Illegal Website using Paypal

louloizides
Contributor
Contributor

My wife was frantic the other day - she typed her name in Google and saw that one of the top 5 results was from a site, http://court-record-management.com. I'm not going to put the exact link to her page, but it was for a normal parking ticket even though the site seemed to make it look like it was a criminal offense. Then the site has a PayPal link where someone can pay $30 to have their record removed. (Note that the person running the site has several other similar scams going on such as mugshot-catalog.com)

 

The site has a disclaimer where it seems to believe that this action is legal because the records are public. I know this is false. These records when on state and county websites always take provisions to make sure they're public but not indexed by search engines (using meta tags in the html source or a norobots file). In addition, government websites always make it very clear that parking tickets are minor infractions (the state site says on it "this is not a criminal offense"). Furthermore, I'm a web developer and after examining the html on the pages it's extremely clear that the site is designed with search engine optimization in mind. The creator wants people searching for these names to see their records to try and get people to pay the $30.

 

By taking these court records out of that non-search engine indexed space, moving them into Google, making an effort to give the pages a high rank, and asking for money to remove the records this is clear extortion according to any extortion law. For instance, I live in Wisconsin. The law here states:

 

943.31  Threats to communicate derogatory information. Whoever threatens to communicate to anyone information, whether true or false, which would injure the reputation of the threatened person or another unless the threatened person transfers property to a person known not to be entitled to it is guilty of a Class I felony.

 

There is no distinction in the law between public and private information - only communicating information and asking for money. Which is exactly what's going on here.

 

I can't even imagine how much money this guy is making anonymously and illegaly through PayPal. It's disgusting. I checked the whois info on the site and the registrar, rebel.com is providing anonymity to the person operating it. I contacted the registrar to ask them to cancel their anonymizer service for the site and they said they wouldn't do so without a legal order (although I tend to believe that by protecting someone who's engaging in illegal activity, they're not immune to legal action themselves because of their own policy). So that settled it for me. I will start a legal case and I asked my wife to absolutely not pay the $30 out of prinicple. Or the $50 they're asking to remove the record from the website and Google (which I don't even see how they could do). The site has to be shut down.

 

I've already contacted a few lawyers, but I know legal action will take time. In the meantime, I'm hoping PayPal will see what's going on and stop enabling this person. How can I report this to the right people there?

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snowshoe
Frequent Advisor
Frequent Advisor

 One method is to email PayPal's AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) Compliance Department at:

 

aupviolations @ paypal.com

 

(had to include some extra spaces in the address in order to post)

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CynthiaLeeMcGui
Contributor
Contributor

@louloizides wrote:

Thanks for the input. I did some research.

 

  • All of his sites are hosted through servers at singlehop.com in Chicago (so our friend is probably in the US).
  • The site is registered through rebel.com, which is also providing him with an anonymous Whois contact.

 

Paypal said they'd start an investigation but wouldn't give me any more info so who knows. I've filed several consumer protection complaints with Federal and State authorities, including one with my state (where it clearly violates the law here). And I've scheduled meetings with a couple of different lawyers for legal action.

 

What drives me nuts about all of this is how the site violates the policies of the rebel.com anonymization service and singlehop's AUP, but neither business even considered shutting it down. If a customer does something illegal with someone's service, and they're aware of it, aren't they also liable? You can't just play dumb. It's like selling someone a gun when they tell you "I'm going to go rob a bank with this" - at that point you can't say you didn't know. But I guess we'll find out! I'm really tired of all of this.



I can understand that. I've had problems with removing sites from the internet as well.

Have you reported it to the F.B.I. & the F.C.C.? 

I wonder if that would help too.

The F.B.I., has a section, where people can report internet fraud as well. 

I've done that too, myself. 

I really hope you guys can get help on this, and shut this creep down.

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snowshoe
Frequent Advisor
Frequent Advisor

 One method is to email PayPal's AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) Compliance Department at:

 

aupviolations @ paypal.com

 

(had to include some extra spaces in the address in order to post)

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annie1025
New Community Member

Max's Club website is another fraudulent web site working through PAYPAL.  I purchased a Ninja Blender for $135 from them only to realize this person had stolen a credit card and used it to buy a Ninja from Lowe's and sent to me.  Lowe's demanded return of the item.  Lowe's instructed us to report this to our local police.  We followed their instructions and now the police have it in their hands.  PALPAL has just informed us they will not refund our money.  The Resolution Center does not have a section online to report this kind of fraud.  BEWARE!  Do not purchase from this company because PAYPAL will not refund for item.  Why didn't PayPal check with the police to see the truth?  Now we will be suspicious of any company that sells through PAYPAL.

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PaperCutPro
Contributor
Contributor

Yes, there's no doubt that court-record-management.com is ilegal. What's to stop any other person from using one of the many "site sucking" apps out there to copy the site and re-post it on the web using their own PayPal account to take the extortion to another level?

 

PayPal needs to cut this guy off, but some government agency (I'm guessing) needs to prosecute also. Why should you spend your dollar on legal fees? This is a serious crime of extortion against every US Citizen who's had to pay a fine or make a court appearance in at least the past 4 years from what I've seen.

 

I'm surprised that PayPal has allowed this to continue.

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CynthiaLeeMcGui
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,I had been searching for the way to cancel a pending deposit I made from my paypal account, to my bank account, and found this thread. ngI followed the link you provided in your post regarding this illegal website, and just scrolled down to the bottom, looking for the name of the .com that this site is registered to. Found nothing but this:

 

Privacy Policy for Court-Record-Management.com

 

If you require any more information or have any questions about our privacy policy, please feel free to contact us by email at support @court-record-management. com.

 

At Court-Record-Management.com, the privacy of our visitors is of extreme importance to us. This privacy policy document outlines the types of personal information is received and collected by Court-Record-Management.com and how it is used.

 

Log Files

Like many other Web sites, Court-Record-Management.com makes use of log files. The information inside the log files includes internet protocol ( IP ) addresses, type of browser, Internet Service Provider ( ISP ), date/time stamp, referring/exit pages, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track users movement around the site, and gather demographic information. IP addresses, and other such information are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable.

 

Cookies and Web Beacons

Court-Record-Management.com does use cookies to store information about visitors preferences, record user-specific information on which pages the user access or visit, customize Web page content based on visitors browser type or other information that the visitor sends via their browser.

 

If you wish to disable cookies, you may do so through your individual browser options. More detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers can be found at the browsers' respective websites.

Thank you, Eric

I hope this helps you and your wife. Apparently, his name is Eric ?

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louloizides
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for the input. I did some research.

 

  • All of his sites are hosted through servers at singlehop.com in Chicago (so our friend is probably in the US).
  • The site is registered through rebel.com, which is also providing him with an anonymous Whois contact.

 

Paypal said they'd start an investigation but wouldn't give me any more info so who knows. I've filed several consumer protection complaints with Federal and State authorities, including one with my state (where it clearly violates the law here). And I've scheduled meetings with a couple of different lawyers for legal action.

 

What drives me nuts about all of this is how the site violates the policies of the rebel.com anonymization service and singlehop's AUP, but neither business even considered shutting it down. If a customer does something illegal with someone's service, and they're aware of it, aren't they also liable? You can't just play dumb. It's like selling someone a gun when they tell you "I'm going to go rob a bank with this" - at that point you can't say you didn't know. But I guess we'll find out! I'm really tired of all of this.

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CynthiaLeeMcGui
Contributor
Contributor

I can understand that. I've had problems with removing sites from the internet as well.

Have you reported it to the F.B.I. & the F.C.C.? 

I wonder if that would help too.

The F.B.I., has a section, where people can report internet fraud as well. 

I've done that too, myself. 

I really hope you guys can get help on this, and shut this creep down.

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Solved

CynthiaLeeMcGui
Contributor
Contributor

@louloizides wrote:

Thanks for the input. I did some research.

 

  • All of his sites are hosted through servers at singlehop.com in Chicago (so our friend is probably in the US).
  • The site is registered through rebel.com, which is also providing him with an anonymous Whois contact.

 

Paypal said they'd start an investigation but wouldn't give me any more info so who knows. I've filed several consumer protection complaints with Federal and State authorities, including one with my state (where it clearly violates the law here). And I've scheduled meetings with a couple of different lawyers for legal action.

 

What drives me nuts about all of this is how the site violates the policies of the rebel.com anonymization service and singlehop's AUP, but neither business even considered shutting it down. If a customer does something illegal with someone's service, and they're aware of it, aren't they also liable? You can't just play dumb. It's like selling someone a gun when they tell you "I'm going to go rob a bank with this" - at that point you can't say you didn't know. But I guess we'll find out! I'm really tired of all of this.



I can understand that. I've had problems with removing sites from the internet as well.

Have you reported it to the F.B.I. & the F.C.C.? 

I wonder if that would help too.

The F.B.I., has a section, where people can report internet fraud as well. 

I've done that too, myself. 

I really hope you guys can get help on this, and shut this creep down.

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louloizides
Contributor
Contributor

I had the FCC, but didn't think of the FBI. Done - thanks for the tip.

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Humble
Member
Member
Any update on this issue? PayPal said they will look into it but is this legal?
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