The virtual mafia ran by Ed Magedson and his racketeering operation calledRip Off Report.com
We recently wrote an article on Rip Off Report and it’s ties with google, nowCommercial Investigations, Inc. would like to go into more detail about Rip Off Report.com itself. Ed Magedson, the creator of R.O.R. (rip off report.com) one mightconsider him “The Godfather” of an online Corleone family or if that analogy seems a bitdated, a Tony Soprano of the internet. Ed has a cutting edge way of extorting businesses.In every mafia movie, T.V. show, or story, typically thugs and gangsters show up to lawabiding businesses with baseball bats, and guns asking them if they would like to pay for “protection.” Many people may think this is a “thing of the past” Ed Magedson is doingthis to companies via the internet. Instead of physically damaging a business or it’semployee’s Ed attacks reputation, and image. Sarah Fenske from the Phoenix Times hadan interview with Ed Magedson, and wrote this article, “The Real Rip Off Report”http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2007-02-01/news/the-real-rip-off-reportSarah writes this on page 6 of her article,
“It's because, as the number of lawsuits against Magedson has increased, lawyers have learnedabout Magedson's willingness to take money from companies to mitigate bad complaints. He callsit his "corporate advocacy program."Here's how it works: Businesses pay Magedson a fee, plus a monthly retainer. And in exchange,Magedson makes "EDitor's comments" next to complaints — generally saying that the claims arefalse.”
Ed and his lawyer defend this “corporate advocacy program” by Ed needing this moneyto keep the website running. A minimal fee would be understandable since websites havea cost for running them. However if Ed was doing this program for the right reasons, itwould be an “at cost” program. In multiple cases Ed charges six figure price ranges and amonthly retainer. If Ed was not extorting and had a legitimate “at cost corporate advocacy program” the cost of editors and website hosting, maintenance, would cost businesses nomore than a few hundred dollars to get their slander taken off the website, and allowingEd to make a profit. Web hosting is such a competitive market, using godaddy.com youcan have an extremely reliable website, with unlimited storage space and transfer for $12or $13 bucks a month. The only actual costs you are looking at, would be an editor,website manager, and money in Ed’s pocket. (If Ed hired efficiently he could even have awebsite manager double as an editor) So, imagine if Ed charged a company $200 onetime fee and then a $15 a month retainer. This leaves the website cost being covered by just one business signing on to the corporate program, leaving all other business’sretainers as pure profit. The $200 would be to pay his editor and cash in his pocket, not bad for a job that would take a whole 15min or less to go look up the negative commentand delete it. Then repost a new one saying this previous comment was found to beslander by a competitor, or something of the sort. Even raising the ante on this, a one time
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