Consumer Fraud Silicon Valley Web Services

[Michael Wechsler]

SPAM DUMPING FOR MESOTHELIOMALAWYERATTORNEY.COM.

Unfortunately at TheLaw.com we've had a visitor who keeps signing up under new account names, making about ten posts and replies of jibberish, and tries sneaking in backlinks in the posts and his signatures to this site: MESOTHELIOMALAWYERATTORNEY.COM. This site which is apparently owned by a company called Silicon Valley Web Services, Inc., which is also owned by an individual named as Brendan Monahan. Research indicates the owner of the mesotheliomalawyerattorney web site is an Internet marketer and we are sending a cease and desist letter to the registrant that appears on record. Apparently several of the posters have IP addresses linked to India, and one can guess that the owner of the web site is paying these posters, directly or indirectly, to promote links on our web site by using cheap outsourced labor to dump spam links.


MESOTHELIOMALAWYERATTORNEY.COM.

Registrant:
Silicon Valley Web Services, Inc.

1484 Pollard Road
Suite 415
Los Gatos, California 95032
United States

Registered through: Silicon Valley Web Services, Inc.
Domain Name: MESOTHELIOMALAWYERATTORNEY.COM
Created on: 25-Aug-07
Expires on: 01-Jul-14
Last Updated on: 18-Jul-08

Administrative Contact:
Monahan, Brendan brendan@brendanmonahan.com
Silicon Valley Web Services, Inc.
1484 Pollard Road
Suite 415
Los Gatos, California 95032
United States
(801) 858-7800

Technical Contact:
Monahan, Brendan brendan@brendanmonahan.com
Silicon Valley Web Services, Inc.
1484 Pollard Road
Suite 415
Los Gatos, California 95032
United States
(801) 858-7800

Domain servers in listed order:
NS127.HOSTGATOR.COM
NS128.HOSTGATOR.COM

 

[Michael Wechsler]

Notice that the owner of the MESOTHELIOMALAWYERATTORNEY site is identical to the owner of brendanmonahan.com, as is all the contact information. The same goes for the Silicon Valley Web Services company.

BRENDANMONAHAN.COM

Registrant:
Brendan Monahan
1484 Pollard Road
Suite 415
Los Gatos, California 95032
United States

Registered through: Silicon Valley Web Services, Inc.
Domain Name: BRENDANMONAHAN.COM
Created on: 13-Apr-00
Expires on: 01-Jul-14
Last Updated on: 18-Jul-08

Administrative Contact:
Monahan, Brendan brendanmonahan@hotmail.com
1484 Pollard Road
Suite 415
Los Gatos, California 95032
United States
8018587800

Technical Contact:
Monahan, Brendan brendanmonahan@hotmail.com
1484 Pollard Road
Suite 415
Los Gatos, California 95032
United States
8018587800

Domain servers in listed order:
NS127.HOSTGATOR.COM
NS128.HOSTGATOR.COM

SVWS.NET

Registrant:
Silicon Valley Web Services, Inc.

1484 Pollard Road
Suite 415
Los Gatos, California 95032
United States

Registered through: Silicon Valley Web Services, Inc.
Domain Name: SVWS.NET
Created on: 08-Mar-02
Expires on: 01-Jul-16
Last Updated on: 18-Jul-08

Administrative Contact:
Monahan, Brendan ilovespam69@hotmail.com
Silicon Valley Web Services, Inc.
1484 Pollard Road
Suite 415
Los Gatos, California 95032
United States
8018587800

Technical Contact:
Monahan, Brendan ilovespam69@hotmail.com
Silicon Valley Web Services, Inc.
1484 Pollard Road
Suite 415
Los Gatos, California 95032
United States
8018587800

Domain servers in listed order:
NS127.HOSTGATOR.COM
NS128.HOSTGATOR.COM

 

[Michael Wechsler]

While we are simply reporting the facts that we are finding, it might be a good idea for those interested in hiring Brendan Monahan or Silicon Valley Web Services for Internet marketing to ask specifically as to how they will accomplish their goals. We're having problems with posts here directing traffic to a domain that appears to be owned by him - and apparently, we're not the only ones. The following link appears from another concerned individual who drafted the following, an excerpt is below:

YourFreeMusicDownloads.com - Scammer with a lot of websites and identities

Recently I read a news release regarding a website called YourFreeMusicDownloads.Com, claiming to offer free mp3 downloads by filling out surveys. I figured it was a scam, but I went through the entire process to check it out for myself.

The website first asks for a valid email address, and the addresses for two friends. I opted to provide that information with my own email address, which is heavily filtered, and two free email services.

The next step is to fill out a survey. I signed up for the first survey on the list, and proceeded to complete every step. As it turns out, the survey was a legitimate company called YourTopBrands.com, and after signing up for three services they gave me a voucher for a free $100 Visa gift card.

I waited several weeks for access to the mp3 downloads, but received no access code. I then contacted YourTopBrands.com to ask if they were affiliated with the referring website. The answer was No. YourTopBrands.com has never heard of, nor do they have any business relations with YourFreeMusicDownloads.com. I forwarded this information to contact@yourfreemusicdownloads.com and waited for a response, which never arrived.

I waited several more weeks, and still had no access to the promised mp3 downloads. However, my inbox now receives hundreds of spam messages per day (graciously filtered at the mail server). Now that I have established that YourFreeMusicDownloads.Com is indeed a scam, I did some research on Google.

As it turns out, the same contact phone number and address are listed for several other shady websites located in California. Top it off with the fact that the retard is a webhosting reseller under the domain svws.net. The funny part is, the phone number has a Florida area code, and the business that resides at the address listed for YourFreeMusicDownloads.com is actually SK Donut Shop. Here are the sites I've found so far:

svws.net
Monahan, Brendan
Silicon Valley Web Services, Inc.
1484 Pollard Road, Suite 415
Los Gatos, CA 95032
ilovespam69@hotmail.com

-

brendanmonahan.com
Brendan Monahan
San Jose, CA
408-892-5222
brendan@brendanmonahan.com

-

YourFreeMusicDownloads.com
Chris Rearden
1440 Pollard Road
Los Gatos, CA 95032
contact@YourFreeMusicDownloads.com
1-904-369-1215

-

FreePlayStation3.net
Brian Cornerstone
1484 Pollard Road, Suite 415
Los Gatos, CA 95032
contact@freeplaystation3.net
1-904-369-1215

-

MesotheliomaLawyerAttorney.com
Brian Cornerstone
1484 Pollard Road, Suite 415
Los Gatos, CA 95032
contact@MesotheliomaLawyerAttorney.com
1-904-369-1215

-

arizonataxliens.com
Brian Cornerstone
1484 Pollard Road, Suite 415
Los Gatos, CA 95032
contact@arizonataxliens.com

-

commercialpropertyappraisal.com
1484 Pollard Road, Suite 415
Los Gatos, CA 95032
contact@commercialpropertyappraisal.com

-

increaseyoursalary.com
1484 Pollard Road, Suite 415
Los Gatos, CA 95032
contact@increaseyoursalary.com

-

learnforexblog.info
1484 Pollard Road, Suite 415
Los Gatos, CA 95032
contact@learnforexblog.info

-

onlineforextradingblog.com
1484 Pollard Road, Suite 415
Los Gatos, CA 95032
contact@onlinwforextradingblog.com

-

cheapwebhostingcompanies.com
1484 Pollard Road, Suite 415
Los Gatos, CA 95032
contact@cheapwebhostingcompanies.com

-

forextradingplatformblog.info
1484 Pollard Road, Suite 415
Los Gatos, CA 95032
contact@forextradingplatformblog.info

-

qualitybabyfurniture.com
1484 Pollard Road, Suite 415
Los Gatos, CA 95032
contact@qualitybabyfurniture.com

-

safebabyfurniture.com
1484 Pollard Road, Suite 415
Los Gatos, CA 95032
contact@safebabyfurniture.com

 

[cbg]

Just out of curiosity, I've noticed a plethora of posts, some here but most on another board I moderate, where there is post that pretends (in some but not all cases) to respond to the original question, but then includes a link to (fill in the state - I've seen about twenty different ones) Addiction Resources. Regardless of whether such a link is appropriate to the question.

Do you happen to know if there is any connection?

 

[Michael Wechsler]

I wouldn't know without knowing the details. I've almost gone to battle a few times with a couple of these "marketing geniuses", one of the worst being a group located in the Empire State Building here in New York City. I can't remember the name of their sites offhand (too-spoiled, toospoiled and a host of other names they registered) but I almost filed a quick suit just to deservedly tarnish their reputation and attempt to pass off their sites as "legitimate successes." Another group was Prepaid Legal Services which was less connected directly to the spammers but still seemed to care less about whether the marketing practices were lawful and ethical.

Many allegedly legitimate (and successful) marketers will hire an international company, e.g. in India, where the people there will work to post hundreds of posts on forums for just a few dollars. As you can expect, these employees could care less about quality or rules and will simply "get the job done" and collect their money. These marketers, if they respond, typically claim they don't know anything about the practice and of course wouldn't condone it. However, since it was done by an external company, there is little they could do.

In other instances companies set up affiliate programs, typically appearing to be more at a higher incentive (as if any of the affiliates really made any substantial money) and let them go wild at will. They will eventually delete the accounts of affiliates who are reported but I've rarely ever received a response with regard to any of my reports.

With regard to the next one in New York City, I'm setting things up to make them a test case. Hopefully we can help blaze some new trails here and help clean up some of the mess at the same time.

 

[Michael Wechsler]

More research reveals that Brendan Monahan may have a history of spamming dating back several years, which may or may not related to work his site and resume claim was done for Philips, NXP, Systemonic and Infineon. As of right now it appears that much of his spamming relates to business fronts he puts up to obtain affiliate links for his sites. The posts below are taken directly from links below:

Sattelite Guys Forums


Quote:
Originally Posted by nanovation
You can also try contacting a local Dish retailer in your area to see what the coverage is like. Try doing a local search by zip code at CRAP LINK REMOVED to find your local retailer.
Regards,
Brendan
Well, well, well. Guess who owns this site? BRENDAN! Just looked up the whois information. The site was created on Apr 5. Pretty quick to compile that big database. If anyone would like to let Mr. Monahan know how much you appreciate his spam, you may write to him at (courtesy of the WHOIS database of internet registrations):

Brendan Monahan
533 Pine Wood Lane
Los Gatos, CA 95032

You can also email him at brendanmonahan@hotmail.com.

I absolutely detest spammers.