RedOrbit sues Torq Cisek and Scam Crew for $25 Million; Blackmail continues.
Many people have asked me over the last year why I have taken the cause of preventing fraud in the industry, from going after these scammers. Many people have told me that most of these are “harmless crimes” and they don’t really hurt people. I’ve received death threats, I’ve received angry phone calls and some scammers have even taken to message boards to make false allegations against me and attempt to hurt my reputation. The reason I do this is simple: these crimes do hurt people, and they do cost people money and more. In response to one of these crimes, Eric Ralls has filled a 25 Million Dollar Lawsuit in Texas Court against Torq Cisek and his accomplices for fraud.
Earlier this year RedOrbit called me up in order to ask my advice: he was furious that his advertisements were being shown through adware, popups and 1×1 pixels, but couldn’t track down who was doing these scams. He has been working with a company called MediaJavelin, which I had been at the time tracking myself, as had known fraud-fighter Ben Edelman. After comparing reports, I was confident that MediaJavelin was just another name for Torq Cisek, a convicted fraudster, a convicted scam artist who had been scamming the industry for years. Even his former employeer had sued him for his scams.
Here’s the issue: RedOrbit hadn’t been just scammed, it had caused them serious harm. Several networks at the time had stopped working with him – and he even returned money back to them. Because of these scammers, he even faced a lawsuit with MSN. For the last 10 years he had built the biggest science website in the world, often quoted in news stories all over the world. Suddenly because of these scammers, there were questions about his business. However, instead of taking this lying down, he decided to fight back and take these guys on. He hired me as a consultant to ensure that this never happened to him again.
During our investigation of him, either himself or his someone crew made it clear that if I reported on this, if RedOrbit did anything but pay their bills, they would go after me personally. Unfortunately, after this lawsuit was filed in Court, the scammer told us this morning that he was going to go on the internet now and post the log files that he took of him scamming RedOrbit. He said he would then do a press release in return and attempt to hurt RedOrbit and myself. In numerous emails he made it clear that he would also go on message boards and start posting false accusations against myself – making claims against my person professionally and otherwise.
Thus, I am delighted that RedOrbit is being proactive, suing the scammers for one of the largest lawsuits related to interactive advertising fraud. I get emails daily from people who are scammed, and they tell me the same thing: that they are scared to take on the people who scam them. I’ve heard even journalists in this industry tell me they are scared to report on these issues, because they’ve also received blackmail threats.
So addressing what I said: Why do I deal with this over and over again, why do I bother to care when it’s clear that the people involved will do anything to harm me when I catch them committing crimes. The truth is simple: I am driven to it. I love this industry, I love how anyone can start a business and push themselves hard and possibly make millions of dollars based on innovation. I love that the owner of RedOrbit, Eric Ralls can build a great science website based on his passion and make money from it. When these scammers prey on this industry, attempt to rob that dream away from hard working people, that really gets me.
Thank you RedOrbit for standing up for all of us.
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[...] Here’s the other information about our favorite scam-artist: http://industrypace.com/frontpage/2010/08/24/known-scam-artist-torq-cisek-tracked-again.html http://industrypace.com/frontpage/2010/10/18/redorbit-sues-torq-cisek-and-scam-crew-for-25-million-b... [...]