
DecorMyEyes Merchant Vitaly Borker Arrested After NYT Piece On Google Rankings - btilly
http://searchengineland.com/decormyeyes-merchant-vitaly-borker-arrested-after-nyt-piece-on-google-57921
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j_baker
This is great and all, but this guy flagrantly broke the law many times and no
one did anything. Do I need to have the New York Times publish an article if
someone does something like this to me?

~~~
guelo
There's a bigger deterrent value when an arrest is made in a high-profile
case.

~~~
boredguy8
I don't know, it seems like the opposite effect is in place: "Just don't go
overboard and you'll be OK. And don't brag about it to the times: apologize
and say you're working to improve her experience, and you get even better
coverage. But the odds are still that you won't get caught in the first
place."

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tortilla
Moral: Don't do illegal shit

Criminal's Moral: Don't give out interviews

~~~
slay2k
But think of all the traffic DecorMyEyes is seeing right now!

~~~
chopsueyar
Not as good as these guys...

<http://www.heavensgate.com/>

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dabent
For those that don't recall, the NYT article was mentioned here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1945112>

and here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1946085>

I had a feeling it was going to come to this, and soon. He had the opposite
strategy as Zappos and had the opposite "exit."

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jacquesm
The bad guy in me sees an opportunity to 'googlebomb' competitors using fake
bad reviews adding one more layer of complexity to this sort of thing.

They'd then have to figure out a way to distinguish the real bad reviews from
the real good reviews and the fake bad reviews and the fake good reviews.

This whole arms race isn't helping anybody. And I wished the arrest would have
taken place even if the guy had not bragged about it, but I highly doubt it.
Likely there are many more characters like this guy happily doing it to lots
of others every day, using their own websites but also on Ebay and lots of
other places on the web.

Before you give out your credit card numbers, don't look for just that
'secure' icon in your browser, realize that the bar for getting a certificate,
a corporate identity and a website up and running is sufficiently low that a
determined scammer will not see this as a significant barrier to entry.

Knowing who you do business with is not enough to avoid getting screwed over.

~~~
zaidf
_The bad guy in me sees an opportunity to 'googlebomb' competitors using fake
bad reviews_

In the spam world, it's very common. They call it _joe-jobbing_. Since spam
websites typically have to be hosted on "bulletproof hosts"(hosts that won't
shut you for complaints), "joe-jobbing" a site hosted with a regular host can
have it shutdown temporarily with a very small amount of spam and the ensuing
complaints. So you could hire a spammer for few hundred bucks to take your
nice-guy competitor down by _joe-jobbing_ him. Pretty sad.

My knowledge is a bit outdated but I am curious how folks deal with this now.

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arithmetic
When I read the article, I was a bit suprised by how he almost seemed proud of
his tactics to rip people off and later bully them. Particularly, the part
where he said "I’ve exploited this opportunity because it works. No matter
where they post their negative comments, it helps my return on investment. So
I decided, why not use that negativity to my advantage?"

This guy should be the dumbest criminal in modern times. He understood how
powerful the internet was, and then decided to ignore it.

~~~
alexqgb
Alternately, he didn't count on his boasting leading to embarrassment for the
NYPD. Not a good strategy with your house in their jurisdiction.

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lawrence
By going to jail, this guy will likely get even more inbound links. It's
extreme SEO.

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jscore
He's an idiot for bragging on interviews. He's Russian but doesn't realize
that this is not Russia and he can't go around threatening people.

~~~
yan
He emigrated when he was a child and was raised in the US. I'm sure he's more
familiar with the US legal system than whatever approximates one in Russia.

~~~
jscore
Obviously you've never been to Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn (where he lives).
They call this part of Brooklyn, 'little Odessa' for a reason.

~~~
vaksel
I used to live in that area, and I haven't heard a single person call it
little Odessa. Granted we moved from the area when I turned 16, and we didn't
live on Brighton Beach...but that just doesn't sound true.

~~~
Evgeny
Actually I just googled it out of interest and the top links for "Little
Odessa" ("Маленькая Одесса") point to the movie with that name
(<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110365/>). Maybe that's how the nickname became
widespread?

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geuis
This is like a little Christmas gift to all the hundreds of people this guy
ripped off. Good riddance.

~~~
electromagnetic
I've always found it funny that those who are innocent, or at least know
they're going to be proved innocent, will generally walk into court with their
heads held high. While the low down scumbags cover their faces and cower like
people aren't going to know who they are.

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daimyoyo
This guy was a swivel chair and a cat away from being a Bond villain. Frankly,
I'm surprised it took the NYPD that long to arrest him.

~~~
metageek
"No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to lose your Facebook account."

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rwhitman
So basically you can threaten the lives of your customers and not fear any
repercussions from law enforcement as long as the New York Times doesn't write
a profile on you using your real name and location.

Not to mention the fact that all the consumer empowerment brought upon by
social media has now been flipped on its head.

Is this the direction online commerce is heading? Its great that they nabbed
the guy but the fact that he used the failings of the system to prop himself
up for years is worrying. There are plenty more Vitaly Borkers out there
waiting

~~~
metageek
> _There are plenty more Vitaly Borkers out there waiting_

Are there really that many businesses threatening their customers' lives? I've
never heard of it before this guy.

~~~
rwhitman
Actually there was another story somewhere on HN (i think) about a guy who did
the same thing, only with data recovery. He would hijack a drive or a
computer's components and tell the customers they needed to pay more money
before he'd return them, often threatening them and telling them to go on yelp
if they were angry

~~~
metageek
Oh, right, I did read that.

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catshirt
this guy didn't merely cheat, he _threatened_. had he not crossed those (very
obvious) bounds, i'm afraid this practice could have been fostered and tuned.

i can't help but wonder if the internet (Google, more specifically) could
still help malicious businesses achieve disproportionate conversion.

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protomyth
Seems odd that Google had their big response, but it doesn't seem to be
working in the case of his sites (see end of article).

~~~
cdr
Here's Google's incredibly vague blog post:
[http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/being-bad-to-your-
cus...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/being-bad-to-your-customers-is-
bad-for.html) \- and HN thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1959348>

Whatever they've done, it seems to reportedly be affecting some queries but
not others. The author of the searchengineland piece may have had to try a few
queries to find one that ranked.

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rbanffy
Proving once and for all that there is criminally bad customer service.

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blahedo
See also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1977247> (register.co.uk link)

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hanksims
The borker borked.

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stretchwithme
Finally, the government oozes into action.

Hopefully, this fine fellow will be DecorMyAss in his next residence.

