Jeweler Forged Judge's Signature To Force Google To Kill Negative Reviews (thedailybeast.com)

A sapphire salesman is facing jail time for forging a judge's signature in a case involving Google. Kelly Weill from The Daily Beast reports: Michael Arnstein is the third-generation owner of the Natural Sapphire Company, a Manhattan-based jewelry business. After a falling-out with a former business partner, Arnstein's company amassed dozens of negative reviews, which featured prominently in the Natural Sapphire Company's Google search results. Arnstein sued the former business partner in 2011, accusing him of writing defamatory negative reviews, and a judge ordered the partner to delete 54 of the negative comments. But some negative reviews remained, even after the court order. So Arnstein copied the judge's signature and forged new court orders of his own, demanding that Google scrub negative reviews from his company's search results, Arnstein admitted in a guilty plea on Friday.

Comments

What could possibly go wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

Forging the signature of a judge to circumvent the checks and balances of the legal system. What a simple idea. There's absolutely no way that that could go wrong - after all, court orders aren't logged in a central system; the recipient of the order can't check back with the court to verify it; and it couldn't possibly come back upon the forger.

Right? Right?

Negative brand equity

[ShanghaiBill]

When a company has a bad reputation, and customers avoid it, it has negative brand equity, and the brand is worth less than nothing. The simple and obvious solution is to change the name of the business, or start a new business and transfer the assets. This would have likely been far cheaper than paying legal expenses and then slowly rebuilding the brand upward from Death Valley.

Is there a problem here?

[93 Escort Wagon]

The guy did something illegal and is now going to jail. To my mind, the system worked as it’s supposed to in this case.

Re:Is there a problem here?

[swillden]

The guy did something illegal and is now going to jail. To my mind, the system worked as it’s supposed to in this case.

Does it have to be a problem for it to be interesting?

Don't Mess With Judges

[SeattleLawGuy]

Yes, bad reviews are terrible for a business, and often unfair. Lawsuits are usually the wrong way to respond to those, and positive reviews from satisfied customers are usually a great way to respond to those--but lawsuits are an option if someone keeps making illegitimate complaints and it hurts your business enough, or if someone is using them to harass your employees, for example.

You know what's not an option?

Forging court orders.