6 ms·

SEO Company CEO Contracts Murderers to Kill Competition, Client Exposes All

104 points by dETAIL 9y ago

lithos 9y ago
SEO is dirtier than I thought.
- it_learnses 9y ago
  I'm not sure we can blame an entire industry because of one sociopath.
  - gsich 9y ago
    >SEO >industry Snakeoil is more like it.
- moomin 9y ago
  But not by much.
coldcode 9y ago
buttsbydr90210.com?
1_2__4 9y ago
I don’t know which is worse, the story topic or Medium’s floating “open in app” desperate plea.
- thsowers 9y ago
  Someone posted a Show HN[0] here a while ago to fix this, and I use it everyday [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15123638 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15123638
- _Codemonkeyism 9y ago
  What is worse? [ ] Medium’s floating “open in app" desperate plea [x] Someone hiring a killer to kill his competitor My pleasure.
rdtsc 9y ago
Coming from a post-Soviet period, I am surprised a bit that this doesn't happen more often. Company owners would be killed seemingly without much worry if they crossed anyone powerful. I was doing homework one night and felt the house shake, I thought it was an earthquake. It turns out a bomb went off in a 5 story apartment building nearby. Someone was trying to kill a banker so they left a bomb by their door.
- outoftacos 9y ago
  The rich and powerful have always tried to get away with... anything they can get away with. Every industry, every political party, every time period. There is no humble and innocent team, even your team. If you think this isn't happening today you're just naive. You should always be skeptical of those people, especially when the amounts of money start getting into the hundreds of millions+. Those people have nobody's interests but their own in mind. Pretending that SEO companies are more or less scummy than a social network or a search engine or an oil company or an airline or a defense contractor is a waste of time. Be skeptical of all of them.
- czechdeveloper 9y ago
  I just wonder if it's not sometimes better to be invisible, even if it means little poorer.
- jondubois 9y ago
  Yes, I'm surprised how celebrities and CEOs of big corporations live so long... In spite of the bodyguards. It's hard to appreciate the sheer number of people that exist in the world... Surely there are enough crazy people to populate an entire city. Is it possible that intelligence is inversely correlated with insanity? I thought it was the opposite.
  - loceng 9y ago
    Insanity is related to the ego mind. The more control the ego mind has then the less input and influence the heart has - the less empathy exists and the more willingness to cause harm as a valid survival mechanism. It's really quite a scary proposition to go against the wished upon status quo of people and organizations who are like this - who become comfortable with this. This behaviour seems only steered away through fear of getting caught. If there is little fear of being caught or of being prosecuted, then this behaviour will be as rampant as it can be without calling too much attention - or those like journalists who do call attention to it will also make the list to be assassinated/murdered in the most extreme cases. There are more covert things people could do to simply ruin someone's life by doing actions indirectly.
taprun 9y ago
I was very suspicious when I read the article. It didn't seem to link to any government websites or newspapers, but I did find a story about the activity in the LA Times [0]. [0] http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-ceo-murder-for-hire-20170605-story.html http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-ceo-murder-for-h...
- hnaccy 9y ago
  It links to court document.
franze 9y ago
>... does very little to enhance our web presence in the first place and then never does anything further to improve our results. Complaints are met with excuses. In other words, ... ... a company that makes false promises and delivers little value. SEO agencies in a nutshell. Disclaimer: I'm a SEO.
- jlebrech 9y ago
  digital snake-oil, idiots will always fall for it.
  - ceejayoz 9y ago
    Don't confuse idiocy and being non-technical. SEO's confusing enough to many of us, let alone someone who's running a little family diner or something.
    - wanda 9y ago
      I think the point is that search-engine optimisation itself is a farce, perpetuated by confidence tricksters—some “SEO experts” do not know that they are conning people, charging people for useless reports, yesterday’s advice and for services that clients could just as easily handle themselves. Obviously no offence should be intended towards victims of SEO cons, but the fact is that it’s a con, and that’s probably why it seems confusing to people without technical knowledge. I have been a web developer for nearly a decade and I still struggle to understand what value an SEO expert/agency is supposed to add. Anyone honest in the field will say that if your website loads reasonably quickly, works on mobile phones and desktop, and comprises useful, quality, regularly-added content—pertinent to things that people actually search for—your website is more or less optimised for search and the rest requires time for search engines to crawl your website and for people to search for it, talk about it, etc. This is the sort of thing that necessitates a good web developer/team and a good writer, and maybe someone to manage social media and press and stuff like that. You don’t need to pay money for some “SEO experts” to give you outdated advice and charge you monthly to provide automatically generated reports from services you could use yourself, for less money, and which provide almost pointless “ranking” measurements. SEO activities of any value include reaching out to high-traffic, trustworthy websites to feature your site (this is PR) and to log into Google Webmaster Tools/Search Console to disavow any “spammy” links to your site (this is something anyone could do).
allan_golds 9y ago
Non closable pop-up window.
stephengillie 9y ago
Reminiscent of laser eye surgeon Mockovak putting a hit on his business partner and fellow laser eye surgeon King. [0] [0] http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Renton-laser-eye-surgeon-sentenced-in-1225540.php http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Renton-laser-eye-surg...
_Codemonkeyism 9y ago
Today one would think Tor and Bitcoin to be involved. But no - classic meeting with the killer and handing over a (faked) image of the victim.
louprado 9y ago
I had a nasty bout with an SEO marketer a few years ago. He had taken content from my website and other assets of mine without permission or advance request. I was willing to overlook it as an inevitable cost of doing business. But when he started to steal my customer reviews word for word and posting them as fake reviews, I became irate. I guess I am OK with someone stealing from me but I felt the reviews were my customer's property, not mine. When I confronted him he started spamming my business and then wrote detailed fake blog posts about how I was criminal hacker that now works covertly for the FBI. My name and photoshopped images were posted on gay websites for bondage sex. I Googled very poorly for a while, especially my images. I lost many many nights of sleep over this and I probably lost a contract over it. I eventually found where he lived and fortunately he owned his own home. I threatened to sue him and take his home. He removed all the libelous posts shortly after that. After all had been settled, a few months later he wrote me asking if I wanted to partner with him on a project, demonstrating a pathological lack of awareness. Apparently tormenting me had just been another fun day at the office and not a memorable event. I ignored him and never heard back. My personal experience does make me wonder if the subject in the parent article was motivated to kill his competitors just for profit. Or did he and his competitors have had a nasty on-going personal war that just kept escalating. Not that I would ever justify attempted murder. Just saying... edits: grammar, clarity.
- alunchbox 9y ago
  well that escalated quickly. Hope I never have to get into a situation like this, happy to hear it got resolved.
- danmaz74 9y ago
  Out of curiosity, why didn't you report these facts to the authorities? Fear of wasting time, or of retaliation, or something else?
  - matart 9y ago
    Not the original poster but I feel that sometimes you just want it to be over even if taking a loss on it.
tptacek 9y ago
Surely he knew the photograph was fake, and just engaged in this transaction to send a message to his competition.
- ceejayoz 9y ago
  I'm sure Homeland Security can gin up a convincing-looking murder scene photo.
- aptwebapps 9y ago
  That sounds like a reference to something. Was that claimed by or for Ulbricht?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
notjustanymike 9y ago
Read the article! "Victim-1 and PHILLIPS were former business partners and are currently business competitors." It's not like he's offing SEO competitors at random. He knew and worked with the victim personally.
fellellor 9y ago
So the government caught this guy in a Sting. What would even motivate such an operation? I have heard of Traps being laid out for potential pedophiles, drug addicts etc. Buy why would they go after this kind of criminal preemptively?
- grumio 9y ago
  FTA: "The investigation revealed that PHILLIPS engaged another individual, who has since become a cooperating defendant (“CD-1”), to commit a murder of an identified victim (“Victim-1”)" As I read it, the potential hitman became a defendant after Phillips attempted to hire him. The potential hitman wasn't LE or on LE's side before that.
diebir 9y ago
The scariest part here is that surgeons are concerned with being "marketing experts". Single payer.

104 points by dETAIL 9y ago

lithos 9y ago

SEO is dirtier than I thought.

it_learnses 9y ago
I'm not sure we can blame an entire industry because of one sociopath.
- gsich 9y ago
  >SEO >industry Snakeoil is more like it.
moomin 9y ago
But not by much.

coldcode 9y ago

buttsbydr90210.com?

1_2__4 9y ago

I don’t know which is worse, the story topic or Medium’s floating “open in app” desperate plea.

thsowers 9y ago
Someone posted a Show HN[0] here a while ago to fix this, and I use it everyday [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15123638 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15123638
_Codemonkeyism 9y ago
What is worse? [ ] Medium’s floating “open in app" desperate plea [x] Someone hiring a killer to kill his competitor My pleasure.

rdtsc 9y ago

Coming from a post-Soviet period, I am surprised a bit that this doesn't happen more often. Company owners would be killed seemingly without much worry if they crossed anyone powerful. I was doing homework one night and felt the house shake, I thought it was an earthquake. It turns out a bomb went off in a 5 story apartment building nearby. Someone was trying to kill a banker so they left a bomb by their door.

outoftacos 9y ago
The rich and powerful have always tried to get away with... anything they can get away with. Every industry, every political party, every time period. There is no humble and innocent team, even your team. If you think this isn't happening today you're just naive. You should always be skeptical of those people, especially when the amounts of money start getting into the hundreds of millions+. Those people have nobody's interests but their own in mind. Pretending that SEO companies are more or less scummy than a social network or a search engine or an oil company or an airline or a defense contractor is a waste of time. Be skeptical of all of them.
czechdeveloper 9y ago
I just wonder if it's not sometimes better to be invisible, even if it means little poorer.
jondubois 9y ago
Yes, I'm surprised how celebrities and CEOs of big corporations live so long... In spite of the bodyguards. It's hard to appreciate the sheer number of people that exist in the world... Surely there are enough crazy people to populate an entire city. Is it possible that intelligence is inversely correlated with insanity? I thought it was the opposite.
- loceng 9y ago
  Insanity is related to the ego mind. The more control the ego mind has then the less input and influence the heart has - the less empathy exists and the more willingness to cause harm as a valid survival mechanism. It's really quite a scary proposition to go against the wished upon status quo of people and organizations who are like this - who become comfortable with this. This behaviour seems only steered away through fear of getting caught. If there is little fear of being caught or of being prosecuted, then this behaviour will be as rampant as it can be without calling too much attention - or those like journalists who do call attention to it will also make the list to be assassinated/murdered in the most extreme cases. There are more covert things people could do to simply ruin someone's life by doing actions indirectly.

taprun 9y ago

I was very suspicious when I read the article. It didn't seem to link to any government websites or newspapers, but I did find a story about the activity in the LA Times [0]. [0] http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-ceo-murder-for-hire-20170605-story.html http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-ceo-murder-for-h...

hnaccy 9y ago
It links to court document.

franze 9y ago

>... does very little to enhance our web presence in the first place and then never does anything further to improve our results. Complaints are met with excuses. In other words, ... ... a company that makes false promises and delivers little value. SEO agencies in a nutshell. Disclaimer: I'm a SEO.

jlebrech 9y ago
digital snake-oil, idiots will always fall for it.
- ceejayoz 9y ago
  Don't confuse idiocy and being non-technical. SEO's confusing enough to many of us, let alone someone who's running a little family diner or something.
  - wanda 9y ago
    I think the point is that search-engine optimisation itself is a farce, perpetuated by confidence tricksters—some “SEO experts” do not know that they are conning people, charging people for useless reports, yesterday’s advice and for services that clients could just as easily handle themselves. Obviously no offence should be intended towards victims of SEO cons, but the fact is that it’s a con, and that’s probably why it seems confusing to people without technical knowledge. I have been a web developer for nearly a decade and I still struggle to understand what value an SEO expert/agency is supposed to add. Anyone honest in the field will say that if your website loads reasonably quickly, works on mobile phones and desktop, and comprises useful, quality, regularly-added content—pertinent to things that people actually search for—your website is more or less optimised for search and the rest requires time for search engines to crawl your website and for people to search for it, talk about it, etc. This is the sort of thing that necessitates a good web developer/team and a good writer, and maybe someone to manage social media and press and stuff like that. You don’t need to pay money for some “SEO experts” to give you outdated advice and charge you monthly to provide automatically generated reports from services you could use yourself, for less money, and which provide almost pointless “ranking” measurements. SEO activities of any value include reaching out to high-traffic, trustworthy websites to feature your site (this is PR) and to log into Google Webmaster Tools/Search Console to disavow any “spammy” links to your site (this is something anyone could do).

allan_golds 9y ago

Non closable pop-up window.

stephengillie 9y ago

Reminiscent of laser eye surgeon Mockovak putting a hit on his business partner and fellow laser eye surgeon King. [0] [0] http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Renton-laser-eye-surgeon-sentenced-in-1225540.php http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Renton-laser-eye-surg...

_Codemonkeyism 9y ago

Today one would think Tor and Bitcoin to be involved. But no - classic meeting with the killer and handing over a (faked) image of the victim.

louprado 9y ago

I had a nasty bout with an SEO marketer a few years ago. He had taken content from my website and other assets of mine without permission or advance request. I was willing to overlook it as an inevitable cost of doing business. But when he started to steal my customer reviews word for word and posting them as fake reviews, I became irate. I guess I am OK with someone stealing from me but I felt the reviews were my customer's property, not mine. When I confronted him he started spamming my business and then wrote detailed fake blog posts about how I was criminal hacker that now works covertly for the FBI. My name and photoshopped images were posted on gay websites for bondage sex. I Googled very poorly for a while, especially my images. I lost many many nights of sleep over this and I probably lost a contract over it. I eventually found where he lived and fortunately he owned his own home. I threatened to sue him and take his home. He removed all the libelous posts shortly after that. After all had been settled, a few months later he wrote me asking if I wanted to partner with him on a project, demonstrating a pathological lack of awareness. Apparently tormenting me had just been another fun day at the office and not a memorable event. I ignored him and never heard back. My personal experience does make me wonder if the subject in the parent article was motivated to kill his competitors just for profit. Or did he and his competitors have had a nasty on-going personal war that just kept escalating. Not that I would ever justify attempted murder. Just saying... edits: grammar, clarity.

alunchbox 9y ago
well that escalated quickly. Hope I never have to get into a situation like this, happy to hear it got resolved.
danmaz74 9y ago
Out of curiosity, why didn't you report these facts to the authorities? Fear of wasting time, or of retaliation, or something else?
- matart 9y ago
  Not the original poster but I feel that sometimes you just want it to be over even if taking a loss on it.

tptacek 9y ago

Surely he knew the photograph was fake, and just engaged in this transaction to send a message to his competition.

ceejayoz 9y ago
I'm sure Homeland Security can gin up a convincing-looking murder scene photo.
aptwebapps 9y ago
That sounds like a reference to something. Was that claimed by or for Ulbricht?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

notjustanymike 9y ago

Read the article! "Victim-1 and PHILLIPS were former business partners and are currently business competitors." It's not like he's offing SEO competitors at random. He knew and worked with the victim personally.

fellellor 9y ago

So the government caught this guy in a Sting. What would even motivate such an operation? I have heard of Traps being laid out for potential pedophiles, drug addicts etc. Buy why would they go after this kind of criminal preemptively?

grumio 9y ago
FTA: "The investigation revealed that PHILLIPS engaged another individual, who has since become a cooperating defendant (“CD-1”), to commit a murder of an identified victim (“Victim-1”)" As I read it, the potential hitman became a defendant after Phillips attempted to hire him. The potential hitman wasn't LE or on LE's side before that.

diebir 9y ago

The scariest part here is that surgeons are concerned with being "marketing experts". Single payer.