Thanks to someone who recognized the picture of my office and e-mailed me about it we have yet another contestant for the annual hall of shame awards for being the crummiest office thief. This time it’s a company called JLBCTech, located at 1200 Smith St, Suite #1600, Houston, Texas 77002 (713-623-1266). According to the blog associated with their business website for JLBCTech;

We provide computer support in Houston with both Home Offices and Small Business since 2007 and we have been fortunate to be to work with some amazing home office setups. Here’s a small collection of some of our clients that have home offices that have blown our minds and redefined the word Home Office

The crap above was posted by them on September 21, 2012. So let me get this straight, then. The text above comes associated with a picture of my home office. A home office that, based on the pictures used, was located in THE NETHERLANDS (and is currently being moved to California) and most certainly not in Houston, TX.

Even more offensive is the fact that JLBCTech claims the pictures on their site are of home offices of “some of their clients”. That’s news to me because I certainly am not, nor ever will be, a client of this JLBCTech place. I wouldn’t trust them as far as I could throw them based on how they have taken images from different places, clearly without permission, and then using them to make their business look either interesting or “high tech” to those who may not know any better. Where I’m from we have a word for companies and folks like that; scammers!

If you look at the other offices they have on their site you may suspect that these people at JLBCTech are pretty big LIARS. If you look at the image titled “Home Office in The Woodlands” you may recognize the office as belonging to Mickey Slater in Portland Oregon. Likewise, the image titled “Mac Setup in Home Office in The Woodlands TX. Apart from the beautiful Mac Setup that this is, what caught our eye was the custom chair…Very relaxing chair” actually belongs to Carl-Johan Kihlbom from Sweden.

The company JLBCTech is run by Jonathan Cardoza, Bessy Cardoza, Josue Cardoza and Sergio Meza, according to the website’s “about” page. I assume these Cardoza’s are all family. They might not be, but if they are, then I must conclude that copyright infringement and lying must “run in the family” because certainly, any of these people at JLBCTech Computer Repair must have been very aware that these offices are not of their so-called “clients”.

JLBCTech reminds me a lot of AwareBear Computers (a computer repair place in Pittsford, New York). They claim to do virus removal, data recovery, small business solutions, and Web Design and SEO Social Media. Again, I should warn everyone reading this to ever do any business with a company that so clearly lies about their stuff and have no problem using copyrighted material they have had no permission to use. You want these people to design your site? So you can be liable for whatever material they might integrate on it?

It is almost creepy to see how much JLBCTech reminds me of Andre Alves and AwareBear. Maybe there is something really wrong with a lot of these types of “computer repair” places that appear to have a need to show off things they have absolutely no involvement in. I wonder if it’s a virus that’s going around at these places. Clearly it’s a virus they have not been able to remove and will need a little extra “help”.

This is an article to educate you, my readers, about copyright infringement, but also to have some satirical laughs at the expense of a copyright infringer who might not have foreseen how copyright matters could be the trigger that uncovers more about your business than you would want people to notice. You will learn:

• What does not work in defense of Copyright Infringement.
• Why you should never hire an SEO company to SPAM the internet.
• Why, if you engage in other questionable business behavior, you should hope to never run into someone who happens to be adequately capable of exposing that.

Jared Grey, the Copyright Infringer

It came as a bit of a surprise to me (thanks for the tip Nathan!) to see thousands of web pages showing videos of a company called MultiPlex PC LLC (Orlando, Florida) that include a picture of my Home Office (the 5.0 version of that particular setup).

I was able to identify 6 videos, all of a similar nature, a slideshow of products and multi-monitor setups, used as a marketing vessel for the products and services of MultiPlexPC, that included this image of mine. And, as it appears they have been on there for over two years (since May 2009, to be exact). And of course, the videos and images on the MultiPlex PC Blog also reflected that, as you can see here.

When searching for videos using MultiPlexPC as the keyword it became very clear that YouTube was not the only place these videos and MultiPlex PC’s “marketing and advertising” could be found. Out of about 3100 results, half of them were all copies of those original YouTube videos, and about a fourth of all of those appear to be local copies and local uploads to various other video storage services. Still, the total number of domains that would need to receive a DMCA ran in the dozens. It seems MultiPlex PC really wanted to cover the entire internet wit their marketing goals.

Of course, anyone using the images of my office, without permission, either willfully or by reckless behavior and committing an act of copyright infringement can understand that sooner or later such things tend to catch up with you.

And it certainly has for MultiPlex PC and its owner Jared Grey. A DMCA takedown notice had already been sent to YouTube while Mr. Grey, the owner of Orlando Florida based MultiPlex PC LLC responded to the matter.

Mr. Grey explained that they did “not have login credentials to the Youtube account anymore” and that “the email account associated with it had been hijacked some time ago” and “because there has been no documented revenue generated from the YouTube videos I did not find it advantageous to recover the account”.

Why would I care if the videos did or did not generate any revenue, documented or otherwise?

But what’s even funnier was the request for documented evidence that the pictures are actually mine. Or, as Mr. Grey put it;

“If I can recover the account I will remove the videos in question, but I will need to see documented (time stamped and watermarked photos should do) evidence that the pictures are actually yours and that you’re not simply claiming they are yours to try and generate income by threatening litigation.”

I can understand Jarod Grey’s desire to know that I am indeed who I say I am but asking for proof when anyone with access to a search engine could easily tell certainly made me laugh a bit. Of course, my attorney would be laughing even louder while presenting tons of volume of proof in court.

The Law

Mr. Jarod Grey of MultiPlexPC was very adamant in stating that he would not pay for monetary damages for the following reason;

“I find claim that a couple of pictures buried deep in a YouTube video are generating the kind of revenue for our business that you claim. Since you cannot prove that we have made money from the videos, and I can more likely prove that we haven’t”

Mr. Grey offered to remove the videos from YouTube, something which would have been taken care of by the DMCA that went out, and it became clear that once again we have encountered someone who is, indeed, ignorant about copyright law. After a little educational response it might have gotten a bit more clear, or perhaps not quite yet, but in case you are wondering why MultiPlex PC’s concept of not having had any financial gain from those advertisement videos does not hold water;

• In the civil context, the term “willful” has a well established meaning and most courts use a “recklessness standard” to enhance statutory damages for copyright infringement. And while the statute does not define “willful”, it consistently defines it as including reckless behavior.

• In a copyright infringement case you, as the owner of the material in question, do not always need to prove that the infringer profited from their actions. But it does help you build a better case and often gets you higher damages awarded. Instead, one can easily sue for punitive damages which are damages which punish the infringer for wrongful conduct.

Committing acts of copyright infringement as part of creating and spreading around video material used as marketing material or advertisements for your business, products, or services, does not require much effort to take to court. Depending on the situation the actual case itself may not require a lot of effort either.

A follow-up e-mail from Mr. Grey said that he was going to take care of removing the videos from YouTube (I guess the credentials had materialized quickly) but asked me why there is no public section on my website that presents the commercial licensing and cost of my images. Now that’s certainly one I never heard before. Probably because nobody else ever brought it up because it is quite irrelevant.

In a free market the owner of any property, intellectual or otherwise, can set whatever price they wish. And it may very well be that larger corporations end up paying more for something that smaller businesses can get cheaper.

The Cost of DMCA takedown notices

After a little further education, provided for free, to Mr. Jarod Grey of MultiPlex PC, I also made it clear that removing all the material from dozens of places through the DMCA process can become quite expensive because of the time and effort involved. And that I certainly did not see a valid enough reason why I should be picking up the tab for thousands of dollars worth of DMCA’ing.

In the meantime, Mr. Grey of MultiPlex PC has been going about removing videos from different places and told me that various SEO companies in the past might be responsible for the content having spread so widely over the internet.

That’s possible. It doesn’t absolve one from the responsibility and legal liability. And in this case it should be a lesson for everyone else that if you are not 100% sure of the source of the materials you use, and there is a chance that you might have been infringing on someone’s copyright, that having an SEO company help you spread the material far and wide is likely to only further harm you down the line.

The “we’re a poor company, don’t sue us” approach

Mr. Grey told me they did not “have any money to pay” me and that with their small margins the profits go back into “trying to grow” (the company) and “paying bills”. Well, welcome to small business 101. That sums up the bulk of all small businesses. But, of course, is not an excuse for copyright infringement. Mr. Grey also informed me that they didn’t have money for an attorney to battle a lawsuit, would not do any more than remove the videos in question (before I provided only a partial list of those I had found), and that I should feel free to sue because if I get a default judgment there’d be no money anyway. So being poor and defenseless is now a good enough excuse for copyright infringement?

At that point the decision is up to me, of course, but you have to wonder how much of what Jarod said is true and how much is just a collection of words in order to discourage someone from spending a few bucks on a lawsuit that yields nothing at all. After a quick round of investigating Jared Grey and MultiPlex PC I am currently convinced that this is not a very trustworthy individual.

It is possible that the cost of engaging in a discovery process during a legal case would show otherwise. But the first thing I recommend doing is to dig up as much information about the other party before making any decisions. And this is where it gets really interesting because the behavior of Mr. Jared Grey of MultiPlex PC in Orlando Florida, claiming to be “The Leader in Multiple Monitors” and being a computer building company dedicated to providing the avid market trader, video game enthusiast, poker player, engineers, and graphic artists with “unmatched computer buying experience”, has started to show some really interesting and deceptive practices.

What Trading Technology Review wrote about MultiPlex PC

The Trading Technology Review website, owned by Market Pirates LLC, has made some very observant comments about MultiPlex PC, LLC. Please allow me to highlight some of those here;

“It is interesting that they offer a FXBootCamp trading computer since Wayne McDonell (the owner of FXBootCamp) just bought a trading computer from another vendor.”

“They show a number of companies under the heading “A Few Companies that trust us…”. This statement seems to be a stretch since we know that some of them have strong relationships with other computer vendors.”

“You will need to pay an extra $200 to get a 3 year warranty with on-site service. the warranty is listed as “complete” and not “limited”. There is no legal definition of a warranty that is “complete”. The correct legal term is “full”. I don’t think they know what they are getting into with their lack of legal understanding.”

“Like many who aren’t, they call themselves “The Leader in Multiple Monitors!”"

After my little bit of research I have to agree with Trading Technology Review. Those who call themselves leaders in anything usually aren’t. Those who say they are the most trusted usually aren’t. And the comment that MultiPlex PC has a lack of legal understanding is something I became quite aware of when I received the initial response from the founder and CEO, Mr. Jarod Grey. It is a bad idea to be in business without at least basic legal knowledge about your products and services.

Meet Jared Grey, the trader who is raking in the money!

How about this one? An article on Ezine@rticles from someone who recently upgraded their computer to run multiple monitors and noticed a great improvement in their day trading productivity. The article claims “Since I have upgraded to just 4 monitors instead of 1 I have made an extra $24,000 this year”.

But then also mentions “If you’re in the market to purchase a day trading computer and multiple monitors, check out Multiplex PC”.

Does it surprise you that the article is attributed to someone named Jared Grey?

The somewhat incoherent writing of the article could be interpreted in different ways but to me it reads as if Jared was trying to get some internet marketing going while trying not to be too outrageously blatant about using a place like Ezine@rticles to post pure advertisements (like many others do and will use it for).
But that was back in November 2008. Jared Grey has certainly picked up on how to do more of it and I will show you exactly how in the next paragraphs.

How Jarod Grey of MultiPlex PC tries to get sales

Disclosure is everything. Posting comments and statements online, pretending you are a satisfied customer of a business, not disclosing that you either work for the business or own it, is a very bad thing to do. Because sooner or later it comes out and your reputation is forever destroyed by your own actions.

Even if at some later time a miracle occurs and real customers, if there are any, would start posting raving reviews of your products, people would no longer believe it because it is entirely possible that those too are fake. Don’t believe me? Just ask Andre Leite Alves of Aware Bear Computers in Pittsford New York just how he dug his own grave with that one.

Here is a comment on a blog article about multiple monitor setups. Notice the inclusion there to my old 5.0 setup over at another site? Notice anything about the name of the person leaving the above comment? Yes, jgreyorl is short for Jarod Grey Orlando, as in Orlando Florida. You can find a lot of interesting things if you search for that short name and many of the things you find will lead straight back to MultiPlex PC in some form.

Also notice how Jarod Grey is pretending he recently bought a triple monitor array and plugs MultiPlex PC in there with a link to the site?

“Glad to see other people putting their rigs up for us to see”, however, I’m not sure how to interpret that because to me it actually reads more like “Great to see pictures of stuff we can grab and use in our advertisement videos because we clearly have nothing of our own to show so we will just pretend we have been involved in any of the setups of which we just stole the images and we hope nobody is ever going to find out”.

Someone always finds out. And if your past behavior is like this, and if that is the way you wish to run your business, then don’t start crying when your business ends up losing any reputation it might have gained in the future.

At about.com there is a similar post by a similar “jgreyorl”. Asking to see more pictures of multi monitor setups that his “fellow day traders” use. Asking for images so there would be fresh material to grab and use for the commercial purposes of MultiPlex PC? And again, in this post Jared Grey once again plugs his business without actually disclosing that he is the owner.

Over at ecoustics.com Mr. Grey responds to someone and tells them to try out MultiPlex PC because “THEY” have much better products. Why would the owner of MultiPlex PC have a need to refer to his own company as “THEY” instead of “I” or “WE”? Oh, because he was once again trying to not be too blatantly obvious about him plugging his business everywhere he can and doing so in a very “spammy way”!

And there the deceptive Mr. Jarod Grey of MultiPlex PC is doing it again! Passing himself off as a satisfied customer and this time trying to cover it up by saying “I spoke to all the other companies out there and Kevin at Multiplex PC was super nice and helpful.”.

Uhm, if there is a Kevin there, which there might be, I don’t know, why would Jared need to refer to him in this particular way? And why would the owner of MultiPlex PC need to speak to all the other companies out there only to decide to buy from his own company? Jared, you’re busted again!

OK, just because you like reading how Jared Grey has completely failed to realize that doing this stuff under his own name is generally something that only really stupid con-artists end up doing, let’s have another one. Over at the trade2win forums, Jared Grey “personally recommends MultiPlexPC” because he “purchased a Proplex 2100 from them” and because “they burn-in the components for 24-48 hours”. Once again, posted jgreyorl, once again using “they” to refer to the company he owns.

It’s getting a bit boring now, isn’t it? Feel free to google around yourself and see just how much more of this you can stand to laugh at. Of course, Mr. Grey might only now realize, gee, what if I do all that and instead use different names and… oh, wait, I might actually be educating Mr. Grey again and I don’t think it would be in anyone’s best interest for him to get better at this tactic of trying to do business. Even Project Honey Pot has an interesting bit on Jared and MultiPlex PC and the spam violations it implies:

The Project Honey Pot system has detected behavior from the IP address consistent with that of a comment spammer. Below we’ve reported some other data associated with this IP. This interrelated data helps map spammers’ networks and aids in law enforcement efforts

Of course, anyone googling Jarod Grey or MultiPlexPC are very likely to arrive on this site where, probably, after this exposure, it is difficult to believe anyone would believe an honest post or actual review by an actual customer because Jarod has soiled his market by trying to increase sales this way. Ah, well, live and learn.

The moral of this story should be clear if you made it this far. Never have an SEO company bloat and spread your marketing materials and advertisements if they contain copyrighted material that you are not authorized to use. Also, never step on the copyrights of someone who really does take it seriously and will investigate a little before making any decisions regarding lawsuits. And whatever you do, don’t do any of these things in public view on the internet where it remains forever-and-ever to haunt you.

Our favorite habitual liar and serial copyright infringer, Andre Leite Alves, of Aware Bear Computers in Rochester, is at it again and proving himself to now also be a habitual perjurer. And no, I am not talking about his Rochester Perennial Exchange “website”, which is nothing more than his attempt to link-build to gain a tiny bit of SEO juice in the hopes that all the negative exposure of his business activities and habitual lies would no longer score as high as they have done.

Andre Leite Alves of Aware Bear Computers, the moonlighting photographer, perjured himself AGAIN!

This week, Andre Leite Alves, Mr. AwareBear, has once again perjured himself, in an attempt to file a DMCA against this site and three of the images used (in good faith used under 17 USC Section 107 which allows for such considering the context of this site). This is not the first time Andre Alves has attempted to do so. Remember many years ago when he filed a false DMCA (against my domain registrar) claiming the images of my office were actually his and that I was the one infringing on them? Perjury might be something Andre Alves was born with but since I am not a doctor I don’t know that for sure. Lying and displaying deceit, however, that I think has long since been proven.

Scroll down to read the actual DMCA takedown notice that was filed.

Andre Alves is not the brightest bulb as most of you have already noticed. I can only imagine how much time and money Andre Leite Alves has spent (possibly from the Aware Bear business account) on the many feeble attempts at influencing search results. But the consistent and persistent failure of his efforts to accomplish anything is truly mindboggling. I also believe that Andre Leite Alves must think that my office is actually a time travel machine because he very seriously botched his DMCA attempt, like he botches a lot of things, just ask any displeased customer of Aware Bear Computers in Rochester.

It seems Andre Leite Alves really can’t do anything right!

Prior to filling out the DMCA, Andre Alves uploaded 3 images from this site. Images which at one point in the past (2009 and 2011 to be exact) were on the Aware Bear Rochester website. Then proceeded to create a blog post in WordPress and backdated it to December 7, 2007. Then labeled the images as (C) 2001-2012 to create the impression for the DMCA Agent that this site had taken them off of his site, and proceeded to state such, under penalty of perjury. Except what our clueless clown Andre Alves failed to pay attention to, because he is not really a detail oriented guy, is that images from 2009 and 2011 appear in his post that is dated several years prior to those.

I honestly do not have a time travel machine but I think Andre Alves believes I do. And for those of you paying attention, he botched one of the images even worse by having it in the 2012/03 upload folder. Anyone using WordPress will understand where I’m going with this. Images uploaded March 2012, in preparation for his false and incorrect DMCA filing, made to appear as if they were actually there in 2007. And he also needs people to believe there was no activity on his link-heavy blog between 2008 and 2011? Nice one, Andre! You must think other people are equally as dumb as you are.

Andre Alves, who appears to also moonlight as a “full time” wedding photographer (a full-time wedding photographer and full-time computer-repair guy, eh), must not understand digital images all that well because he clearly also forgot about things like date stamping and additional digital data embedded in those very image files. What that exactly means I will not explain because there is no reason to try and educate Andre Leite Alves. Instead I will just save this really good information for any situation where I may need them to pull the rug out of under any attempt at legal harassment. There are two other indicative issues with his DMCA attempt but those too, I will save for later.

What Andre Leite Alves (or should I refer to him as the Aware Bear that is unaware most of the time) also failed to think about is the fact that two of the images are cropped from the site they were originally on and are not the actual crop size of the images as they were at the time. It is nothing short of amazing that the exact crop is actually dated 2007 on his “blog” because they are clearly the exact crop I took. The old Aware Bear site(s) and content are probably not in Andre Leite Alves’ possession anymore so he didn’t notice it. Luckily, I always cache and copy everything just in case such is needed to provide proof and evidence.

Why did AwareBear Computers’ Andre Leite Alves spend $99 on a false filing?

So what’s up with these images and why would Andre Leite Alves spend $99 on trying to have them removed through the DMCA process? Nothing in particular, really. It is clear he attempted this as a “test” to see if it would work and if it did he could then proceed and start filing more false DMCA’s as long as he had a few dollars to spend on it. But the reason the habitual liar and serial infringer wanted the images gone is clear; they expose his habitual lies in a no uncertain manner.

The image that is a screenshot of one of his web pages, with the so-called testimonials on it for example. As already shown previously, testimonials from allegedly happy customers have been used throughout the years and attributed to different names at different stages during the changes of the Aware Bear Computers website(s). Also, the exact same text of the supposed testimonials has been found posted elsewhere and passed off as real testimonials, yet also attributed to different people in different places. Under 17 USC Section 107 I of course am showing exactly that.

The other two images have a bit more history to them. The first was taken from the Aware Bear website (in the state it was in at the time) to show that it was not just my office that Andre Leite Alves pretended was his. Also, a friendly and smart person e-mailed me with the links to the actual website designs in the image, as they belong to Template Monster and are not designs ever made by Aware Bear Computers. Ditto for the small image pasted into the monitor in that arrangement.

After I pointed that out and used the image to show this, Andre Leite Alves immediately modified the image on his website to contain an email address instead of the office and also took out the small design pasted in the monitor. He left the Monster Template images on there. Perhaps he bought those templates or decided he would take his chances. During that year the Aware Bear website underwent a lot of changes as Andre Leite Alves tried to wipe out all the obvious lies like claiming to be an official Apple Repair Center (yeah, right, ask Apple about that one).

Speaking of Apple. Did anyone notice the banner image at the top of Andre Leite Alves’ “link farm” blog? Do you feel you have seen that image before? That’s because you probably have. On Apple’s website! So clueless Andre can’t even build a “link-farm” blog without yet again using content he’s not authorized to use!

The full DMCA takedown notice as it had been received by my web host.

Please note that I have taken out the name and details of the copyright agent. As it turns out the actual filing was done through a 3^rd party website and the chain of action on the DMCA is a little complicated to explain, nor really of any interest here. The copyright agent is someone I know and respect and it became increasingly clear what exactly transpired and what Andre Leite Alves attempted to accomplish.

Notice of Copyright Infringement
Received: 2012-03-26 21:42:02 from [name removed] to DreamHost Abuse

Please see attached notice of copyright infringement, which has also been pasted below. Thank you very much for your time and attention to this matter. Please note that, in addition to the below infringement, the site itself appears to be nothing more than a spam redirect and an attempt to capitalize on my clients domain name.

To Whom It May Concern,

I am writing to you to avail myself of my rights under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and/or the European Directive on Electronic Commerce (EDEC). This letter is a Notice of Infringement as authorized in § 512 of the U.S. Copyright Law and EU Directive 2000/31/EC. I wish to report an instance of what I feel in good faith is an instance or Copyright Infringement. The infringing material appears on the Service for which you are the designated agent.

You are either registered with the U.S. Copyright Office as the designated service provider agent to receive notifications of alleged copyright infringement with respect to users of the service or have listed this information as the appropriate account to file such complaints on your site.

1. The material which I contend belongs to myself or my client, and appears illegally on the Service is the following:

Various AwareBear Images

2. The material appears at the website addresses:

http://www.andreleitealves.net/images/gibberish-large.jpg
http://www.andreleitealves.net/images/awarebearfakewebdesign1.jpg
http://www.andreleitealves.net/images/awarebearfakewebdesign2.jpg

3. The material appears on my or my client’s Web site at these addresses:

http://www.andreleitealves.[other]/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/abc1.jpg

http://www.andreleitealves.[other]/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/abc-design.jpg

http://www.andreleitealves.[other]/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/abc-design-2.jpg

4. My contact information is as follows:

[name and company details of the DMCA agent removed]

Filed on Behalf of:

Aware Bear
Andre Alves
5 Monroe Ave
Pittsford, New York 14534
Phone: 585-473-7035
Email: solutions@awarebear.com

5. I have a good faith belief that the use of the material that appears on the service is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or by operation of law.

6. The information in this notice is accurate, and I am either the copyright owner or I am authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner.

I declare under the perjury laws of the United States of America that this notification is true and correct.

Signed:

[name removed]

Note: [company name removed] is acting as an authorized DMCA agent and is solely responsible for the preparation and submission of the DMCA notice.

Don’t you just love the lies Andre Leite Alves manages to concoct?

As the DMCA takedown notice reads, “Please note that, in addition to the below infringement, the site itself appears to be nothing more than a spam redirect and an attempt to capitalize on my clients domain name.”

So this site is a spam redirect now? Amazing! I challenge anyone reading this to google the name of the habitual liar and discover the countless attempts he’s made to influence search engine results to combat the negative exposure that his actions have received here and in other places over the many years. It is unfortunate for Andre Leite Alves and Aware Bear being presented in a satirical manner here but there is a limit to how many times this clown should get away with his lies.

I think poor Andre was projecting a little too much when he came up with the “spam redirect” idea considering that he has produced tons of content and posted it all over the internet for just one single purpose. And yet, even after spending so much time over those many years, he accomplished nothing with it (nor will he, but he hasn’t figured that out yet, as I said, he is not the brightest bulb).

It’s also funny how all of Andre Leite Alves’ link-farm experiment sites use basic WordPress themes. I wonder if he will be starting to claim those are his designs just like he seems to do with anything that his eyes see.

The images will be back up shortly as I entertain the full counter notice of the DMCA process. In order not to expose the current web-host as this process resolves itself, you can view the images here, here, and here if you want.

A recent tip (thanks McQ!) by someone who recognized my office on a website that has nothing to do with me had led to yet another entry in the Office Thieves Hall of Shame. Today it’s Gerald Jameson, also known as Your Local Tech Guy (at yourlocaltechguy.com).

The website that the image of my home office was discovered on contained a little bit of information about its owner and his business, such as:

My name is Ger­ald Jame­son and I would like to be your local tech guy. I have over 20 years expe­ri­ence set­ting up, maintain­ing and repair­ing com­puters and var­i­ous sys­tems.

I guess those 20 years of experience did not include the the experience or knowledge that simply taking pictures from the web, no matter how much you might like them, and using them on your own website and/or for commercial and business purposes. I don’t know much about computer repair but I bet that repairing computers must be easier than repairing reputations.

Not only can I help with hard­ware, I can help with soft­ware set-up, choos­ing the right soft­ware or train­ing. This also includes Inter­net marketing,web design, graphic design, and pub­li­ca­tion design.

So if you have prob­lems with your com­puter, need a web site designed or just need advice on the lat­est tech I can help you.

This, of course, is the part why Gerald is present in the Office Thieves Gallery of Shame. Someone offering web design services, commercially in Shelby County and Tipton County, and yet did what he did? I would not want to work with such a web designer who might end up using copyrighted material without permission. In fact, I advise everyone to avoid such “web designers” like the plague. Especially since it could get you exposed like Shami Haq and Andre Leite Alves of Aware Bear Computers.

You could say if it is hard­ware, soft­ware or tech related, I have been involved with it.

And now getting caught at copyright infringement can be added to the list of things Gerald Jameson has been involved with.

It does speak for Gerald, though, that he replaced the unauthorized picture of my home office with something that could very well be some home office stock photo within mere hours of me notifying him of the infringement and offering the option to remove it or properly accrediting and linking it to its original source website. I suspect doing the latter was too complicated for Gerald as he just replaced the image and then decided to hide in a corner, not even trying to pass off a lame explanation along the lines of “I didn’t know you can’t just take pictures off the internet” or “the web designer did it” (which would’ve been funny considering Gerald’s YourLocalTechGuy business offers web design services.

On several forums on the internet someone using the nickname EndeverouX, claiming to work on PS3 hacks and something called ONYX 3.56 CFW 3.56, is using the images of my home office in his posts and signatures. THIS IS NOT ME but just some pathetic individual who is often called a fake and a fraud by his peers and who felt it was a good idea to use the images of my home office in the false hope of gaining some credibility from his peers.

Needless to say, EndeverouX has now accomplished exactly the opposite because any credibility he might have had is now being taken away as I expose him for the fraud that he truly must be.

EndeverouX has been making waves and noise in the world of the Sony PS3 (PlayStation 3) with various claims about him working on some firmware hacks under the name of ONYX 3.56 CFW. Don’t ask me what that is or what that’s even about. Anyone who knows me or has read my FAQ knows that I don’t play computer games and that I don’t even own any computer game console of any kind. But from the stuff I’ve seen on the nextgenupdate.com site it seems it all revolves about hacking this ONYX 3.56 CFW stuff for the PS3.

Many of EndeverouX’s peers in the PS3 forums have considered his statements and claims to be bullshit combined with a serious level of lies and fraud. Whether that is true I don’t know but I think all those people who say that about him are probably correct in their assessment of EndeverouX.

There is no doubt in my mind that if someone has to show off my office and claim it’s their workstations and their “studio” and then have the audacity to use them as images in every post they make it is nothing less than a sign of very low self-esteem. It is also a sign of being incredibly stupid and DUMB because so many millions of viewers have seen the images over the years on my site and recognize them as such.

If you examine the above screenshot of one of his posts I’m sure you’ll get a laugh out of it. Notice how he’s having arguments with his peers and claims he “will not stop down to anyone’s low level”. But, EndeverouX, you have stopped much lower than anyone’s low level and this is the proof!

The reason I discovered this was after getting a lot of hits from some Spanish PS3 forum in which EndeverouX “studio” was mentioned. One of the Spanish users ran the image through TinEye and called EndeverouX for what he really is; a complete and utter fake who wanted to impress his peers with something that isn’t his. A quick search led me to the “home base” of this pathetic individual (who claims to be a 29-year old with 9 years of experience yet that is drawn into doubt by his peers).

I have asked EndeverouX why he is using the images of my home office in the manner in which he does but he has not come up with any explanation as of yet. Not that it really matters because anyone reading this can probably figure that one out without his help.

I have also sent an official copyright infringement notice to the folks over at the nextgenupdate.com forum since it is their forum that EndeverouX is using to publish, without permission and obvious fraudulent intentions, the images of my home office. I expect the forum admins will be removing the images as per my request (I bet they wouldn’t want to be held liable for someone who’s so clearly a complete fraud). I wouldn’t be surprised if they end up banning this EndeverouX person from their forums in violation of the policies (such as not posing copyrighted material).

Of course, what someone like EndeverouX wants is attention and it is very clear from his actions in the whole PS3 scene that it is what he craves. I doubt he wanted the kind of attention this will now bring to him, though.

Especially on a site that’s so heavily visited as mine. I bet a little extra exposure on the officethieves.com website wouldn’t hurt either.

It’s a new kind of category for EndeverouX. I don’t think I have ever encountered an individual who’s claims are questioned by his peers and then to counter the doubts that are issues decides to use my office images to “buy” him some (non-existent and baseless) credibility.

With EndeverouX and his exposure on my website I hope to make it perfectly clear that anyone who saw the images and recognized them as my home office now also knows that it was not me on those forums.

Wow, EndeverouX, you really are a piece of work, aren’t you?

Update: I was wondering why I was getting so many visitors looking for EndeverouX and CFW and ONYX 3.56. But the Google search results on the left explains exactly where all those visitors and web traffic is coming from.

Welcome to your last 15 minutes of “fame”, EndeverouX. You’ve worked very hard for it so please be proud of yourself.

I think Aware Bear Computer Repair (i.e. Andre Leite Alves) may have been pushed from its coveted number one position in the office thieves’ hall of shame by a company called Innovative Consulting Group (using the domain name groupiconsulting.com), founded and co-owned by the very unreliable and suspicious Ihtisham (Shami) Ul Haq.

For the record, I have nothing to do with this fraudulent and illegally operating international ‘company’ called ICG, nor do I have any stake in any activity that either promotes, endorses, or encourages the outsourcing of software development (or any other such) activities.

Summary

Innovative Consulting Group, in its own words, “is an IT consulting and development company in service on the market since 1999″ and they “help companies around the world” through the many outsourcing activities that it allegedly offers. This company was found to be using an image of my home office on its main website, fraudulently implying that I am involved in facilitating or rendering of their “good services”.

After a very quick round of legal negotiations and settlement offers, Shami Ul Haq agreed to pay US$25.000 as a settlement fee and to remove the image from the ICG site. Shortly thereafter Innovative Consulting Group (ICG) took the addresses of its US office location (in Virginia) off the site and substituted a phone number for the address of its Australian office—only to replace that with an e-mail address a day later and after being confronted with the fraudulent addresses used by his company, in silence and the dead of night took off the Australian address too. Clearly, Innovative Consulting did not wish to be found anywhere besides its office in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Just as obviously, these are the sudden actions of a company or one or more individuals that have something to hide. In this hall of shame exposé, you will learn just what ICG has to hide—and it’s not just the fact that they are operating unregistered businesses illegally. Read all about Innovative Consulting Group in Islamabad, Pakistan. We’ll even show you the REAL images of their American offices. I guarantee you’ll get a few laughs out of it.

The website of Innovative Consulting Group (ICG) at the time of notification of copyright infringement. If the site still exists after this hall of shame exposure, you can find it at groupiconsulting.com.

A little background to put things into perspective

Those of you who know me personally or professionally know my clear and outspoken opinion on the subject of outsourcing (to low-wage slave-labor countries in what still is or used to be called the Third World). My experience with outsourcing, in particular assisting companies that have “outsourced their butts into a corner”, is such that I not only apply that experience to help those who have ended up with minor or total disasters as a result of such outsourcing but also help and prevent such disasters from happening in the first place. You will often hear me talk and consult about the dangers of outsourcing to companies in India and China as well as helping the companies in the Western part of the world understand just why things are not always as easy, clear, and cheap as they had hoped for. Some companies I’ve consulted for have lost millions of dollars on outsource projects. This goes far beyond “They are taking the jobs away from us,” though in many cases that is also true.

You can imagine that I would consider the association of my office with an outsourcing company that targets Western countries a direct attack on my integrity and reputation. The more than 17 million visitors to my website attest to the strong public association between those office photos and my business. Based on the photo on the Innovative Consulting Group website’s home page, it would be easy to assume I was affiliated or associated with them, or worse, had a stake in the company and its activities, and therefore never mentioned Pakistan because I wished to drive outsource money away from India and China and into my own pockets. That would be an entirely reasonable, if incorrect, conclusion for a visitor to the ICG website to reach. I’m sure you understand that under these conditions I was ready to take on this company head-on. I was not about to let them get away with this.

The information from the web designer

I became aware of this copyright infringement when I received a tip regarding screenshots posted to Deviant Art by Bilal Malik and decided to notify Bilal of the trouble his client was in and how he, as the designer of the Innovative Consulting Group website, could be in trouble depending on the kind of indemnification clause in his contract with the company.

Bilal Malik immediately removed the image from his Deviant Art pages and informed us that he did not have any part in the copyright infringement because the company (Innovative Consulting Group) did not want to pay for stock photography and provided their own content to the web design company that Bilal worked for when he designed ICG’s website. He also informed us that he created this design for the ICG web-site around March of 2009. That meant nearly 2 years had passed between the creation of the site and my discovery of the infringement.

The other interesting thing that Bilal Malik said, however, was that both he and Innovative Consulting Group were based in Pakistan and there would be no way to sue over copyright matters. Luckily I had already consulted with my attorneys on this matter and re-educated Bilal on that subject.

Facts about copyright law in Pakistan

Anyone else who thinks that copyright laws don’t exist in Pakistan is misinformed. The fact is that Pakistan signed the Copyright Ordinance of 1962. This Ordinance is a derivative of the English Act of 1914. In addition to that Pakistan is also a member of the Berne Copyright Union and Universal Copyright Convention. In 1992 the Copyright Amendment Act was signed into law in Pakistan and since that time allows for stiffer penalties and damages for offenders that are guilty of copyright infringement. Even of more interest is that under section 71 of Pakistan’s copyright laws it is not only the company that commits the act of copyright infringement that can be held liable: liability extends to every person who was in charge of the company at the time the infringement was committed.

First contact with Mr. Ihtisham Ul Haq ( Shami Haq).

Because I believe in a personal approach and keeping the lawyers locked in their cages until they are deemed necessary, I sent off a notification with additional information to ICG. They were informed of the infringement, the consequences, the unforeseen effects, and of course their legal position and my thoughts on how to resolve the matter. I prefer to have companies and individuals settle their matters out of court if possible, because it’s the best option for everyone involved and there is often no real benefit from the higher costs (and higher damage claims) and length of time involved in a formal legal suit.

Shortly after that a response arrived from someone who signed with just “Ihtisham,” without giving any indication of his or her full name and certainly not a job title. Rather unprofessional, I thought. But then again I am not familiar with business etiquette in Pakistan. The best part was that the response said that the images of the home office used indeed “showed similarity”. (Gee, ya think?!) And the message asked whether more of my images were found elsewhere on the site. But “Itisham” entirely failed to take responsibility for ICG’s actions, even though it was no longer possible to blame the web designer for the infringement. Needless to say, if you do that you’ll just get the legal chapter and verse in more detail.

Settlement reached

Chapter and verse read and the lawyers rattling the bars of their cage with eagerness to take things to a higher level, another response arrived from Mr. Shami Haq saying that he was ready to compensate me for falsely associating me with his business.

Based on the length of time the image was used and because it incited visitors to the ICG website to question my ethical standards and statements regarding outsourcing, and because Innovative Consulting Group deliberately committed copyright infringement as well as false advertising , my lawyers recommended I make an offer with the following options. One was a lump sum payment of US$25.000. One was a rectification on their website for the duration of one year with a mutually agreeable text that would disclaim my perceived association with them. Or a combination of the two for half the amount as a lump sum and half the period of time. Very quickly Mr. Ihtisham Ul Haq responded that they preferred to settle according to the first option, a lump sum payment of US$25.000 and asked for bank information, etc. to deal with the matter swiftly.

The speed at which they agreed was both surprising and suspicious. The general assumption was “That’s too quick, it appears they have something to hide”. Well, clearly they had, and did, and still do, but we’ll get to that part next!

My reputation is NOT for sale for $25

A few days later another response from Shami Haq of Innovative Consulting Group arrived asking whether he was correct that the US dollar amount was “twenty-five” dollars. I guess the notion of the number actually meaning “twenty five thousand” must not have occurred at the time of agreeing to that particular settlement option. I can’t begin to tell you how much we had to laugh but let’s just say that the entertainment value provided by ICG that day was certainly one of the best so far.

It does show, however, that something is seriously wrong with Innovative Consulting Group if they consider US$25.000 to mean “twenty-five” dollars. Even with the cultural difference of dots and commas there’s just no way you can mistake that number for its actual value. But then again, ICG and Shami Ul Haq claim that the company provides:

High-quality development such as web design and development, database design and integration, programming, web site maintenance, e-commerce solutions and Application development. We help companies around the world to leverage the power of the Internet by placing highly qualified design and programming specialists, project managers, and analysts at their fingertips. We beat deadlines and leave our clients completely satisfied. In addition, the relatively our weak Currency is allowing us to drop our prices, making us a favorite service provider for US-based clients. We have the skills you need, and we have the credentials, portfolio and client references to prove our abilities.

AND THIS COMPANY CLAIMS THEY ALSO WORK IN THE FINANCIAL IT INDUSTRY?!

It’s real easy to drive the point home here. What company in their right mind would want to outsource their development or IT tasks to these amateurs? Are you sure you want to have such numerical errors in your financial systems? Outsourcing is cheap and you get what you pay for but in the case of Innovative Consulting Group you might actually see your numbers vanish by a thousand-fold when “experts” like Shami Haq are part of your business. It does show that Mr. Ihtisham Ul Haq has the ability to make money disappear.

But that’s not all Mr. Shami Ul Haq can make disappear. Read on to learn just how he made his offices in the USA and Australia disappear OVERNIGHT.

But first let’s have a good look at this company and then the founder and co-owner because it is crucial to understand what is being presented and how what is being presented ends up being nothing more than a total scam based on lies and other very suspicious behavior.

Who are Innovative Consulting Group?

According to their own words they claim to:

Maintain high ethical standards in our dealings with clients and business partners, and make decisions that factor in our principles first and foremost. We treat each client’s business as our own. We care how they perform over the long term.

Ethical standards? I would argue that a company that doesn’t want to pay for stock photos and would rather steal content from the web has the ethical standards of a weasel with a drug addiction problem. Treat the client’s business as your own? I wasn’t your client and never will be, thank you very much. Please don’t treat my business as your own as you have done for nearly 2 years!

Since our inception, we have been committed as both business and community leaders. We believe that to build a successful company we must contribute back to our community in hopes of making it a successful environment for others. By making financial donations to registered charities that provide food and shelter to the needy, we hope to fulfill our obligation towards those that Allah Subhana wa Ta’ala tests by financial hardship.

I plead ignorance on the whole Allah Subhana thing they mention but I can read the financial hardship part and I think they might be in for that for the long run. If not by the trouble they have unleashed upon themselves and by their own decision and doing then certainly by the in-depth investigative exposé about the scam these jokers are running and how they target US companies who wish to outsource (their money) to this Innovative Consulting Group in Pakistan. I think that real financial hardship is yet to hit them.

Oddly enough, if you dig real deep you will find that this “multi-national outsourcing company” with the allure and presentation of that of a large corporation actually in more recent years only offered web-design and development services. But overnight it transformed itself into what you can see on their website at groupiconsulting.com. Some of the people and companies that allegedly outsourced their money to them include:

• Ken Dawson / Federal IT Publications, USA
• Usman / NEIMS
• Ikram / CCP
• Steve Philly web Solutions, USA
• VisageIT, USA
• Phoyola ArqITech, USA

Who is this Shami Haq (a.k.a. Ihtisham Ul Haq)?

Shami Haq claims to have been educated as MCS Software Engineering 1999-2003 at the Naval University. Unfortunately I was unable to obtain any verification of that. Based on public information out there, Shami Haq’s specialties (and that of the Innovative Consulting Group ‘company’ that he founded) include; Project Consulting, Software Development, Web Development, IT Infrastructure, Web Design, IT Outsourcing, Offshore Dedicated Team. It’s a shame that his specialties fail to list “content theft” and “impersonation” and “lame copyright infringement” along with “pretending to operate foreign businesses” and “pretending to be a multi-national company”.

Mr. Ul Haq also claims to be the founder of Federal Advantage, which operates in the Information Services Industry and provides on-demand federal resources & contact solutions. Or is otherwise described as “A collaboration of information for businesses to gain more opportunities to do business with the federal government”.

If that’s not enough for you, he also claims to be the founder of Federal IT Publication which is some kind of “GSA IT Catalog” and an “informative IT Directory offering in-depth information about vendors who provide products and services on GSA Schedule 70″. Mr. Shami Ul Haq also claims to have been the owner of WebSauce Technologies, a web design company that supposedly existed for a period of 3 years between 2002 and 2005. From the details on WebSauce you can see that Shami offered his “services” for $5 per hour. Yes, that’s right, $5.

If you look at the way Innovative Consulting Group, through its website, presents itself as a large multi-national outsourcing company and then examine their actual activities you will find that it is mostly just really simple and below average web stuff. Perhaps the presentation of the company was wishful thinking or just pure delusion. Either way the reality shows it is definitely deceptive.

Where is Innovative Consulting Group based?

Let’s get to the real fun part and expose the Shami Shame for all to see. Yep, you’ll now learn the true locations of this amazing outsource company from Pakistan. I’ll provide you with some images of the locations and the addresses that were listed on the Innovative Consulting Group web-site. You will learn all about this fraudulent company and its founder and co-owner an what he’s involved in when he’s not trying to sell glass top dining tables from the so-call “business address” in Australia (oh, yes, that’s right, we have plenty more information on the location in Australia and Mr. Shami Haq than we’re publishing here… yet).

During our legal communications and interactions the US office address was removed from the ICG website as was the office address in Australia. Instead the office in Australia only had a phone number. A day after those changes were detected the Australian office ‘lost’ its phone number and only listed the central e-mail address for the company. Eventually everything except the address in Pakistan was removed from the site. Suspicious? Offices that vanish into thin air might be a common thing when the owner of the company is called Shami Haq. This is the behavior of someone with a very clear and present consciousness of the need to hide. Unfortunately for Mr. Shami Haq, we already had the addresses and kept them on file and also have screenshots of everything. So now let’s have a look at these addresses. Put on your laughing face because you’re going to need it!

The US office of Innovative Consulting Group

8507 Kernon Court. Lorton, VA 22079. USA.
Phone: 702-626-09033

Is it just me or does this US office location and address simply not match the allure and presentation provided by their multi-national looking IT outsourcing services website?! And guess what, the property at 8507 Kernon Ct, Lorton Virginia is owned by a Mr. MAHMOOD HAIDER.

In fact, if you really want to know, at the time of writing this the land value is $78.000, the building value $187.333, the total property value is $265.330. It’s 1554 square feet of land with a 1440 square feet living area. It’s a 2 story townhouse (4 bedrooms 3.5 bathrooms) connected to water and sewer but has no gas connection but does have a fireplace. It was built in 1986 and the most recent sale is from 03-28-2006 at a price of $425.000. The sale before that was 4-26-2000 for a price of $165.000.

And just how are MAHMOOD HAIDER and Shami Haq connected? Once I have information on that I’ll be sure to let you know in an addendum. Perhaps Mr. Haider is the co-owner of Innovative Consulting Group because no other co-owners can be legally found or discovered by regular means.

Mahmood Haider also sold a property on Eastgate Lane 7312 to Sarah K. Anderson for $333.000 and another property on Curtier Drive 6035 to Travis J. Upton and Tiffany A. Wight for $180.000. However, before you start wondering, no, there appears not to be any license for a realtor or real-estate agent by that name.

The phone number listed (703-626-0933) belongs to the Herndon, Virginia area. Other information also directs the radius of the location to include the 8507 Kernon Court location in Lorton).

The Australian office of Innovative Consulting Group

13 Rolain Ave. South Morang, Victoria 1732 (should be Victoria 3752), Australia
Phone: 04-3128-1331

Another little plot somewhere in a typical residential area that certainly does not fit the way the company presents itself as a large internationally operating corporation. And not only that, according to other information, another company is registered to the address at 13 Rolain Avenue; Zach’s Distributors. A company that distributes funeral, cremation, etc. goods and materials.

The other thing to take note of is the postal code that ICG listed on their website. It consistently shows 1732 when in fact the actual post-code is 3752. Strange that an international outsource company like Innovative Consulting Group can’t even get their own post-code right, doesn’t it?

The Pakistan office of Innovative Consulting Group

Suite #03, 2nd Floor, Multi Trade 1, Plot #11
E-11/3, MPCHS, Islamabad. Pakistan
Phone: +92-51-253-4529

Indeed, it’s one large building site based on those images. However, those image may be quite old and likely actual buildings now exist at that location.

Of course, it could be a site that recently saw some impact of terrorist-seeking drones or just a complete mess of some other kind. The lack of building cranes, vehicles, or stashes of materials do make it seem odd for just a building site. Either way, this is the location of a company that presents itself as a big outsourcing multi-national? If you believe that I’ve got easterbunnies with bridges to sell you.

And if that’s not enough the address and phone number are used in other places on other websites as well. For example a company called ETCON ME, based in the Middle East, in the United Arab Emirates, with just a PO Box, a phone number and an e-mail address.

This comany, ETCON ME, also lists an address and phone number in Pakistan that is identical to that of Shami Haq’s Innovative Consulting. The phone number also shows up for a completely different address for Innovative Consulting. This time on an address listed as: 1-B, Street No. 50, F-7/4, Islamabad, Pakistan. This while the listed “owner” of the company is: shahzadyounis91.

Business license and registration

You can probably sense this one coming a mile away. After some initial searching and contact with the relevant agencies and authorities in both Virginia (US) and Victoria (Australia) it became clear that neither ICG nor Shami Haq had no business registrations or business license in either location.

Anyone with a little knowledge about business knows that it’s illegal to conduct business without the required registration, license, and in specific cases various permits. This may very well explain why, after our initial round of legal interactions, the company’s website no longer had their foreign offices listed. Let’s look at their business statements once again:

In addition, the relatively our weak Currency is allowing us to drop our prices, making us a favorite service provider for US-based clients. We have the skills you need, and we have the credentials, portfolio and client references to prove our abilities. We maintain high ethical standards in our dealings with clients and business partners, and make decisions that factor in our principles first and foremost.

So here we have a company, Innovative Consulting Group, founded and co-owned by Shami Haq, who also goes by the name of Ihtisham ul Haq, operating illegal and unregistered business entities with addresses in Australia and the US, claiming to have credentials and high ethical standards.

There are more appropriate ways to describe this situation and for lack of such on their site I will happily provide it: Innovative Consulting Group is FRAUDULENT and Shami Haq runs A SCAM. Because no matter how you examine this, left right top or bottom, front or back, the unregistered illegal nature of the non-existent business entities used in their “dealings” with alleged clients is everything except honest and ethical and truthful. Instead, it is all the opposite of that. Everything about Shami Haq’s Innovative Consulting Group reeks of misrepresentation and suspicious behavior.

Their “testimonials” are FAKES!

Yes. It’s not just Andre Leite Alves of Aware Bear Computers who’s good at writing fake testimonials and then removing them from the site when the fraud is exposed. Shami Haq is equally pathetic when it comes to the way he DECEIVES potential clients with FAKE testimonials. For example, here are a few that come straight from the site of Innovative Consulting Group:

Innovative Consulting was an amazing service provider to work with. Their quality of work was excellent, and completed all specifications required. They even made some changes after the project was complete. They did a great job, and we will use them again. Highly reccomended A++.Steve Philly web Solutions, USA

Innovative Consulting did a great job on my project. Their quality of work was excellent. All specifications were completed and on time. Price can”t be beat. Highly reccomended A++.
Steve Philly web Solutions, USA

Innovative Consulting showed infinite patience in developing the web portal and did a great job. In the instance that there were problems they took great pains to sort it out once I brought it to their attention. Would definitely work with them again.
VisageIT, USA

I am so glad that I chose Innovative Consulting. The staff was professional and very, very helpful and patient. I will definitely work with them again. I have begun referring my friends to them. They gave me exactly what I was hoping to get in a website. Two thumbs up for Innovative Consulting!!!
Phoyola ArqITech, USA

Guess what. There is no company in the US by the name of Steve Philly web Solutions. Go look it up yourself if you think otherwise. Or better yet, try and find that portal mentioned in the “testimonial” of VisageIT. But the best is yet to come. Try finding that oddly named Phoyola ArqITech. There exists NO SUCH COMPANY. In fact, as you can see below, that company ONLY exists on 3 pages on the internet; two of which are testimonial pages of Innovative Consulting Group (i.e. Shami Haq’s scam company) and one that you will find on the NEW SCAM COMPANY called GLOBAL CONSULTING (www.gc.com.pk).

Notice in the lower-left corner of the page (click the image to enlarge) it has the exact same testimonial as that over at the Innovative Consulting Group website. Are all these fraudulent con-artists operating on the same low intelligence that they always re-use their fake testimonials? It certainly appears that way for Mr. Shami Haq!

Their “company news” is FAKE TOO

It is not just the testimonials that are obvious fakes. The company news on the Innovative Consulting website is just as fake and designed to create a false perception that Shami Haq and his company had an involvement with the projects mentioned there. But the facts are that he had nothing to do with the National Rabta Information Portal or the “Successful Implementation of SIM Information System”. The company news articles are just general articles taken from the actual reporting media in Pakistan as you can see here and here.

The only company news article that fits Shami and his scams is the one about having successfully delivered a new platform site for “Coach To Coach”. Or as the news article puts it; “Innovative consulting Web consultants have melt there skulls in the implementation of social netoworking plateform for CTC. CTC is a global networking company designed to promote the finest qualities of each individual coach in their respective field”. Yet the date on that company news article has changed at least twice in the past two weeks and I don’t know what’s so successful about having created the site that you can see in the image on the left.

Global Consulting Pakistan

Shami Haq probably thought that he could dump his US and Australian “office addresses” from the site and in a worst case scenario just make the entire site vanish just like any other criminal and con-artist would. So he prepared Global Consulting (www.gc.com.pk) as the next NEW SCAM to continue on with his fraudulent business activities. Unfortunately that will not happen for Global Consulting since it is now nicely exposed and available in recorded form here on the site.

The domain has only been very recently registered and if you examine the site (I won’t be putting up all the screen shots of all the pages here even though I of course have them) you will find the structure, topics, areas, and everything except the design, to be identical to the Innovative Consulting Group website. Except the Global Consulting site is not yet finished because Sami has been working his butt off trying to setup that new scam. He even hasn’t gotten around to adding some suspicious addresses on the new site.

Poor delusional wannabe-scammer Shami Haq even has this little “IBM Business Partner” logo on the Global Consulting site. Guess what… Oh, you already guessed. Yes, IBM has never heard of either Shami Haq or Ihtisham Ul Haq or either of the companies! The second screenshot on the left shows a different design for his latest scam. Note that the image that was pretended to be used as the site’s main page has a copyright notice of 2010 (while Innovative Consulting listed 2009 even though it was 2009), proving this to be the “fallback” plan Shami has to rid himself of the crisis of ICG. Also note that the footer says “designed by Megatronix Studio”. That’s a web design company in Pakistan. Once Shami noticed that we had discovered his latest scam under a new name and with yet another new site he quickly removed everything from the web server and put up the sign you can see on the left. Yes, you’re right, he can’t spell construction. Then again, why would you want to outsource a single dime to a scam that claims their site is “under upgradation”. It’s not even a word.

Also compare the following two texts of Innovative Consulting Group’s website and that of Global Consulting’s website. From Global Consulting:

Global Consulting is an IT consulting and development company in service on the market since 1999…. Global Consulting team with experience of over 8 years is available to ensure client satisfaction through timely and quality service provision. We help companies around the world to leverage the power of the Internet by placing highly qualified design and programming specialists, project managers, and analysts at their fingertips. We beat deadlines and leave our clients completely satisfied. In addition, the relatively our weak Currency is allowing us to drop our prices, making us a favorite service provider for US-based clients…

And the one from Innovative Consulting Group:

Innovative Consulting is an IT consulting and development company in service on the market since 1999.. Innovative Consulting team with experience of over 8 years is available to ensure client satisfaction through timely and quality service provision. We help companies around the world to leverage the power of the Internet by placing highly qualified design and programming specialists, project managers, and analysts at their fingertips. We beat deadlines and leave our clients completely satisfied. In addition, the relatively our weak Currency is allowing us to drop our prices, making us a favorite service provider for US-based clients…

Wow. What a scam. And what an obvious scam. Just as well this con-artist is being reported to all available authorities before any US company ends up losing their money to a fraudulent individual with most definite suspicious intentions.

Shami Haq engaged in PLAGIARISM AS WELL

You think you’ve heard it all? You haven’t. If you look at the text portions of both the Global Consult and Innovative Consulting websites you will see a use of the English language that Shami Haq has been incapable of in his communications with us. He stole most of the text on his websites from OTHER SITES. Here’s just one small example from their services descriptions:

Application Maintenance Service which handles all the small to big complexities pertaining to your business applications. We can correct the defect and also enhance the capability of the application.

Now GOOGLE IT.

Want another one? How about this one:

Offshore Outsourcing has come a long way from its origins as a strategic source of inexpensive talent. Global Consulting offers world-class offshore outsourcing and consulting services guaranteed to cut costs and improve quality.

Which is the same as this one over at another outsourcing place called Netsoft Consulting:

Offshore Outsourcing has come a long way from its origins as a strategic source of inexpensive talent. NETSOFT offers world-class offshore outsourcing and consulting services guaranteed to cut costs and improve quality.

Maybe you want an even more interesting example to show just how widespread the Shami Scam goes? OK, let’s have one. Here’s a text straight from the ICG and GC scam websites:

As responsible citizens of this world, we try to do our part in making our surroundings, and the world by extension, a better place to live. Since our inception, we have been committed as both business and community leaders.

This is the same text used by a company called Gleam Technologies, IIIrd Floor, #16-7-310, Azampura, Chaderghat. Near Sahifa Masjid, Hyderabad-500024. See for yourself in the image linked here. Who’s ripping off who here? Is India stealing from Pakistan or the other way around? Given Shami’s questionable activities I’d say Shami is the one doing the stealing.

But there is something even more interesting about that Gleam Technologies website. Notice the little “Integrated Services” logo in the bottom left? Where have you seen that before? Yes, on the Innovative Consulting Group website! Incidentally, the same text is also used by TechZone Systems, LLC.

As you can see, the exact same word for word text portions can be found on other (some also rather dubious!) websites. What did all these websites, including Shami’s sites, use for this? Some pre-baked “scam in a box” product? Some kind of “all your lies for $4.95″ type product or did they just all decide to copy major portions of texts from other sites, companies that really do know what they’re talking about when they had those texts written for their (original) site?

Shami the scammer is even so careless and negligent to show that he has been stealing most of the site for the new scam company Global Consulting. Pay attention to the screen grab via this link. So in addition to all those technical, development, and IT services the company also has a service called “INTERVENTION FOR TEENS”? Yeah, right. Forgot to remove some left-over bits from a set of frames you copied from somewhere, Shami?

I (do not) hate to be the one to say it but it looks to me like Mr. Shami Haq is not just a completely failed web-fiddler but a rather failed criminal who’s still trying to learn the basics of deception, lying, and stealing. Considering all the things you can read about here (and double check for yourself if you want) it is evident that Shami wants to become a “Mr. Scammy” and follow in the footsteps of bigger criminal con-artists. So far he’s being an amateur at all of it, though. Copying texts from other outsource companies in India? If you ask me that’s beyond pathetic and exceedingly desperate.

Bottom line, both Shami Ul Haq’s websites use copied portions of texts that originate from at least 51 other websites. If anything, it does PROVE that Shami is good at stealing. It also SHOWS that getting caught hurts when it gets exposed like this.

What’s next?

Quite a bit, actually. It wouldn’t be in my best interest to announce that here, but you can imagine that some further investigation is going to take place while I have my lawyers notify all the relevant authorities regarding the illegal business operation and suspicious behavior by Shami Haq and Innovative Consulting Group. Pending some of the further information we’re awaiting, a decision will be made to start legal proceedings. If nothing else it might rid the world of a fraudulent company and their vague misbehaving founder before they grab more money (and perhaps jobs) by illegal means out of the economies from their preferred ‘hunting ground’ in the US.

On a slightly related subject there is another even more serious thing to consider. Lots of organizations, including the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) repeatedly bring to our attention the money laundering schemes conducted by shell companies (i.e. front companies) in the west in order to funnel the money generated to Pakistan to fund international terrorism. I’m sure you’ve heard of it in the media over the past many years just like we all have heard and seen it. In case you haven’t you can familiarize yourself with the subject matter here, here, here, here, here or here, or maybe even here and here.

Considering the profile of this company, the illegal operations in Australia and the US, the sudden disappearance of their office addresses the moment that Innovative Consulting Group through Shami Haq discovered that the matter of the copyright infringement was going to be publicized, the clearly fraudulent nature of the construction and presentation the company wishes to project, and all the other information above, certainly can be categorized as “suspicious behavior” and “suspicious activity”. As we’re frequently informed, such suspicious activities should be reported to the proper authorities so it can be examined and dealt with.

Conclusion

Would you really want to outsource anything to Shami Haq (a.k.a. Ihtisham (Shami) Ul Haq) and his Innovative Consulting Group (groupiconsulting.com) or Global Consulting (www.gc.com.pk) knowing that:

• Shami Ul Haq enters into agreements it does not honor.
• has fast moving office addresses that can vanish overnight.
• does not appear to be operating as a legal registered business in Australia.
• does not appear to be operating as a legal registered business in the USA.
• copies their texts and mission statements and company values from other sites.
• are now proven to be deceitful liars and NOT real businesses.
• was unwilling to pay for stock photographs according to the web designer.
• is careless and negligent when it comes to using content without permission.
• pretends to be a lot more than the company really is.
• claims to render services for the financial sectors but don’t understand basic numbers.

What if Innovative Consulting Group provides cheap web design and development work to you and by its own ignorance and carelessness causes you to be exposed to potential legal trouble and in response to your complaint will simply move offices again in the dead of night? They certainly show all the typical behaviors normally associated with a fraudulent operation.

I’m sure everyone agrees that all of this says:

GAME OVER SHAMI!

I was made aware of this case of copyright infringement using an image of my Home Office by someone who had seen my website and recognized the image on the Queensland Connectors & Cables website. Something that happens a lot and isn’t surprising considering just how many visitors my website gets, on average.

The person that notified me is a local in the area of where Qld. Connectors and Cables is operating from, namely Milton QLD, Australia. The company itself is located at Unit 2/10 Dorsey Street and had been notified by the individual that found them using my image. However, Qld Connectors and Cables didn’t respond to that and failed to take the image offline so the information about the company was passed along to me.

As you can see from the screenshot above (you can click it for a larger image) an image of my Home Office was being used to promote a USB-SVIDEO device. According to the marketing statements the converter works as a second video card and allows you to connect an extra monitor to your desktop PC or laptop’s USB port and will support resolutions of up to 1920×1200 and 2048×1152.

Unfortunately, the choice of image in combination with this device IMPLIES that a setup like my home office would be possible with the device. There are several other brands of these things out there and trust me, creating a setup like mine will not work with these devices.

However, the way Qld. Connectors and Cables presents it and attempted to conduct their marketing and sales efforts is what I consider to be FALSE ADVERTISING. After all, you are using an image of a setup that is completely different, technically different, and designed for a different purpose than the product that was being advertised on their site.

Shame on Qld. Connectors & Cables for false advertising.

Needless to say, after Qld. Connectors and Cables did not respond to the original notification and I was informed of this infringement it didn’t take long (under 2 hours, a very quick result) to resolve the matter. A single demand explaining the legal and potential harm to their reputation was enough for Qld. Connectors and Cables to reconsider the way they were promoting this USB-SVIDEO device and the image was immediately taken down as the demands stated.

In case you’re wondering, the squashed format of the stolen image of my Home Office is entirely the way that Qld. Connectors & Cables had put it on their site, making the multi-wide-screen setup look even much wider than it really is. The least you could do when you steal my office images is to at least make sure the proportions are still correct, I would think!

Just when you thought no company could not sink any lower than Andre Leite Alves of Aware Bear Computers, think again. If there ever was a company deserving of being exposed in the “hall of shame” of copyright infringers it’s Astucemedia, Inc. in Montreal, Canada. I present to you the fraudulent misrepresentation and copyright infringement:

Astucemedia in Montreal using a copyrighted image without permission:

The design and graphics of the site are, I hope, actually their own and not also snatched from elsewhere. I have blurred the design out of respect for their copyright concerns, which is more than I can say for them and their total disregard in such matters. If you want to see what it otherwise looks like check their site. I’m sure you can find the original image here or here.

Notice how they pasted their company name and logo onto the wall. Why do that unless they wanted to create a false perception? What reason could Astucemedia have to associate me with their business activities? The obvious ones? Perhaps. But there might even be ulterior motives involved that I can only theorize about and will share with you later in this “hall of shame” exposure. Or you could just scroll down a bit.

How Astucemedia’s copyright infringement was discovered

A mutual client (which remains nameless) of Astucemedia and more recently of yours truly asked me what my involvement with them was. None, of course. After a few seconds of confusion and further communication it was pointed out to me that my office was prominently displayed on their website. What a great move, using my office on your site, this client now has doubts about the professionalism of Atucemedia and I most certainly agree with the client on that. How’s that for being stupid… unless it wasn’t mere stupidity?

Astucemedia’s response to the copyright infringement

Of course, Astucemedia was contacted about this blatant copyright infringement. Since they are a company that is technically playing around in my “backyard” of 3D computer graphics I offered them a chance to take responsibility and own up to their actions. Unfortunately they decided to quickly swap the image with another (one watermarked as copyright 2006 by Google) yet didn’t show any common decency or professional courtesy to respond.

No “sorry”, no apology, just total silence. This shows me exactly what kind of company Astucemedia and its management wishes to be and highlights the unprofessionalism they convey. It’s possible that the management at Astucemedia wasn’t creative enough to come up with a typical lame excuse or a flat out lie. Not the kind of non-response you’d expect considering that they had the benefit of using my home office image since April 2008 (according to caches on the internet that were used in the research of this case of infringement).

What sort of company is Astucemedia?

It is important to know that Asucemedia is “a design and technology company providing on-air broadcast graphic services using exclusively using Vizrt, Wasp3D, Ventuz, Orad, Brainstorm, Chyron Hyper X and Miranda/VertigoXmedia and also traditional tools”. They are specialized in “elections, weather, news, sports and branding” and has staff based in the USA, Canada (147 St. Paul West, Suite 320, Montreal, Quebec), Switzerland (Rte de Taillepied 85, 1095 Lutry, Lausanne) and United Arab Emirates (the UAE one operating only through a cell phone number). They create visual content for TV networks such as ABC, ABC7, CBS, Fox sports, AlJazeera International, TF1, TSR, WBZ, MusiquePlus, MBC, and others.

In their own words they offer; On-Air Broadcast Graphic & Virtual Set Design and Integration, Interactive Graphics for screens, Video Wall and Virtual, Stereoscopic 3D Services, Real-Time Data Integration, Broadcast Graphic System Advice & Rental, Channel Branding, “Turnkey solutions for Elections, Weather, Sports, News, Finance”, Graphics for Event and Presentation, Live Web Streaming with graphics, and Training.

I’m sure my readers understand that a company like Astucemedia, having as its core business the creation of content for clients, must be intimately familiar with intellectual property and copyright matters. For a company that presents itself as experienced professionals it is nothing less than absolutely shameful to be negligent using unverified and unauthorized content. Shame on Astucemedia, indeed. Reckless, careless, and unprofessional are the words that come to mind to apply in this situation.

Who are the people responsible for the business at Astucemedia?

The owner, Alexandre Leclerc, currently appears to be busy in trying to sell software in the Middle East as the managing director of Feeling Software. This company is involved in “big brother” type solutions for security and surveillance cameras; Omnipresence 3D Security Platform (3D Pro Design, Central Command, GeoLink, iGuard) and provides things like license plate recognition and mobile surveillance. If only it could have been used to keep an eye on his other company and prevent t from negative attention. I think I have a client for Feeling Software, a company called Astucemedia certainly could use some internal content surveillance to guard against the use of unauthorized materials and prevent it from being used to create a fraudulent misrepresentation.

Alexandre Leclerc, by his own information, is the owner of Astucemedia since October 2003. The domain certainly has been registered at that time and shows the registrant to be Alexandre Leclerc, 301 Chemin Club Marin, Iles-des-Soeurs. However, information on the Feeling Software website claims he started the company in 2006. Since March 2010, Alexandre has taken up a role as the managing director at Feeling Software but Alexandre but is still very active for Astucemedia because he’s been posting about job positions as recent as August 2010. Perhaps Feeling Software isn’t working out too well for him or isn’t keeping him busy enough. Obviously Alexandre is too busy to apologize for the copyright infringement conducted by his company.

Previously, during 2003 to 2006, Alexandre was a project manager at Miranda Technologies (also in Montreal). It appears that many people at Astucemedia have come from Miranda Technologies, such as Michel Croibier (listed on their website for their office in Switzerland). And there is Jean-Francois Poirier, named as the CTO at Astucemedia and formerly a software designer at Miranda Technologies.

I never had any contact with any of these individuals but in order to provide full disclosure in this expose I shall mention that I have experience with some Miranda Technologies products. However, that dates back to 1994 when we were doing a large development project that involved Matrox Studio OEM systems and hardware 3D DVE boards. Titania, I think those were called, forgive my memory since that’s 16 or 17 years ago now. So my connection to the company that some of the people at Astucemedia came from predates Alexandre Leclerc’s arrival at Miranda Technologies by some 9 years. This was even several years before Mr. Leclerc started as a graphics designer at VertigoXmedia.

Why Astucemedia simply used an image without permission?

If you have any ideas about that feel free to leave a comment on this article. However, because Austucemedia has declined to respond to their flagrant image theft while having been provided ample opportunity to do so I am going to make a few educated guesses.

Perhaps Astucemedia does not have nice offices to show. Maybe, for their commercial marketing purposes, they figured it would impress their (potential) clients by using an image they felt was impressive enough to use even though any person with half a brain would know that using images without permission or from an unverified source is a really carnal offense, ESPECIALLY in the content creation industry!

One could also argue that Astucemedia had a strong desire to enter the “hall of shame” of copyright infringers and desperately wanted the number one position held by Andre Leite Alves of Aware Bear Computers in Rochester. Or maybe they wanted to show they were better than David Dik of Linado at modifying an image. It’s possible they just wanted to show themselves as an unprofessional business that lacks moral judgment while displaying a disgraceful disregard of other people’s materials. But why wish to be perceived as lowly as “common thieves”?

An ulterior motive for using my office without permission?

Oh, right. You were probably waiting for this since I mentioned it earlier. Again, lacking a response and clarification from Astucemedia and concluding that they wish to stick their heads in the sand regarding the responsibility of their actions, I am forced to theorize along a different direction.

Let me start by saying that the field in which Astucemedia conducts its business is a field that I am intimately familiar with. After all, I’ve been around in that field for over two decades (over 20 years). Astucemedia is not, by any leaps or bounds, a market leader or “big name”. Of course, marketing statements may imply otherwise but that’s certainly not my perception of them. I think I had vaguely heard of them many years ago, at best. I don’t know what reputation Astucemedia has, whether one exists or not, but can certainly say that according to my experience with them their reputation went from non-existent to plain awful.

What I do know about reputations is that my involvement in the development of (realtime) 3D Virtual Set and Broadcast Graphics software and solutions predates the careers mentioned in the profiles of the people in charge of Astucemedia. I might be presumptuous and pretentious for saying it but I like to pride myself on a rock solid reputation throughout this industry. I would even go as far as to say that my renowned reputation probably goes much further than that of Astucemedia and its (ir)responsible management.

It would be beyond stupid if Astucemedia were to mention my name or the names of my businesses on their site because there has never been any involvement or affiliation. But with the widely recognized images of my home office throughout its various incarnations I can’t help but seriously question whether someone at Astucemedia thought that they might gain something by explicitly using an image that is easily and quickly identified with me and my activities. In other words, to simply use an image that might be linked to my reputation for their commercial or reputational gain by fraudulently, falsely, and very possibly litigious unauthorized using it the way they did.

What Astucemedia has gained by copyright infringement and implied affiliation

They certainly haven’t gained the implied affiliation because I’m officially stating right here and now that I am not, nor ever have been, and certainly would not ever now, wish to be affiliated with them in any way, shape, or form.

They also haven’t gained positive attention. I know what happens when I start blogging and when I am inspired to add a company to the public and eternal “hall of shame”. But Astucemedia’s unauthorized use of my content over this long period certainly makes them very deserving of the negative attention they have brought upon themselves. What they have gained is that they are now on my radar in different ways. Pending some more investigation to hopefully uncover the reasons of their actions I reserve my right to take full legal action (in laymen terms; “sue their asses off”) and they’re aware of that.

Astucemedia has also gained generous space and bandwidth on my site and a very serious consideration for the top copyright infringer on the (unfortunately) growing “hall of shame”. There’s no physical prize in being the #1 on that list but there is a price that comes in the form of a big jar of “google juice” (the SEO experts out there will know what that means).

Conclusion

It’s a shame that a relatively small, and to me mostly unknown, company in my very own “backyard” has felt the need to let it come to this. But they had a lengthy period of time to discover their infringement before I did (unless of course they already knew from the moment they used the image that they were doing so with completely different motives). They were then provided a generous amount of time to respond to my inquiry and request to own up to their responsibility in a professional manner but what Astucemedia has shown beyond a doubt in my mind is that they do not wish to act in a responsible manner…

And that could be bad news for their clients! I certainly have nothing good to say about any company involved in the creation of content that shows this level of negligence towards the content of other professionals. There are plenty of other broadcast graphics design companies out there and, as far as I know, none of them have felt a need to use content stolen from my site.

Update 12-17-2010

Astucemedia responded to the initial communication claiming that the freelancer/company that did their website provided that image. Right, where have we heard that one before? Oh, a few dozen times already. And guess what, that argument has never held up in copyright matters. It seems Astucemedia does not want to take responsibility. What I find surprising is that a company in the field of content creation doesn’t know that the finger pointing “they did it” does not diminish or alter the responsibility of the company accepting and using material without due dilligence.

Who the hell is Ros Kaspi and why did she use an image of my Home Office for an article about online entrepreneurs on one of her websites? Let’s dig a little deeper into this and uncover the ethical implications of copyright infringement as conducted by someone who is affiliated with what many people, including lawyers, are describing as a total scam and illegal business model. But let’s start with a screen grab of the article that was on her site prior to getting in trouble with me after the disovery.

The first thing to take note of is the domain that the website runs on which is called itpaysyoutoplayblog.com. Maybe it’s just me but with domain names like that the sense of it being some kind of financial scam comes to mind. The About page of the site doesn’t even have any content so the owner and author of the site, which was identified as Ros Kaspi (Rosalyn Kaspi) probably didn’t want to provide any information there.

The second thing to notice is that the article “Online Opportunities for Entrepreneurs” contained an image of my Home Office (in its previous setup) and associated me and my business activities with the content of the article. That, dear readers, is certainly the quickest way to get me to rain down lawyers on you. Additionally some amounts of money are mentioned including various names of people like Richard Sears, Alvah Roebuck and companies such as Sears. None of those names or companies have anything to do with me or vice versa and certainly have nothing to do with the image of my Home Office.

Because Rosalyn Kaspi did not leave any information on the site to help in the process of contacting her about the copyright infringement and the false impression she created with the article the summons and notice was added to the site as a comment that awaited moderation. However, that comment awaited moderation for over a week, well beyond the deadline stated in the notice of infringement. In fact, at the time of writing of this article it is still showing as awaiting moderation which shows you just how involved Ros Kaspi is
with this site of hers.

A search was started to find Ros Kaspi. One of the first things discovered was a phone number and a traveltvi4pay domain and the fact that Ros Kaspi speaks for a company called Travel Ventures International (she signs her communications with that company name). The company appears to provide “online travel discounts” of some sort and a quick search into TVI revealed a lot of material on many different websites claiming that TVI is a total scam, including an attorney explaining why TVI Express is not legal in the US or Canada.

Some additional searching revealed even more interesting things from Kasey Chang and an article he wrote about Ros Kaspi and some other business thing she’s involved in. In Kasey’s words:

Who’s Ros Kaspi, you ask? Kaspi is half of the moronic duo who had been publishing increasingly hallucinatory entries about TVI Express, passing on messages from their uplines that made absolutely no sense at all.

And in another article featuring Rosalyn Kaspi we find this:

Kaspi and Jackson, who runs a TVI Express member website called IncreaseMyMonthlyIncome. They’ve published some crazy claims before, such as claiming a TVI Express convention in the Florida, US in 3 months even though TVI Express has no announcement doing so. Today, they released even MORE unconfirmed information, which is just… idiotic.

They claim that their upline (the new one, since the old one quit after getting a “cease and desist” from state of Georgia) …

Darren Aikens TVI Presidential in the United States today had a webinar with quest speaker Aknon, who is the current TVI Express Barrister of Marketing.

Do they even know what a “barrister” is? A barrister is what the Brits call a LAWYER or attorney. What the **** is a “lawyer of marketing”? What sort of a lawyer is he that won’t even give his full name? And where does he practice law? India? VP of marketing or president of marketing, I can believe. LAWYER OF MARKETING? Are they kidding me!?!?!?!

But what’s even more interesting is the fact that Kasey writes about Travel Ventures International (TVI) HAVING STOLEN ANOTHER IMAGE. You can see the images and the alleged infringement on Kasey’s site.

So clearly both Travel Ventures International (TVI) and Rosalyn “Ros” Kaspi have a history of copyright infringement for their personal and monetary gains as part of how they prefer to conduct their business. If you can call it a business because everything you can find online about Ros Kaspi and TVI certainly amount to a lot of scam related accusations that I’m sure have a very firm and solid basis considering the amount that can be found, including things like these:

Back in October 2010, Darren Aikens, another “presidential” TVI Express distributor, was supposedly Kaspi and Jackson’s upline, and claims to have talked to Tarun Trikha and a new “barrister of marketing” Aknon and relayed exciting news. Mind you, this is AFTER TVINorthAmerica got the Cease and Desist from State of Georgia.

So what you got here is a lie (by TROYSHELL) to “improve” a lie (by Kaspi and Jackson), about yet another lie, about a company that was founded on lies.

It should be obvious that all this doesn’t indicate anything good about whatever Ros Kaspi is involved in but certainly shows that affiliating themselves with others (or vice versa), without permission, is just part of how Ros Kaspi wishes to conduct her “business”. That is, until real legal crap managed to hit the fan, of course.

Luckily it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to find the location of Rosalyn Kaspi (Chicago, Illinois, USA) and thanks to her avatar images used on many other sites like LinkedIn it was easy to find a trail of other sites using the same avatars which eventually led to an e-mail address at comcast.com. It then didn’t take too long to settle the matter!!

This is normally the place where a company or individual gets shamed and exposed for copyright infringement regarding my Home Office images. This time, however, I’m not going to expose just the user but the company that enables the user to commit acts of copyright infringement.

In this particular instance the individual responsible for the copyright infringement is someone by the name of Dennis Landayan who created one of the most awful looking websites I’ve seen since the dawn of places like Geocities and the tremendous amounts of crap that started to culminate over there. Dennis Landyan calls this eyesore of a site “Freedom of Technology”. But it seems Dennis may have mistaken his concept of “freedom” to extend and include “freedom to steal images”. I’ll let the following screen-grab fill in the rest of the picture.

Notice how the page has some automatically generated links for the Terms & Conditions and Copyright Notice. How ironic that they certainly don’t apply to the image of my home office used there by Dennis Landayan.

However, because Dennis Landayan has failed to leave any contact information on his chaotic and messy eyesore site there was no way to send a copyright infringement notice or summons. But Terapad (part of SiteJourney Ltd.) the company that provides Dennis Landayan the ability to host such an eyesore sire has to act under the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act). Unfortunately (for Terapad and SiteJourney) they have appeared repeatedly unresponsive to the DMCA notifications.

Shame on Terapad and SiteJourney Ltd.

Looking at the terms and conditions of use, Terapad provides individuals with a free web-site (much like Geocities once did), and has a clause regarding violations that clearly states:

23- VIOLATIONS
Please report any violations of these Terms and Conditions via email at labs@terapad.com

Guess what. There is no response nor any action when DMCA notifications are sent to that address. In fact, any other contact address or way of contacting either Terapad or SiteJourney Ltd. yield any response whatsoever. It is possible that Terpad has gone out of business or that SiteJourney is bankrupt and that what we’re seeing online are just the left-over skeletons of some kind of Geocities clone or failed experiment.

However, the unresponsiveness is also what essentially creates a bigger problem for Terpad and its parent company SiteJourney Ltd. because not responding and thereby allowing the infringement to continue makes Terpad and/or its parent company SiteJourney Ltd. liable and responsible for what is being hosted on their server(s). And that’s where the “fun” starts.

SiteJourney Ltd can be found at 40 Beaufort Court, Admirals Way, London, 14 9XL, England (UK). Tel: 020 7093 6040 and Fax: 020 7093 6041 while citing e-mail addresses for support support@sitejourney.com and a general address as labs@sitejourney.com. The latter address, as you can see, is the same as the address for any violations of the terms of service (TOS) of TeraPad.

It is unclear just what the relation between Terapad and SiteJourney Ltd. is but the site of the latter contains the following information:

Terapad.com is a revolutionary online publishing and eCommerce solution well adapted to the needs of small and medium businesses. It’s ‘Software as a Service’ (SaaS), meaning there is no capital investment to make, no long term tie-ins, and no upgrade cost, ever.

Terapad is unique in providing a complete online presence going well beyond the traditional ‘web brochure’, and includes e-commerce, forums, image gallery, blog, RSS, event calendar, recruitment tools, support for internationalization, and 500+ other features.

This Hall Of Shame contestant will probably see an update in the story provided here as the last and final notice of copyright infringement has gone out to SiteJourney Ltd. After which there is no longer an excuse to claim ignorance nor any excuse for their prolonged and continued unresponsiveness of over 3 weeks (at the time of writing of this expose).

Needless to say it will be interesting to see how SiteJourney Ltd. is going to respond to a formal legal complaint and whether the results of that might break the company’s back or drive them to take their responsibility like any reliable web-hosting company should (and usually do!) but in the meantime they’ve found themselves a welcome place amongst the contestants in the game of who’s the biggest and worst copyright violator in the Office Thieves Hall Of Shame.

You would think that after the enormously damaging and reckless ‘stunt’ by Andre Leite Alves of Aware Bear Computers people would know better than to Photoshop themselves into my office pictures and pass it off as theirs. It seems some people are just not capable of learning much and just willingly fling themselves into a position to be placed on the “hall of shame” of “office infringement” (or, in this most recent case, the hall of shame of triple-P (pathetic pretentious pretenders) type individuals).

This is NOT ME but a pathetic pretentious pretender named DAVID DIK.

The above image was discovered on the about page of Linado. A website still under construction with a domain that is registered to David Dik on Zum Laakkanal 4 in Rostock, Germany. Further research shows that David Dik either is, or pretends to be, a web designer of some sort that resides in Germany but appears to prefer the Russian language for his website and has links to places like this and this which appears to be sites about Kabbalah “the science and purpose of life”. I’m not sure whether David Dik has found his purpose in life but at this point in time I would have to conclude that David Dik’s purpose in life is to become known as a fraud and a pretender who likes to impress his potential clients with an office that’s not his, instead of his (perhaps incredibly lacking?) web design skills.

The original image from my “office 5.0″ page

Perhaps David Dik’s purpose in life is to be better at Photoshopping himself into my office than Andre Leite Alves of Aware Bear Computers in Rochester has been. Clearly David Dik’s attempt at doing so has been better in overall quality yet does not escape the eternal ridicule he may now have to suffer as a consequence of it. Sorry Mr. Dik, but it’s not a contest. If it were a contest you might actually win a prize, though. Except it’s not the recognition of that prize that you probably wanted to invite upon yourself. I guess the Kabbalah doesn’t teach anything about copyright infringement or might not have any good advice such as “you shouldn’t steal… theft is bad”. Or maybe it does but David Dik hasn’t studied that part yet. The Russian text under the image on his about page translates to “I love my work. It’s my hobby!” but it isn’t clear what his hobby involves, except of course, pasting an image of himself in other people’s environments in order to create the perception and appearance of success or hardware overkill?

Maybe I should be tipped off once a month so I could make this a recurring feature on my blog; adding new members to the “eternal hall of shame”. Maybe add online polls to each post so visitors could vote on a scale of 1 to 10 in categories such as “level of pathetic” and “quality of faked image”. Hell, I could be starting a whole new trend here!

The original image above seems to be particularly popular for individuals and companies that wish to use it without permission as there is currently another, much more serious, matter of copyright infringement for commercial purposes that’s being handled and that I might be publishing about in the near future. The company at the center of this is currently being contacted in a much more serious manner. Depending on the outcome I would say, stay tuned.

Yet another entry for the Office Thieves Hall Of Shame web-site has materialized. This time the company is called CyberNet Charleston, based in as you can guess, Charleston, South Carolina, USA. The company’s web-site shows that CyberNet Charleston does “computer support” (which got labeled as tech support after the removal of the image of my Home Office), network wiring, data recovery, website designs and website hosting.

However, a far more interesting thing could be found on their site under their contact-us page. That page contains the following statement:

We are a Christian-based company and have been working under the same management for over 2000 years.

Oh, my. That’s a rather long period of management, please let me contain my sarcasm about the cheeky nature of such a marketing statement. But more importantly it raises several questions. I am not a bible scholar and certainly never studied theology but to the best of my recollection I seem to remember that the bible clearly states “thou shall not steal”. Something about the ten commandments in which it certainly stated “do not steal”.

I have very little experience with “Christian Based” companies so wouldn’t know how they normally operate and go about their “business” but based on the example set by CyberNet Charleston I think it means that copyright infringement doesn’t equate to stealing. Likewise, using an image of my Home Office for the purposes that they chose to do so looks to me as if they did so to try and make their “tech support” or “offices” look impressive and appealing. Again, I don’t know about that but I believe the bible also talks about things like vanity.

After the discovery of the CyberNet Charleston website they immediately received a summons with the demand to cease and desist and take down the image they had so happily infringed upon. Within a day the image was replaced with something else entirely but no further word has come forth from CyberNet Charleston.

Normally a company tends to respond with one of various lame-ass excuses such as “we didn’t know we were infringing on your copyright” (ignorance of the law is no excuse and never held up in any copyright case that went to court) and “we didn’t know it was your office” (as if they hadn’t yet noticed it wasn’t their office?!) or the hallmark of most copyright infringers, “it was the webdesign company we hired that did that” (yes, and you’re still responsible and liable as a company and you can go figure it out later with the indemnification clause you might have had in the contract with such a web design company).

Again, with the example that CyberNet Charleston sets for “Christian Based” companies it seems they want me to conclude that being a “Christian Based” company means you try and avoid any and all responsibility and stick your head in the sand until something may or may not blow over entirely. I don’t know where it says that in the bible but perhaps someone more informed about that could let me know.

Of course, the one thing that went through my mind was “God may not punish you but I sure will” and that certainly has materialized for CyberNet Charleston.

Any lawyer or attorney that one consults in cases of copyright infringement will tell you that not responding and hoping things will magically (or by devine intervention in the case of “Christian Based” companies?) go away is by far the worst possible approach to the problem. But it’s entirely possible that a place like CyberNet Charleston does not accept man-made laws and looked up in the bible where it said anything about copyrights and only found the copyright notice of the book itself.

Over the many years I’ve had people ask me if they could use one or more images of my Home Office for some kind of presentation or project they were working on for entirely non-commercial purposes, things that wouldn’t be published anywhere, etc. and there have been instances in which I said, sure, go ahead, because I don’t have a problem with properly accredited links or use of that kind. Unfortunately I no longer do that because of people like Louis Darling (a.k.a. “aussie4me“) and here’s the story about why that is.

Louis Darling asked me, a long time ago, whether he could use some of my office photographs for some music video he was working on. It was for just a personal project that wouldn’t be published. Didn’t seem  like a big deal to me so I kindly gave him permission to do so. It’s rare these days that people actually ask in the first place. Unfortunately, I am starting to learn that people who do ask might not entirely be honest and truthful about their real intentions.

Recently, however, a friend of mine pointed out a video on YouTube titled “The maga computer setup”. (Yes, that’s correct, it’s no longer there, instead there’s a nice copyright message). The video contained an entire slideshow of almost all of my home office photos and scrolling text of the various specs combined with some music track. Not anywhere in the video was it clear that this was my office, where the images came from (you had to look real close to identify the transparent watermarks I’ve put in them in the corners). I tried contacting the individual via YouTube about this but got no response. It was only a little later that I discovered that this was the very same Louis Darling who had asked permission to use the images for his personal project that wouldn’t get published.

And not only was it a video as described above but Louis had turned it into some kind of “YouTube Game” that I probably just don’t understand. He asked viewers to identify the source of the images and figure out where they came from and who owns the setup in the images. There were several hundred responses in the comments of the video, some more clueless than others, some more ignorant than the rest, but intermixed with comments from Louis talking about the setup with incorrect descriptions and other half truths. I have no idea what the fun is in starting a guessing game like that but I wasn’t amused in the slightest by it.

After discovering the nicknames and handles used by Louis Darling I decided to look a little further and to even more of my surprise, the images he asked permission to use for his private project that wouldn’t be published were all over his MySpace site! Both in the form of a slideshow on his main page as well as the entire collection in his photo album. You can see the results here as I grabbed them as I discovered all this.

There’s a lot that can be said on the subject of what exactly is a personal project that won’t be published or made public in any way but I can’t see any possible way how that could ever be interpreted to mean what factually happened and how all the images were subsequently used all over the place (and perhaps other places that I am not at all aware of).

How can anyone construe the permission granted for a personal project to include all this unless the request was made under false pretense with the intention of claiming to have the right to do that just because one holds a very peculiar view on exactly what a private project is.

Lacking any response from Louis Darling on his two YouTube accounts I waited a few days and then proceeded to have the appropriate DMCA take-down notices filed with both Google (YouTube) and MySpace. The copyright agent for MySpace was less easy to dig up but at the same time when the agent received the DMCA it was a very fast and efficient process. Less than 20 hours, in fact. Google needed a day or two more before acting but that too is considered to be swift.

If you’ve never heard of Transworld International Youth Organization welcome to the club. I sure never heard of them. Until now, that is.

What you see here is a grab of the “contact us” page of this organization which I assume now can confirm must be is some kind of scam. Why else would a real organization use a picture of MY office on their “contact us” page, implying it’s their “head office”? The address listed for Transworld International Youth Organization (TIYO?) is Brunham Road, FT. Smith, Arkansas, United States of America.

There is very little you can find about this organization but if you search for the name of their secretary, supposedly a person going by the name of Professor William Kim Higgins, you will find this particular e-mail (from 2003) where the person posting the e-mail asks whether this is a scam or not.

What strikes me as really funny, and is perhaps related to someone not paying attention. The www.stefandidak.com URL is part of the office photo because it links directly to one of the images on my site. If you’ve come to my site with questions about Transworld International Youth Organization or Prof. William Kim Higgins because you saw my URL in what they claim is their “head office” picture then I’m afraid I can’t help you. I have no idea who that is or what that organization is trying to do but I can tell you, it isn’t anything good and you are likely to lose information or money to this organization and the scam they are running. Needless to say, I have absolutely nothing to do with these crooks.

Looking at the rest of the website it just looks like a total scam revolving around global relief re-construction and some kind of vague conference. Note that the main site also has an alternate main page that’s linked from elsewhere in the site. I don’t know what kind of fraud ring this organization or the (probably fake) Prof. William Kim Higgins is running but it sure looks like it’s nothing good and the website does not inspire me with confidence. In fact, the text and content on the site just seems to scream “this is a total scam” as far as I can tell.

If you know more about this, please let me know of leave a comment here.

Addition: Some additional information can also be found here. This link features a warning about a scam called International Youth Org. Saying that an e-mail from one Secretary General, Madam Cynthia Brady is floating around. This particular Transworld Youth Organization uses the address of No 157 West 47th Street, New York, NY 10036.

Another addition: A website called Fraud Watchers also has some info on this scam. It appears the scam attempts to get your name, date of birth, place of birth, passport numbers, country code number, etc. information from you. For what is likely to be nefarious purposes.

Update April 4th, 2009: The scammers have killed their site. After exposing them in my post and updating an image on their site it only took them a week to discover the game was over. They had not just taken one of my office images, they linked directly to it. I modified that image so everyone visiting the website of these scammers showed THIS image. I expected they’d notice that sooner or later and take the image off. Instead, they just deleted their entire site (which was hosted by FreeServers).

This is getting to be prime time entertainment if you ask me. For those of you that have read a previous post of mine on the theft and infringement on my copyrighted material committed by Andre Leite Alves (operating a business under the name Aware Bear in Pittsford, Rochester, New York), there is a new development that I would love to share with you all.

Andre Alves has attempted to misuse (abuse) the DMCA in order to get my story of his fraudulent actions removed from the internet. In order to attempt that this little Aware Bear sent a DMCA complaint to a domain registrar where stefandidak.com, my domain, is registered. Unfortunately it once again shows that Andre Leite Alves has no clue about the law, in any way shape or form, and had no legal assistance in the process of writing that DMCA complaint (the plethora of errors and missing words in there is very similar to his hasted reply after I first confronted him with a demand he immediately stops using my material for his personal gains and business activities). It is starting to be clear that Andre Leite Alves is an amateur in every respect.

What Andre Alves also hadn’t realised is that I have dealt with DMCA situations in the past and am even on record in a policy report by the Brennan Center for Justice of the NYU School of Law, regarding a very similar case with a professional con-artist I had exposed. That con-artist also attempted to abuse the DMCA for what it was never intended for as you can read in the report.

I believe that Andre Alves of Aware Bear Computers is not too happy with me showing the derivative work he illegally and without authorization created from my copyrighted work. And again it becomes clear that Alves has no legal assistance because they would have informed him that it was his mistake that caused the circulation and that now it allows me to use it under the fair use clause of the copyright act. Of course, we all know that Andre Alves doesn’t care about the image and copyrights, if he cared about copyrights he would not have done what he did and would not have spent the past days removing OTHER material from his site and replacing it with generic images instead. All Andre Alves cares about is not getting exposed. Well, bud, it’s a little too darn late for that.

Notice how Andre Alves also commits perjury in his DMCA complaint by stating that my website is operated an on anonymous basis. Funny he can find the contact details of the domain host but not my contact details that are right there alongside it. Contact details he already had in the first place as is already on record from our previous communications. Again, it shows typical low-life behavior of a petty amateur because he believed he could get away with filing a DMCA that way. What Andre Alves should do, if he feels strongly about copyright infringement and believes that the fair use clause does not apply, is file suit against me and leave it up to the courts (he already knows where to find me to file suit and even if he didn’t it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out with a simple lookup). I would welcome him trying that. For one, if he makes a personal appearance in court (very unlikely since he’s running and hiding from being served with my case that’s now hanging as a thundercloud above his head) we can serve him easily. Notice how he failed to provide a valid address on the DMCA (a requirement)

Anyone who can provide me with the whereabouts of Mr. Andre Leite Alves at a specific point in time can expect a generous reward once we can serve him his summons.

Anyway, for your enjoyment and education I present to you the DMCA complaint as it was sent to the domain registrar. Needless to say, all the errors and mistakes are verbatim and by Andre Alves. I wonder if he will attempt to claim copyright on his DMCA complaint too now.

Andre Leite Alves
Rochester, NY 14618
(585)473-7035, (585) 738-2583
(585)473-7035 FAX

November 12, 2008
“Take Down Notice” Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act 17 USC ? 512
[name of domain registrar]

Dear Sir or Ma’am:

This letter is formal notice to you under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), 17 USC ? 512. that you are maintaining materials on your servers that infringe on the copyrights of my personal work. Accordingly, we hereby request that you take down or remove this infringing content from your servers.

1. Identity Of The Copyrighted Work That Has Been Infringed. My own the copyright personal photograph, which have appeared and have been published over the years in, among other places, web sites owned by me and in literary and marketing materials in several types of media distributed to the public. Below are just a few examples of the items of content that have been copied and pasted into this website.

2. Identity of the Material That Is Infringing My Copyrighted Work. The website StefanDidak.com currently contains pages infringing content. The search queries, and the search results containing web pages that infringe on my own rights, are attached as Exhibit B. We can provide a digital copy of this Exhibit B if it would be helpful to you.

3. Contact Information for Andre Leite Alves. Please send all correspondence on this matter to:

Andre Leite Alves
Rochester, NY 14618
(585) 473-7035, (585) 738-2583
(585) 473-7035 Fax
solutions@awarebear.com

4. Contact Information for Owner/Administrator of the Web Site Containing Infringing Material. The individuals who operate the website www.stefandidak.com do an anonymous basis. The email that they provide on their website is: stefan@stefandidak.com.

5. Good Faith Statement & Affidavit. Please see the affidavit attached as Exhibit A.

If you have any questions about this notice, please contact me at (585) 473-7035or at solutions@awarebear.com

Thank you,
ANDRE LEITE ALVES

Exhibit A
AFFIDAVIT

I, Andre Leite Alves, declare the following:

1. I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described in the attached letter, that appear on the allegedly infringing web pages as described in the attached letter, is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

2. I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in this notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the, owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the State of New York that the foregoing is true, and correct.

Exhibit B
Link1
Link2

I would like to thank Andre Alves for providing this DMCA complaint under penalty of perjury because he has now incriminated himself even further than he had already done. Thanks Andre! You have just declared that you have used the stolen material that “appeared and have been published over the years in, among other places, web sites owned by me and in literary and marketing materials in several types of media distributed to the public”. So it’s been used even more than we already can prove with the hardcopies of the brochures, judging from his words. You’re going to not be too happy in court but please do continue to incriminate yourself and declaring so under penalty of perjury. Maybe, Andre, it is time you get an actual attorney instead of trying to play one yourself. You end up making a clown out of yourself this way.

What Andre Leite Alves also hadn’t grasped is that by not having proper legal counsel it can become a very painful situation that backfires (which, once again, it has for him). For example, he has not understood the DMCA at all (then again, there does not seem to be much he understands other than that he needs to hide and run from a legal suit that is likely to impact his life in a very negative way), and as a result has not understood section (f) of the DMCA in which it states that it makes the sender of an invalid claim liable for the costs involved, including legal fees.

Of course, I can’t complain because his clowning around works in my legal advantage.

I operate my website on an anoymous basis? Gosh, this Andre Alves must be a certified moron if he thinks anyone with half a braincell believes that. A 2-year old can easily prove that is not the case. It is, of course, entirely within the realm of possibilities that I overestimated Andre’s IQ. With the US credit crisis going on, perhaps that IQ is also a negative number.

Update 29th March 2012, once again Andre Alves attempted to file a DMCA and botched it up completely. It cost him $99 and provided us with PRICELESS ENTERTAINMENT.