—
Reputation management has apparently entered a bold new era.
An entity facing an old SEC enforcement settlement hired a reputation-management company to improve its online search results.
Fair enough.
Nobody enjoys having an unpleasant regulatory history show up near the top of a search page.
Then the hired help allegedly decided ordinary search engine optimization (SEO) wasn’t ambitious enough.
The SEC inspector general says the largely overseas reputation-management company fabricated a U.S. District Court order and submitted it to an internet search engine in an effort to get information about the settlement removed from search results.
From the SEC:
The OIG conferred with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and found that the court order was in fact fabricated. We subpoenaed records related to emails sent to the internet search engine and the SEC in support of the de-indexing/removal requests and identified the sender’s internet protocol addresses.
We interviewed legal counsel for the Entity and discovered that it hired a “reputation management” firm (the Firm) to assist with “search engine optimization.” The Entity hired the Firm to remove harmful internet links related to the Entity’s business. Unbeknownst to the Entity, the Firm, largely based overseas, created the fake court order and sent emails to the SEC seeking de-indexing.
Most SEO firms recommend better content, cleaner websites, stronger backlinks, or perhaps a professionally written explanation of whatever unpleasantness the Google-gods keep remembering.
Having worked as an SEO and content specialist for decades, I know that doing it the “right way” more often than not leads to success.
Stupid shortcuts?
Pfft! Idiots.
Fabricating federal judicial documents would appear to be farther down the checklist.
The fake order wasn’t merely waved around internally. Investigators found it had been submitted to a search engine as part of an effort to de-index information about the SEC settlement. The reputation firm also contacted the SEC, seeking removal of related information from the commission’s own websites.
There was one substantial problem with the legal paperwork.
The court hadn’t issued it.
The U.S. District Court involved confirmed the supposed order was fabricated. The SEC inspector general then used subpoenas to trace communications tied to the effort and alerted federal law enforcement and court officials.
The most important detail is also one of that keeps the story from becoming unfair to the client. Investigators found no evidence that the entity that hired the reputation-management company knew the order was fake.
So imagine paying somebody to improve your online reputation, only to discover that your reputation consultant’s strategy apparently included inventing federal court paperwork.
At some point, “We should improve your search engine results” became “How convincing can we make the judge’s signature look?”
The SEC didn’t identify the internet search engine involved, so there’s no reason to pretend we should know which company (ahem, Google?) received the fabricated order. The scheme itself is strange enough without embellishment.
The larger story is less funny.
Search engines and online platforms routinely process legal requests seeking removal of material. Court orders carry enormous weight because they tell a company that a judge has already considered the dispute and directed some action. A convincing forgery can therefore exploit the trust built into the system.
Once fake judicial documents enter the process, search-result manipulation stops looking like aggressive public relations and starts seeming like something federal investigators need to examine.
The inspector general ultimately referred information to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center and notified federal court officials before closing its investigation.
There’s a useful lesson here for anybody shopping for online reputation help: ask about experience and fees, what results are realistic, and perhaps ask one more question.
“At any point in this process, are you planning to invent a federal court order?”
If the answer includes a long pause, quickly run away.
The strangest government stories are often buried in inspector general reports that almost nobody reads. PJ Media VIP helps us dig through those documents and find the details worth your time. Save 60% with promo code FIGHT.
