| To: Francois Goelo who wrote (10156) | 5/4/2006 5:39:32 PM | | From: StockDung | | | | Yahoo! Sued for Alleged ‘Typosquatting’ and Click Fraud
Thu, 04 May 2006 02:52:32 -0700 PDT
by Carly Zander
NEWARK, NJ /Advertising Industry Newswire/—In a class action lawsuit brought this week against Yahoo! and its pay-per-click (PPC) unit Overture Services, Inc., plaintiff Crafts by Veronica, of Newark, NJ claims that the search portal and others have engaged in click fraud against advertisers who pay to display ads in relation to search content.
The complaint alleges that “by placing ads into illegal platforms such as spyware programs, [Yahoo] wrongfully collected high search engine advertising fees for ads that are actually shown in contexts that are worth far less, if anything. It is well known that spyware advertising is much cheaper than search engine advertising.”
The complaint continues: “But when Defendants and their syndication partners place class members’ ads into spyware, they continue to charge class members full price for those ads, and pocketing the difference between the high fees class members pay and the low cost of providing spyware-delivered advertising.”
Among the “spyware vendors” named in the complaint as partners in Yahoo’s ad program are Direct Revenue and Intermix, two companies recently sued by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer for violating consumer protection laws.
An example of customer ads shown on typosquatting sites include “Expedai.com,” which includes a Yahoo! ad for the real Expedia.com.
The Washington Post Website posted a full copy of the complaint in PDF format yesterday.
One of the attorneys of record in the case, Benjamin Edelman ( www.benedelman.org ). has a superb online resource that covers many issues related to spyware and click-fraud with excellent documentation and screen shots.
Author Carly Zander has written for numerous publications including CrossMedia and Search Engine Intelligence, and in the music business for outfits like Neotrope® Records. She is a full-time content manager for the Send2Press® News Network.
• Story is Filed under: eMarketing News, Headlines |
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| To: Francois Goelo who wrote (10156) | 5/4/2006 9:04:25 PM | | From: StockDung | | | | MARKOW/GOLEO UPDATE
02/14/2006 155 MOTION to Withdraw as Attorney for by Defendants Michael M Markow, Global Guarantee Corporation. (Baumgartner, Bruce) (Entered: 02/14/2006)
02/17/2006 156 ORDER granting 155 Baker & Hostetler LLP's Motion to Withdraw as trial counsel for Defendants Global Guarantee and Michael M. Markow. Attorney Robert Myron Kincaid, Jr; Bruce O Baumgartner and Gina A Beredo terminated. Signed by Judge Mark R. Abel on 2/17/06. (jk) (Entered: 02/17/2006)
02/21/2006 157 Memorandum in Oppostion re Defendant's 154 Objections to the 1/10/06 Order filed by Plaintiff United States Securities and Exchange Commission. (Attachments: # (1) Exhibit A placed under seal on 2/22/06 (2) Exhibit B)(Lo, Tracy) Modified on 2/22/2006 (sem, ). (Entered: 02/21/2006)
02/22/2006 158 Amended MOTION to Amend/Correct for by Defendants Michael M Markow, Global Guarantee Corporation. (Baumgartner, Bruce) (Entered: 02/22/2006)
02/27/2006 159 CERTIFICATE of Counsel Notice of Service by Bruce O Baumgartner Defendants Michael M Markow, Global Guarantee Corporation (Baumgartner, Bruce) (Entered: 02/27/2006)
03/03/2006 160 Reply re 157 Response (non motion), Response (non motion) to Defendant Aaron Tsai's Objections to the Order of the Magistrate Judge Denying a Remedy for Attorney Schlenkert's Breach of Confidentiality and Privilege and the SEC's Exploitation Thereof by Defendant Aaron Tsai. (Luper, Frederick) (Entered: 03/03/2006)
03/06/2006 161 Mail Returned as Undeliverable. Mail (Doc 156) sent to Aamer Ravji. (jr) (Entered: 03/07/2006)
03/17/2006 162 First MOTION to Withdraw as Attorney David F. Axelrod by Defendant Francois Goelo. (Axelrod, David) (Entered: 03/17/2006)
03/17/2006 163 First MOTION for Leave to Appear Pro Hac Vice Carter M. Stewart by Defendant Francois Goelo. (Axelrod, David) (Entered: 03/17/2006)
03/22/2006 164 ORDER granting 162 Motion to Withdraw as Attorney. Attorney David Freeman Axelrod terminated. Order granting 163 Motion for Leave for Carter M. Stewart to Appear pro hac vice as co-counsel for defendant Francois Goelo on the condition that, within 15 days of the date of this Order, counsel register for electronic filing. Signed by Judge Mark R. Abel on 3/22/06. (jr) (Entered: 03/22/2006)
03/22/2006 Filing fee: $ 50, receipt number 200 250679 (phv for Carter M. Stewart) (jr) (Entered: 03/22/2006)
03/27/2006 165 ORDER signed by Judge Mark R. Abel on 3/27/06. (jk) (Entered: 03/27/2006)
03/27/2006 166 MEMORANDUM OPINION & ORDER: In re document's 151, 62 and 154. Signed by Judge John D. Holschuh on 3/27/06. (sln, ) (Entered: 03/28/2006)
04/03/2006 167 Mail Returned as Undeliverable. Mail (doc 164) sent to Aamer Ravji. (jr) (Entered: 04/04/2006)
04/04/2006 168 Mail Returned as Undeliverable. Mail (doc 153) sent to Aamer Ravji. (jr) (Entered: 04/05/2006)
04/10/2006 169 Mail Returned as Undeliverable. Mail (doc 166) sent to Aamer Ravji. (jr) (Entered: 04/11/2006)
04/26/2006 170 SHOW CAUSE ORDER - Defendants Global Guarantee and Michael M. Markow are ORDERED to SHOW CAUSE within 11 days of the date of this Order why DEFAULT should not be entered against them for failure to defend and failure to comply with the Court's 2/17/06 Order. Signed by Judge Mark R. Abel on 4/26/06. (jr) (Entered: 04/26/2006)
04/26/2006 171 Supplemental Memorandum Supporting re 160 Reply (non motion), Reply (non motion) Defendant Tsai's Supplemental Brief in Support of His Objections to the Order of the Magistrate Judge Regarding a Remedy for the SEC's Exploitation of the Breach of Confidentiality and Privilege filed by Defendants Aaron Tsai, Aaron Tsai. (Luper, Frederick) (Entered: 04/26/2006)
05/02/2006 172 Mail Returned as Undeliverable. Mail (doc. 166) sent to Global Guarantee Corporation. (jr) (Entered: 05/03/2006)
05/04/2006 173 Mail Returned as Undeliverable. Mail(170) sent to Aamer Ravji. (jr) (Entered: 05/04/2006) |
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| To: rrufff who wrote (17564) | 5/5/2006 7:39:37 AM | | From: rrufff | | | | Mark Cuban - "news" - apparently the gossip NY Post page 6 has info that Mark "I'm a billionaire" Cuban had a difficult time getting into NYC hotspots. Tried to flash a wad of dough, proclaimed he is a billionaire, and offerred $1000 bribes to bouncers, then finally was able to get into Scores and give his best "advice."
Why is this relevant? He's a hero to the NSS defenders. Apparently, money means his arguments have merit? He'll have a show on SIRIUS so perhaps we can get him to elaborate on his theories of "my scam is ok, but yours isn't."
Maybe he's spending some of the ITEK s/h money at NYC hotspots? |
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| To: Francois Goelo who wrote (10156) | 5/5/2006 12:04:34 PM | | From: StockDung | | | | Conman who made thousands in email fraud told, pay up
May 5 2006
A MEMBER of a gang which conned gullible US businessmen and women out of almost £1million has been ordered to repay some of his ill-gotten gains.
Damon Knight, 28, duped dozens of rich investors across the world in a classic "advance fee" fraud.
In 2005, Knight, of Nunhead, was locked up for two-and-a-half years at Southwark Crown Court.
His associates, Kennedy Eguakhide, 34, of Clapham, and Reginald Emelonye, 37, of Abbey Wood, were jailed for three years and two years respectively.
Last Friday, Judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith estimated Knight had made up to £374,000 from the sting but ordered him to pay back £15,000.
If he fails to pay up within six months he must spend another year in prison.
At a hearing in January, Knight's co-defendants were each ordered to pay back £20,000.
The trio had bombarded companies with emails offering huge sums to anyone who paid to help free 38million US dollars held in bank accounts in South Africa, China and Nigeria.
But the fraudsters then repeat-edly asked for increasing payments to cover "anti-terrorist certificates", release fees and "money laundering certificates".
One Boston businessman sold his house, cashed in his pension and his dying father's health insurance and borrowed from friends to hand over 250,000 US dollars.
Up to 30 people were trapped by the cunning scam with five customers alone handing over £955,000.
The ring was smashed when a Californian sculptress rang police after paying 6,000 US dollars.
Christopher Cousins, prosecuting, said: "It was a worldwide conspiracy to defraud.
"Many, many victims lost large sums of money."
Southwark Crown Court heard the money from the scam was to be smuggled to Nigeria and Ghana.
Before sentencing the trio, the judge told the gang they had become involved in "a mangled world of false identities".
He said: "Anyone who joins the venture must know the potential profits are enormous and the risks of punishment are substantial."
Eguakhide, of Macauley Street, and Emelonye, of Panfield Road, had admitted conspiracy to defraud between October, 2002, and May 1, 2003.
Knight, of St Asaph Road, admitted five counts of money laundering and was jailed for two-and-a-half years on each, to run concurrently.
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| To: Kevin Podsiadlik who wrote (17690) | 5/5/2006 1:14:40 PM | | From: rrufff | | | | Kevin - in your thrust to diffuse, perhaps look behind you. The truth may be gaining on you. Get some protection before you bend over.
I've often posted that I have no position in OSTK. My only experience with them has been as a customer and results were better than Amazon. If I were a stockholder of OSTK, I'd be annoyed with Byrne's performance and distraction.
As a spokesmodel for NNS, I'll take the billionaire's publicity. Heck, even the guy you NSScamming defenders love Mark Cuban (of ITEK scam? and no word from you NSScam defenders about that one LOL) is great because he brings more light to the issue.
Have a nice day. |
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| To: Francois Goelo who wrote (10156) | 5/7/2006 9:07:09 PM | | From: StockDung | | | | Arbitrator rules against teachers with phony master's degrees
BILLINGS An arbitrator says two teachers who received master's degree from a diploma mill must take salary cuts, and return extra pay given to them based on the advanced degree.
In 1999, Beverly Henckel and Candice Holzer of Canyon Creek School in Billings received master's degrees from the online Columbus University.
The teachers received their degrees in fewer than six months. The university is not recognized by accreditation agencies.
Other staff members questioned the degrees and Superintendent Stepanie Long demanded the teachers return 37-thousand dollars. Trustees also reduced their pay.
The teachers filed a grievance with the Montana Education Association, leading to an arbitrator's hearing in January.
During the hearing, the teachers said they did not know the degrees were not legitimate. However, they said they did no coursework, did not correspond with any instructors, took no exams and wrote no theses.
Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. |
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| To: Francois Goelo who wrote (10156) | 5/8/2006 8:53:21 AM | | From: StockDung | | | | CARL'S SHELL GAME BY CHRIS BYRON
nypost.com
AN ICAHN REVERSE MERGER BEARS POTENTIAL FOR DANGER
May 8, 2006 -- THREE weeks ago, the Securities and Exchange Commission finally brought closure of sorts to one of Wall Street's biggest and ugliest swindle-romps ever, charging fugitive financier Adnan Khashoggi in the stock-rigging scheme that came to be known as the Genesis Intermedia affair.
Yet don't be surprised if you wake up one morning not long from now to discover that an eerie echo of the five-year-old Genesis affair is making headlines all over again, this time featuring a Nasdaq-traded "China bubble" stock called Intac International Inc.
We'll get to the particulars of the Intac situation in a minute. For now, it is enough to know that the billionaire who has lately emerged as the central figure in the Intac case is the same Wall Street moneyman who surfaced in the final weeks of the Genesis affair back in June of 2001, all teed up to become Khashoggi's reluctant patsy - none other than corporate raider Carl Icahn.
To understand how a man with Icahn's reputed ruthlessness and market smarts could wind up as anyone's patsy, it may help to recall what the Genesis Intermedia affair was all about from the start: the tug of easy money from the land of penny stocks.
Beginning in 1999 from his offshore hideout in Bermuda, Khashoggi orchestrated a price-rigging scheme that over two years illegally lifted Genesis shares by 1,400 percent to a high of $25, giving Khashoggi more than $130 million.
By summer 2001, Genesis Intermedia's rising stock price had caught the eye of Icahn, who seems to have been more impressed by the company's share price performance than its business fundamentals or the creepy reputation of the man who was really running the company: Khashoggi himself.
By the time Icahn became involved in June 2001, Genesis Intermedia's SEC filings had already named Khashoggi as the company's largest shareholder, with a controlling 45.3 percent block of its stock in an offshore front company in Bermuda.
The filings also revealed that Khashoggi had gotten the stock through warrants issued to him by the company in return for $71 million worth of junk loans that made Khashoggi not just Genesis Intermedia's largest stockholder but its largest creditor as well - in effect, the man who was actually running the entire company.
It's simply amazing that Icahn would have been willing to climb in bed with Khashoggi in the first place. By the spring of 2001, Khashoggi's curriculum vitae already included a well-documented history of arms trafficking in the Third World as well as a stint in a Swiss prison on fraud charges, not to mention his fishy middleman role in the Iran-Contra affair.
BUT Icahn jumped right in anyway and agreed to lend Genesis a star tling $100 million in return for stock options and warrants, just like Khashoggi had gotten. And Icahn was plainly interested in the deal as a stock play, too, because he insisted on terms at least as good as those that Khashoggi had been getting, causing a lot of back and forth haggling over details even after the deal was announced on June 29.
That haggling may in fact have saved Icahn's bacon, because subsequent SEC filings show that none of Icahn's $100 million got lent out before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 roiled the markets, sending Genesis into a tailspin that ended in the company's demise before the $100 million credit line was ever tapped.
Given all that, you'd think Icahn would have learned his lesson and sworn off any future excursions into the land of penny stocks, where the inhabitants all seem low rent, wretched and sublimely slimy.
Yet that is where we now find Icahn all over again, this time using Intac International in a ploy known as a reverse merger to pump up the value of an investment he made months earlier in a privately held Atlanta, Ga., Internet company called HowStuffWorks.com Inc.
Icahn declined to be interviewed for this column, so it hasn't been possible to nail down just how much money he actually pumped into the Atlanta outfit, or what he received back in return. But one can make a pretty good guess.
Six months ago, the Atlanta company's founder and CEO, Jeff Arnold, told reporters that Icahn had by then become a "significant" shareholder in the operation in return for financial support totaling "tens of millions" of dollars.
Given the fact that data from the D&B credit reporting agency suggests that HowStuffWorks generated less than $1.2 million in gross revenues last year, an investment of the size Arnold says Icahn made may well be enough to rank Icahn as the company's largest shareholder and creditor alike, just as Khashoggi had been at Genesis Intermedia.
IN late April, Intac an nounced plans to merge with HowStuffWorks in a way that seems likely to transfer Intac's valuation as a publicly traded Nasdaq stock onto the privately held shares of How Stuff Works, which Icahn holds much (if not most) of already. And to say that Intac's shares are grossly overvalued would be an understatement.
Like many penny stocks, Intac began life as a Nevada-incorporated shell company, with its shares listed on the fraud-drenched Vancouver Exchange under the name Commodore Minerals Inc.
Though the company's registration papers described it as being in the gold exploration business, its real objective was to be taken over by anyone looking to obtain freely trading public stock for a private company without incurring the expense and bother of an actual IPO.
The gimmick: buy the penny stock shell and merge the private business into it. In October 2001, a Hong Kong businessman named Wei Zhou did just that, acquiring a controlling 64 percent block of Commodore's stock and eventually merging the company with a Hong Kong-based business he was running that imported used cell phones from Germany for resale in China.
But the business was flimsy, to say the least, and by the end of 2003 just one customer - vaguely identified in the filings as a "Mr. Lam" - accounted for 68.6 percent of sales. Though Intac reported $91.3 million of revenues for the year, the cost of acquiring the used cell phones to resell to Lam and other customers ate up nearly $88 million of that money, leaving an illusory gross profit of $3.5 million that actually consisted of uncollected receivables.
Zhou himself soon realized that he needed a sexier business to peddle than used cell phones from Germany, and launched Intac on a string of new ventures that also went nowhere.
So, why would a man with Icahn's financial acumen want to put even 5 cents into such an operation? The answer seems obvious. With most of Intac's 22.2 million shares held by Zhou, and with an average of less than 80,000 of the remaining shares traded day-to-day, the market conditions for Intac were both volatile and easily manipulated, creating valuation multiples for the stock that stood at nose-bleed levels.
At Intac's closing price last week of just under $11 a share, investors are valuing the company at roughly $240 million, an absurd price for an outfit with crumbling revenues, soaring losses and a balance sheet on which goodwill and uncollected receivables account for 83 percent of assets.
With the merger terms between HowStuffWorks and Intac structured to make the current shareholders of each company 50/50 owners of Intac as the surviving entity, the number of Intac shares will wind up doubling.
And with many (or perhaps even most) of those shares winding up in the hands of Icahn, the public market will stay tight, supporting the stock price, while Intac instantly balloons from a $240 million company into a nearly $500 million business, with Icahn's stake surging as well. It's the penny stock market in action, and it helps explain why so many otherwise cautious investors become so beguiled by its charms.
Unlike Khashoggi, Icahn seems so far to have done nothing wrong or acted improperly in his penny stock excursions. Yet his emerging role in Intac presents exactly the sorts of opportunities for abuse that Khashoggi found irresistible at Genesis Intermedia.
And there is no denying that Icahn is a moth now circling ever closer to the flame.
cbyron@nypost.com |
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