The ALOA (Associated Locksmiths of America, the locksmith trade group) has recently posted the legal filing from a lawsuit initiated by a locksmith in Arizona. The complaint for violations of Arizona’s laws preventing misrepresentation of “the geographical origins or location of the person’s business” attempts to

1)Get an injunction against the offending locksmtih (Atlas Locksmith Soltuons among others) and

2)Require the attorney general to “take over the crimianl and consumer fraud aspects of the case

It is interesting that a local locksmith, in his frustration, is “going after” the attorney general to do their job of enforcing laws on the books. It will be interesting to see if he manages any success in either convincing the AG or perhaps embarrassing him to take on the case.

At the bottom of the filing it notes: Charley requests donation to his legal fund because he feels the expertise of an attorney is now needed.

It seems a little late in the process to think about hiring a lawyer but heck, better late than never. Good luck Chuck! For more information about Chuck’s quest you can visit his website.

From the filing:

SUBJECT MATTER OF THIS ACTION

This action is a private action authorized by ARS section 44-1221(C) to enforce the provisions of 44-1221(A) in an effort to stop the “Invasion of the Locksmith Scammers (ILS)” within the state of Arizona generally and Maricopa county specifically. These criminals utilize a modus operandi that includes the procurement of hundreds to thousands of telephone numbers. Subsequent to the procurement of these numbers the scammers cause them to be associated with addresses that have no connection to them then they cause the telephone numbers and their associated phony addresses to be published extensively in printed directories and the internet directories and search engines and they thoroughly saturate same.

The TELCO DEFENDANTS involved are either (A) grossly negligent in insuring the accuracy of the listings that they populate into their directory databases which are ultimately used by all 411 information providers and publishers of print directories and internet information sources, or (B) are intentionally co-conspiring with the ILS scammers by accepting all the phony addresses from them to populate said phony addresses into the shared database. /// /// /// /// /// ///

COMPLAINT FOR INJUNCTION /WRIT OF MANDATE / DAMAGES

PAGE 21 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

Since the telephone companies enjoy “PUBLIC UTILITY” status conferred upon them by the State of Arizona and “TRUSTED ENTITY” status by the directory publishing companies and internet information providers they have a fiduciary duty to the public to ensure that the information that they place into DIRECTORY DATABASES is in fact accurate and will not cause the public or other businesses to be harmed. Plaintiff attempted to gain the assistance of the ARIZONA ATTORNEY GENERAL and despite the potential for over $3,000,000.00 (three million dollars) in fines against one company alone; Terry Goddard’s office has turned a deaf ear. A defrauded consumer Lisa Mendez informed plaintiff that she also made a complaint to the Attorney General that was apparently essentially ignored.

On one occasion Plaintiff personally met with Attorney General Terry Goddard at a public event and we spoke at length about the issues surrounding the locksmith scammers. At that time I handed him a 100 page document that contained documentation of the “REVIEWER SCAM” and Plaintiff volunteered to work in his office, perhaps as an investigator or paralegal. Mr. Goddard declined that offer.

Since that date plaintiff has heard nothing from Mr. Goddard or any of his staff with the exception of one e-mail from Ms. Ellis in his Tucson office who was simply forwarding me a copy of a default judgment against DEPENDABLE.

PARTIES

P1. Plaintiff Charles Eastwood is a resident of Phoenix Arizona. Plaintiff is a professional locksmith and has held an Arizona Privilege Tax License for the business “Locksmith Charley” since 8/14/2001. Plaintiff is a member in good standing of the Associated Locksmiths of America and after proficiency testing holds the title “Certified Registered Locksmith”.

Whether

Google Maps & Places has always been the playground of bad actors, whether the computer repair company that got carried away with bulk uploads, the non existent locksmith, the plastic surgeon with fake reviews or the less than savory payday loan folks masquerading as local businesses in an effort to get customers. In the legal scheme of things there were mostly deceptive and only occasionally criminal but heck they were “just trying to make a living”. But leave it to the SEO business to really lead the dive to the depths of depravity in the Maps world.

There have been several tales of extortion reported in the past few weeks that describe  holding a businesses listing in Maps “hostage” until some form of payment is received.

From the Google Forums:
My business has a couple address that are both listed and claimed in google maps. However, if you do a search of my domain name, you will see three pages of results, all but two of which are wrong.

The wrong listings have a bad phone number, random business name, and random address, but it does list my company domain. These listings have already been “Claimed by owner” so we cannot go in and fix them.

This was brought to our attention today by a phone call from a “marketing expert” who pointed out this problem and how it could get us banned from google. When we refused to pay him to correct the problem, he threatened to flag our real listings and get them removed/penalized if we didn’t pay him. This person obviously created about 25 fake listings with my domain in another Google Places account before calling to point out this “problem” and is holding the ability to delete them hostage… There is no way for us to correct the listing.

And this report from Webmasterworld (Hat tip to Andy Kuiper, an SEO Analyst in Vancouver):

This has happened to two companies that I work for in the past 6 months. Wondering if anyone else has seen the same…

A bunch of negative reviews are posted in Google Maps for a particular company. About a month after the posts, the company gets a call and is told that the negative reviews can be removed for a fee… typically $400. We have been flaging the reviews, tey it seems to take google forever to even take a look.

If nothing else, Maps never ceases to entertain but these reports indicate a new form of criminality. It seems that Google’s current reporting mechanism and customer support structure of the “report a problem” link and the forums is woefully inadequate to deal with this sort of problem. How would you handle this situation if one of your clients was being extorted? Should Google create some communication mechanism to deal with this?

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Here is a Tag that I saw on the search for Wrongful Death Attorney San Francisco:

When you click through the Tag this is what you see:

What is your take on this use of Tags?