. She reiterated that she didn’t kill anyone.

    Grigsby was arrested for the heinous crimes back in 2011, along with David “Joey” Pederson. Both were charged in 2012 with 14 counts in a federal indictment that said they were white supremacists acting in a campaign to kill Jewish people. The two were initially going to be tried together. Now only Pederson will go to trial in July.

    Tuesday’s plea hearing marked Holly Ann Grigsby’s first court appearance without David Pederson. Her plea deal in exchange for pleading guilty to a count of racketeering includes a life sentence. She will spend the rest of her life in prison without the fear of being prosecuted by any other state or federal authorities with regard to this case.

    According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Jane Shoemaker, Holly Ann Grigsby and David Pederson “murdered first Pedersen’s father, David “Red” Pedersen, accusing him of being a child molester, then his stepmother, Leslie DeeDee Pedersen as a “supporter” of that activity.”

    Following the arrest Grigsby told a newspaper reporter that she had killed DeeDee Pederson because “white supremacists believe that men should not murder women.” She took back that statement in court Tuesday, however, claiming she didn’t murder DeeDee Pederson.

    Senior Judge Ancer Haggerty asked Grigsby after she said, “Yes, I aided in the commission.”

    “Did you stab her to death?”

    “No,” Grigsby replied.

    Did the state want David Pederson much more than they wanted Holly Ann Grigsby? It definitely sounds like behind closed doors she may have been offered a plea deal to turn on Pederson. It sounds like she played huge roles in these murders, however.

    There were more victims, too. Following the murders of the Pedersons, David Pederson and Holly Ann Grigsby stole Red Pederson’s Jeep but eventually dumped it over an embankment. Next they enlisted the help of a friend to drive them to Newport. It was there they hitched a ride with a 19-year-old named Cody Faye Myers. When they tried to hijack his car, he put up a fight. Pederson then shot him in the head. His tragic, senseless death is detailed in the video clip above.

    Pederson and Grigsby then traveled in Myers’ car to Eureka, California, where they dumped his car. Then they hitched a ride with Reginald Alan Clark, who they allegedly also kidnapped and murdered. Clark was African-American and Grigsby was later heard saying they had “killed a negro degenerate.”

    Does Holly Ann Grigsby deserve the plea deal she got? Should she be put through the ringer the same way David Pederson will be in July?

    Holly Ann Grigsby will be officially sentenced at a hearing in June.

    Image via YouTube

  • More Unproven Yelp ‘Extortion’ Accusations Publicized

    The story has been going on for quite some time. Businesses accuse Yelp of “extortion” or holding their positive reviews hostage unless they spend advertising money, and Yelp denies it vehemently, citing a lack of evidence and research appearing to contradict it.

    But the story isn’t going away, as more accusations make their way to the public eye.

    Has Yelp sufficiently proven that such accusations are unsubstantiated? Tell us what you think.

    Last week, the Seattle Times ran a guest column by Terry Thomas, a small business owner who has taught business ethics at Seattle University and the University of Washington.

    “Shortly after our company began receiving positive reviews on Yelp, an energetic Yelp salesman called me, congratulating me on our company’s online reviews, and offering to help boost our Internet presence with one of several of Yelp’s marketing programs,” he wrote. “Once I was finally able to get him to answer my question about what the price would be, I was staggered: $8,400 per year for their midlevel program. I politely declined.”

    After that, Thomas claimed his positive reviews began to be filtered or “buried deep” within the site and “difficult to access.” Only positive reviews had been moved, he said. The more negative reviews moved up the page and were featured more prominently.

    It’s pretty much the same story we’ve been hearing for a long time. One business owner even shared it with Judge Milian on The People’s Court:

    Last May, Yelp defended itself after similar accusations from various business owners were reported by The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.

    “Some business owners have even gone so far as to take these accusations to court, but their claims keep getting dismissed for lack of any fact-based evidence,” blogged Yelp’s VP Communications & Public Affairs, Vince Sollitto, at the time.

    He pointed to research finding no connection between advertising and Yelp’s automated filtering.

    With the data set employed, a Harvard Business School study found that “none of the advertise interaction effects are statistically significant,” and that “neither 1- nor 5-star reviews were significantly more or less likely to be filtered for businesses that were advertising on Yelp at the time we collected our dataset.”

    It went on to conclude, “Yelp’s current implementation of the filtering algorithm does not treat advertisers’ reviews in a manner different to non-advertisers’ reviews. While we have no direct knowledge of how Yelp’s filtering algorithm works, the lack of filtering biases associated with advertising increases our confidence in using filtered reviews as an unbiased, albeit imperfect, proxy for fake reviews.”

    You can find the report in its entirety here. Find section 3.4 for more details on the methodology.

    “A simple Google search debunks the conspiracy,” Sollitto wrote. “Want to see if businesses that advertise on Yelp really do get ‘special treatment?’ Feel free to do your own version of a simple Google test like this [site:yelp.com/biz ‘Yelp sponsor’ AND ‘rude staff’] by inserting your own negative phrases in the last set of quotation marks. The words ‘Yelp Sponsor’ only appear on pages of advertisers, which begs the question: if these Yelp advertisers get a special ‘Delete’ button for negative reviews, why in the world aren’t they using it? (Hint: because it doesn’t exist.) Nor is there any rational incentive for a Yelp sales team member to jeopardize his or her career by pitching a product that can’t be delivered because it doesn’t exist.”

    Thomas says he’s not buying Yelp’s defense, and notes that many other small business owners who have filed a class-action lawsuit against the company don’t either. The case was dismissed, but is awaiting a decision in appeals court.

    His article points to an NBC report from November about a dentist who claimed his negative reviews had been removed when he paid to advertise with the company, but reappeared when he told the company he no longer wanted to advertise.

    Following Thomas’ article, The Seattle Times posted a letter to the editor from someone named Nete Olsen, who claimed, “I’ve also been extorted by the online reviews site,” and that the article “puts into words the exact experience that our business has gone through with the online review website.”

    This week, the Times published another letter to the editor from Sollitto saying that both Thomas’ piece and Olsen’s letter “rehash a conspiracy theory that lacks evidence (see: Woozle effect).” He noted the Harvard study again.

    “Yelp does not extort small businesses,” he continued. “We have been transparent with the fact that we do not recommend every review that is submitted. Why might a review not be recommended? It might be a fake, an unhelpful rant or rave, a review that the business owner asked a customer to write, or, simply, a review that was posted by someone we don’t know much about.”

    “Let’s spend a moment on that last one,” he added. “We feel the most useful reviews come from active members of the Yelp community — those who regularly return to the site to share their opinions, who engage with other members of the community and share more information about themselves. After all, whose opinion would you trust more: a friend who you know is an expert in that given area, or a faceless stranger just shouting out a drive-by suggestion?”

    Jeremy Stoppelman

    Image via Jeremy Stoppelman (Twitter)

    Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman addressed the topic in a reddit AMA in November, saying, “Despite the ‘Yelp extorts’ conspiracy meme, there’s never been a shred of actual ‘smoking gun’ evidence (phone call recording, email, etc.) to back up the claims.”

    As far as we know, he’s right. We’ve not seen any real hard evidence. Still, the accusations continue to fly, and businesses even go to Yelp events to voice their frustration.

    Yelp and the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) have a new online reviews initiative, which will see even more events in various cities throughout the country this year, leading up to Small Business Week in May. We’d imagine that Yelp will face a few more unhappy businesses.

    In a couple weeks, Yelp will release its Q4 and full year 2013 financial results, and will no doubt provide some stats on reviews and users. On the last one, they announced a 68% year-over-year increase in revenue and 42% year-over-year growth in cumulative reviews.

    The extortion accusations are only one of the controversies Yelp continues to face. It also continues to battle fake reviews with “sting operations.” The company recently revealed that it has caught nearly 300 businesses engaging in fake reviews, resulting in their business pages displaying Yelp’s consumer alert messages.

    Do you believe the “extortion meme” is a baseless conspiracy theory or do you think there’s a legitimate reason these accusations continue to fly? Share your thoughts in the comments.

    Lead image via Yelp

  • Woman Receives $3,500 Fine for Negative Review

    The next time you place an order online, make sure you read the fine print. According to KUTV.com, a woman from Utah left a negative review for a business online and was later told she would have to pay a $3,500 fine for posting the review. Otherwise, the company threatened to report a delinquency to the credit bureaus, which would negatively impact her credit score. Well, she didn’t pay up and the company did report the delinquency, which caused Jen Palmer and her husband to have trouble when applying for a car loan.

    Back in 2008, Palmer’s husband purchased some items for her from Kleargear.com. The Palmers never received the items, nor did they ever hear anything from the company, so they had PayPal cancel the transaction and refund their money. Considering that the items were purchased as Christmas gifts, the Palmers were a little ticked off, understandably. Jen Palmer decided to leave a negative review on RipoffReport.com to make other consumers aware of her experience.

    “There is absolutely no way to get in touch with a physical human being,” Palmer’s review said. There are also some other reviews on RipoffReport.com that complain of not receiving items, so the Palmers weren’t the only ones to have such issues with the company. Fast forward three years–Palmer’s husband received an email from Kleargear.com telling him to remove the review or face a fine. According to Kleargear, the Palmers violated a clause in the sale agreement by posting the review:

    In an effort to ensure fair and honest public feedback, and to prevent the publishing of libelous content in any form, your acceptance of this sales contract prohibits you from taking any action that negatively impacts KlearGear.com, its reputation, products, services, management or employees.

    Should you violate this clause, as determined by KlearGear.com in its sole discretion, you will be provided a seventy-two (72) hour opportunity to retract the content in question. If the content remains, in whole or in part, you will immediately be billed $3,500.00 USD for legal fees and court costs until such complete costs are determined in litigation. Should these charges remain unpaid for 30 calendar days from the billing date, your unpaid invoice will be forwarded to our third party collection firm and will be reported to consumer credit reporting agencies until paid.

    Wow. So basically, it doesn’t matter how terrible the company’s service or product is or whether you even receive the items you purchase–you can’t say one negative word about it, or you’ll owe the company a pile of money.

    The Palmers say they never saw the clause. “This is fraud,” Jen Palmer said. “They’re blackmailing us for telling the truth.”

    So, what’s next for the Palmers? Now that their credit score is messed up, they’re hoping to appeal the delinquency with the credit bureaus. As ludicrous as the delinquency is, they’re hoping that they can get it removed, but that isn’t guaranteed. Since the Palmers don’t have money for a lawyer, they’re pretty much on their own unless someone steps up to help them now that their story is out there.

    [Image via YouTube]

  • Miss Teen USA: ‘SEXtortionist’ Pleads Guilty

    NBC News reports that a computer science student pleaded guilty today to three counts of extortion and one count of unauthorized access into Miss Teen USA and other young women’s computers. Charges were brought against the hacker because he allegedly threatened to  post nude photographs of the women online.

    The 19-year-old Jared James Abrahams of Temecula, California, was released on bond until his sentencing, which is scheduled for March 17th, 2014. At the hearing, Abrahams is expected to enter a guilty plea, defense attorney Alan Eisner said. The teenager faces possible imprisonment of up to 11 years and fines amounting to $1 million.

    Abrahams is alleged to have hacked into Cassidy Wolf’s computer as well as that of of seven other women from various states and counties, authorities said.  Miss Cassidy Wolf is the current Miss Teen USA. For four years she attended the same school as Abrahams in Temecula, just southeast of Los Angeles, and graduated in 2012.

    A plea statement filed last month gives details from last year until June of this year. The computer science student hacked into computers,  social media accounts, and emails accounts belonging to the victims. He was then able to control webcams and surreptitiously photograph the unsuspecting women, the FBI reported. Abraham was said to have sent anonymous emails to the victims,  informing them that he was in possession of their nude photos and would publish them online if they failed to send him additional pictures or undress for him. He promised to destroy the images only if they complied with his demands.

    Wolf did not comply with Abraham’s demands and called the investigators after receiving threatening emails containing her nude photos. However, according to police, at least two of the other victims went along with his demands.

    A Florida man accused of employing similar tactics was sentenced to ten years in prison for hacking into Scarlett Johansson and Christina Aguilera’s online accounts, and publicly revealing their nude photos.

    (main photo via YouTube.com)

  • Whitney Houston FBI Report Details Extortion Scheme

    In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has released a 128-page report into the life of singer Whitney Houston.

    According to the Detroit Free Press, the report was part of an FBI extortion case that was closed before any charges were filed. The document shows that Houston was blackmailed in 1992, with a letter from a woman stating that details of her private life would be revealed if $100,000, and later $250,000 were not paid.

    Houston had told the FBI that the woman was “a friend.” Houston’s father, John Houston, later sent the woman a “confidentiality agreement” and paid her an amount of money which was redacted in the FBI document.

    The document also contains letters from adoring fans, some of which were of interest to the FBI because the agency was afraid certain fans might hurt someone because of their obsession. FBI agents were compelled to interview several of these obsessive fans, once going as far as Brussels, Belgium. In the cases detailed, these fans were determined to not have broken the law and did not appear to have actual plans for hurting anyone or extorting Houston.

    Houston died just over one year ago, on February 11, 2012. She was found unconscious in a bathtub in her room at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. The cause of death was later determined to be an accidental drowning related to heavy drug use.

  • Natalee Holloway Suspect To Be Extradited To U.S.

    Joran Van Der Sloot, the prime suspect in the disappearance of American Natalee Holloway in Aruba in 2005, will soon be extradited to the U.S. to face charges of extortion. He is currently in Peru serving 28 years for the 2010 murder of Stephany Flores, who was stabbed to death in his hotel room. Van Der Sloot confessed to the murder as well as robbery, saying he took cash and the victim’s car in which to escape.

    The 24-year old was the last person to see Natalee Holloway alive and told authorities he would lead them to her body and reveal how she died in exchange for $250,000. He was allegedly given $25,000 by Holloway’s mother, Beth, which he used to travel without revealing any of the promised information. He faces a sentence of 25 years if found guilty of extortion, and the extradition will commence within the next few months.

    But some think the U.S. courts want Van Der Sloot here in the states so that a trial can be held regarding Holloway’s death, which will be difficult since her body has never been found. She has, however, been declared legally dead, and officials believe Van Der Sloot murdered Stephany Flores because she found incriminating evidence on his computer.

    “The key to that is that the U.S. has jurisdiction over anybody, anywhere in the world, who kills or injures a U.S. citizen,” said Michael Griffith, senior partner for the International Legal Defense Council.

    On Van Der Sloot’s future, his Peruvian attorney, Maximo Altez, said, “I think he will be extradited within the next three months. He will go to trial in the United States. Once he is sentenced, he will return to Peru to finish serving his 28 years, and then go back to the States to serve whatever sentence he gets there.”

  • Teen Tries to Blackmail Russian Billionaire

    A Russian SWAT team recently stormed the house where a 17-year-old student who was living with his mom, to grab his laptop, after linking the computer to repeated murder-for-hire related extortion attempts.

    The teen had allegedly attempted to blackmail Russian businessman Suleiman Kerimov, who is worth roughly $7.8 billion, by sending him emails claiming that he was a hitman ordered to kill the oligarch, but would stop with the killing for $10 million. Kerimov, #146 of Forbes world’s richest, wasn’t playing around, and apparently rallied a task force from Moscow to fly in to St. Petersburg to drop in on the teen at 6 AM last Tuesday. In Russia, one has to have a bit of pull to command this sort of operation, as the government doesn’t mobilize in regards to all crimes. The kid had recently tried to threaten St. Petersburg City Hall’s energy department chief Vladislav Petrov, who was able to track his IP, but was not in the position to rally law enforcement to do anything about it, besides set up a bit of surveillance. When Kerimov received the threats, the operation against the teen became fully orchestrated from the Moscow headquarters, which is said to be a rarity.

    While cybercrime in Russia is commonplace, it would seem that one runs into problems if Russian, while trying to extort other Russians. It is evident that after the teen began threatening Kerimov, the billionaire likely got into contact with “someone equal to him in status. It must have been either head of the Federal Security Service, Alexander Bortnikov, or the Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliev.”

    Either way, the teen, who apparently had no idea what he was doing, was deemed to never have been an actual threat. After confessing to the entire thing, he was charged with extortion, and claimed that he actually thought he was going to get the money. He is currently under house arrest – his offense carries up to four years in a Russian prison.