Copyright and Attribution of Source Material
The development of this site has taken over eight years of research
and development and has been brought to you at a great expense
of time, money and resources, without financial assistance or governmental
support.
That being said, it would not have been possible without the source
material content freely available on the web, itself publicly and
privately funded.
The shear volume of data which was collected, evaluated then condensed,
paraphrased or simply left intact, made attribution difficult,
if not impossible, for which we apologize and wish to rectify in
the following fashion.
Any person, organization or other body which after viewing this
site, feels that source attribution should be noted in this section
or wishes to provide further data may contact us with particulars
and we would be glad to acknowledge your efforts along with links
to your site information.
Editorial Contributions
Any person wishing to supply information for this site will be
acknowledged, should the material be deemed relevant and complementary.
We reserve, however, the right to condense, alter or incorporate
the information into appropriate sections.
Copyright Protection
All material within this site, present, past and future, in printed
or electronic format, is copyrighted by its developers, with the
exception of source material with earlier attribution and copyright
protection or public domain availability.
Privacy Statement
Third parties may be placing and reading cookies on your browser,
or using web beacons to collect information, in the course of ads
being served on this website. It is recommended that you install
a program such as AdAware, Spybot Search and Destroy, or CCleaner
so that unwanted cookies from any site you visit can routinely
be removed from your system.
I don't access or store personal information about visitors nor
do I give or sell email addresses to other parties.
Disclaimers
Information provided on this website is provided for a worldwide
audience with the exception of the State of Florida. Individuals
from that State are prohibited from viewing this website, purchasing
books from the author, Les Henderson, or otherwise doing commerce
with the website owner or any of the advertisers on the website.
I will have absolutely no contact with any consumer from the State
of Florida for any commercial purpose related to this website.
Information within has been primarily gleaned from court records,
government information circulars and enforcement actions. All persons
are presumed innocent unless proven guilty in a court of law, even
despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Reference to any firm or individual, in any form, within any section,
does not imply any wrongdoing or illegal behavior. All persons
or companies mentioned on the site are invited to reply to comments
or statements with an alternate view of events.
The site headings referencing Crimes of Persuasion: Schemes, Scams,
Frauds; which are consistent throughout the entire site; are not
a statement of facts to be attributed to any person or entity mentioned
within, but merely identify the site itself.
Any innuendo which may be attributed to any party mentioned shall
be deemed a comment based on facts truly stated.
Derogatory statements made in error will be swiftly removed upon
request and will be accompanied with a posted apology if requested.
As there will inevitably be those con artists who, having absconded
with millions and now living on a beach, will feel slighted by
comments or allegations made herein, we have tried to deliberately
avoid using individual names in order to avoid nuisance law-suits.
Another reason for omitting their names is that we do not wish
to immortalize them as clever individuals, so we endeavour to ignore
them and focus on the deeds themselves.
Unfortunately, this failure to properly identify ongoing concerns,
for which complaints have been recorded, prevents individuals from
locating them by web searches.
Legal Advice Pertaining to Threats of Libel and Slander
Q: How far should I go in covering a scam which
hasn't been officially charged yet? Even with a million complaint
letters saying the same thing I get the feeling they can sue me
for libel for posting them on my site. I thought opinion pieces
had some leeway. Do I have a leg to stand on?
A: First, truth is a complete defense. That being
said, the only way you can really show truth is in front of the
judge. Best to not be sued and have to make a successful defense.
Second, there is some leeway. If you are simply printing consumer
complaints, then it's less likely that you can be personally liable.
If you have some kind of disclaimer, like, "I don't know if
this is true and accurate, but I get lots of complaints like this
one," it still doesn't protect you from getting sued, but
it will prevent them from successfully suing you.
And it gets you out without having to show that their business
is a scam. Merely showing that others believe so is sufficient.
Q: Even when I have someone write in asking about
a company I have had demands to remove the company's name from
the section as it deals with scams and could be interpreted as
one. Another site that dealt with scams was shut down by his web
site host because a company which had daily complaints from viewers
threatened them.
A: It is not at all uncommon to have scam businesses
respond with allegations of slander and libel. An overall disclaimer
on your site that you do not verify the accuracy of the consumer
complaints, but merely post them, should make the business realize
that it can't shut you down.
In a recent Seattle case, the web host was sued to try to get
the names of the people who had posted. The judge did not require
the host to reveal the names unless the business had sued the people
who had posted and shown that it could not get the names through
some other method. The web host itself had no liability.
My most recent experience with scams trying to fight back by claiming
slander is with Great Expectations Video Dating Service. They try
to claim that anyone who posts on one of the several anti-GE websites
has defamed them.
This doesn't make sense, because another defense to slander is
that there are no damages, usually proven by showing the business'
reputation in the community. Amway can't claim that you've slandered
them by calling them a pyramid scheme because millions of people
call Amway a pyramid scheme.
If it's not uncommon for consumers to complain about the business,
then it's hardly a damaging comment. A business that claims this
person said something bad about them (on a website where lots of
people say bad things about them) wants to ignore the part in parentheses.
They also never state how they have calculated the damages that
they have allegedly suffered. They can only recover their damages
(or in some cases, "nominal damages").
Nominal damages are awarded where they technically win but could
not show any accurate damages. In these situations, the court awards
$100 to show that they won. Of course, the court case itself can
be very expensive, and this is usually the big club that the business
holds.
But in most cases, a "slander of a business by a consumer" case
would be dismissed on a preliminary motion (such as where the web
site contains a disclaimer).
I recently advised an Indianapolis Great Expectations member to
respond to a slander and libel counterclaim to his lawsuit by printing
out all of the Anti-GE pages off the internet and submitting them
as evidence that you can't really hurt GE's reputation in the community.
I never heard back from the consumer, which is usually a sign
of success. Think of how GE would have had to respond to this evidence. "Your
Honor, everyone is slandering us." Gosh, I wonder why?
A threat of slander and libel is a sign that you're on the right
track.
Mark Fleming
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