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Malicious Online Retailer Ordered Held Without Bail
Zaphod_85 writes "You may remember the New York Times story from a couple of weeks ago regarding Vitaly Borker, an online retailer intentionally harassing customers in order to gain linking points in Google's PageRank algorithm. Now, not only has Google altered their algorithm in order to prevent this tactic from being effective (Though according to Katherine Noyes at PCWorld, this tactic may never actually have been benefiting the website in the first place), Now Mr. Borker has the Feds to deal with. He is being charged with cyberstalking, wire fraud, mail fraud, and making interstate threats, and faces up to 50 years in prison if convicted on all counts. Given his disturbing behavior that brought about the charges, a federal judge has ordered he be held without bail while he awaits trial."
This would be why trolling doesn't tend to work as well in real life, when there are real-life consequences, as it does on the internet when there's little chance (absent clever data-wrangling techniques and a little stalking) of your words coming back to bite you.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
Really? The NYT article described it as "too graphic and violent to print in a newspaper", which hardly sounds like "carefully worded". Besides, "taking a picture of someone's home and sending them a message saying 'I'M WATCHING YOU'" is not only a verbal threat, but one involving an action. Frankly, I'm surprised it took two years to arrest this guy - if he tried it on me, I would have filed a police report within minutes.
And that still does nothing for the identity theft charges or the fraud. Hell, maybe we can get him on ACTA or something for selling counterfeits.
With 10 libertarians you would have 10 lines each 1 libertarian deep
>> What troubled me about Mr. Borkers story more than anything is how easily he circumvented the various red-flag tripwires that credit card companies allegedly employ.
More than that, what took it so long to nail him? There has been over 200 complaints filed with FTC against him, but it had to be reported by NYT for the US attorney to wake up?
I don't think I'd call this guy just trolling.
On the internet even from the start trolling meant just something crafted to create as many responses as possible, rather than rape threats. As the dictum went, "Confucius say: successful troll is master baiter" ;) Really, it didn't even have to be offensive or explicit or illegal. It could be something as indirect as asking which Linux distro has IE.
And in the meantime it's largely become a synonym with "someone saying something I disagree with." Someone calling one's pet conspiracy theory a conspiracy theory? Someone else posting a bit of textbook science that contradicts one's ID beliefs? Someone else disagreeing that <insert game flop> is TEH GRATEST GAME EVAR? Someone else disagreed in another thread entirely? Well, they must be trolls and only saying that to get attention ;) But seriously, I've even seen textbook physics quotes modded as troll or overrated. It's just become the blanket excuse to not use one's brains and hang on to some pet dogma or half-truth: anyone disagreeing must be just trolling for attention.
What this guy did is a bit beyond mere trolling. And I suspect that even the trolling excuse was just an excuse. Threatening to rape someone asking for a refund and mailing them photos of their home with texts like "I'M WATCHING YOU" and whatnot, is the kind of asshattery even most Internet trolls would distance themselves from very quickly. That's already way beyond just seeking attention.
If anything, this just gives the lie to the old marketing canard that all exposure is good, and there is no such thing as bad publicity. I've seen it repeated in so many places, that it's not even funny. It turns out that, yes, there is bad publicity. Not only it can cross into being flat out illegal, but there's a very good case to be made that all that Google rank via people talking about how badly he treats customers, actually didn't benefit him. Getting mind-share as a dangerously deranged asshat to avoid can be just that: it just moves one from an unknown company to being the well known asshat company to avoid.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Every electronics/camera store in Brooklyn has been doing this for decades. They are all scammers and conartists.
Shanties and warehouses, or fake addresses, but websites with greymarket and fake products.
Examples of the stores im talking about:
http://donwiss.com/pictures/BrooklynStores/
The FTC has done nothing about it.
People place products thinking they can get it cheaper, and then when they talk to the store the sales people scream and cuss at them if they don't buy addons they "must" buy (like power cords and batteries).
For every 1 reputable company based in NYC and NJ there are hundreds which are ran y petty criminals.
Modded funny. Okay, but perhaps the moderators have forgotten the case of Norman Henry Hunt. Mr. Hunt was convicted of mail fraud (phony computer parts). He escaped from prison, was caught and convicted again (more mail fraud, plus the escape). After the second conviction, he was found to be running a mail order business out of a P.O. Box at NNCC. His ads represented NNCC as the Northern Nevada Computing Center; it was actually the Northern Nevada *Correctional* Center.