{"id":14247,"date":"2024-01-27T10:27:05","date_gmt":"2024-01-27T10:27:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/taxpolicy.org.uk\/?p=14247"},"modified":"2024-01-27T12:23:45","modified_gmt":"2024-01-27T12:23:45","slug":"mogul_fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/2024\/01\/27\/mogul_fraud\/","title":{"rendered":"Mogul Press &#8211; using fraud to silence criticism of their deceptive business practices"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"\">I&#8217;ve <a href=\"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/2023\/11\/23\/shady_scam_mogul_press\/\">written previously<\/a> about a business called Mogul Press, which spams people on social media from fake profiles, often with stolen photos of real people. They claim to be a &#8220;PR agency&#8221; but their business appears to actually involve charging for paid placements in low quality media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Mogul Press didn&#8217;t much like our article. At that point I thought they had several options:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"\">\n<li class=\"\">Change their business practices: stop spamming people, stop using fake profiles, and be honest about what their business actually is. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"\">Given they claim to be an &#8220;award-winning&nbsp;public relations&nbsp;and communications&nbsp;agency&#8221; they could communicate to the world why my article was inaccurate or unfair.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"\">Threaten legal proceedings &#8211; although given that my claims were factual, this would always be challenging.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">What I didn&#8217;t appreciate was that they had a fourth option &#8211; fraud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I received this from Google:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"is-style-default wp-block-image size-large is-resized\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"869\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/image-26-869x1024.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-14249\" style=\"width:520px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/image-26-869x1024.png 869w, https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/image-26-768x905.png 768w, https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/image-26.png 1190w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 869px) 100vw, 869px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">It&#8217;s a &#8220;takedown notice&#8221; under the US <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act\">Digital Millennium Copyright Act<\/a>. The idea is that a copyright owner can submit an online form to a service provider, e.g. Google complaining that an indexed page on the internet breaches its copyright. Google will then delist the page and notify its owner. If the owner disagrees there&#8217;s a copyright breach then they can file a &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/copyrightalliance.org\/education\/copyright-law-explained\/the-digital-millennium-copyright-act-dmca\/dmca-counter-notice-process\/\">counter-notice<\/a>&#8220;. The complainant then has a couple of weeks to begin an actual legal action for breach of copyright; if it doesn&#8217;t, the service provider restores access. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I assumed they&#8217;d complained about my use of images of their website. These are copyrighted, but I&#8217;m perfectly entitled to use them for purposes of comment\/criticism under the US <a href=\"https:\/\/copyrightalliance.org\/faqs\/what-is-fair-use\/\">&#8220;fair use&#8221; doctrine<\/a>. In theory, I could sue Mogul Press for filing a <a href=\"http:\/\/smithlawtlh.com\/false-fraudulent-bad-faith-dmca-take-claims\/\">bad-faith takedown notice<\/a>.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">But I was wrong. We can now see <a href=\"https:\/\/lumendatabase.org\/notices\/38942439?access_token=nLNwASUO5gh7uQxgd_o06A\">copies of the actual complaints<\/a> and they aren&#8217;t incorrect, or bad faith. They&#8217;re simply fraudulent:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"is-style-default wp-block-image size-large is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"698\" src=\"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Screenshot-2024-01-27-at-10.00.51-1024x698.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-14251\" style=\"width:687px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Screenshot-2024-01-27-at-10.00.51-1024x698.png 1024w, https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Screenshot-2024-01-27-at-10.00.51-768x524.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">The &#8220;tribunepost.com&#8221; link (<a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20240127100141\/https:\/\/thetribunepost.com\/mogul-press\/\">archived version here<\/a>) is just a direct copy of our article. Mogul Press created it (naturally breaching our copyright) and then filed a DMCA notice claiming that we&#8217;d copied them. This is, very obviously, just fraud.<sup class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote \" data-mfn=\"1\" data-mfn-post-scope=\"0000000000002f4e0000000000000000_14247\"><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\"  role=\"button\" aria-pressed=\"false\" aria-describedby=\"mfn-content-0000000000002f4e0000000000000000_14247-1\">1<\/a><\/sup><span id=\"mfn-content-0000000000002f4e0000000000000000_14247-1\" role=\"tooltip\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote__note\" tabindex=\"0\" data-mfn=\"1\">I asked Mogul Press what they were up to, and they didn&#8217;t reply &#8211; so I think we can discard the possibility that someone else did this without telling Mogul Press<\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">It seems reasonably clear we&#8217;d have a claim for damages against Mogul Press under the DMCA. Google has <a href=\"https:\/\/torrentfreak.com\/images\/5-23-cv-05824-Google-v-Nguyen-Van-Duc-Pham-Van-Thien-complaint-231113.pdf\">taken legal action<\/a> against <a href=\"https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/google-search-goes-after-fraudulent-and-manipulative-dmca-takedown-requests-434748\">similar fraudulent takedown requests<\/a> in the past. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ojp.gov\/ncjrs\/virtual-library\/abstracts\/mail-fraud-and-wire-fraud\">Criminal offences<\/a> may also have been committed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Given the likelihood Mogul Press and its CEO, Nabeel Ahmad, are just scammers with no easily-traceable assets, it&#8217;s probably not worth spending time suing them. I&#8217;ll probably hurt them more financially by publishing this article &#8211; and that would be an entirely fair outcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:100px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Image by <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/User:Lexein\">Lexein<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\"><ul class=\"modern-footnotes-list \"><li><span>1<\/span><div>I asked Mogul Press what they were up to, and they didn&#8217;t reply &#8211; so I think we can discard the possibility that someone else did this without telling Mogul Press<\/div><\/li><\/ul><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve written previously about a business called Mogul Press, which spams people on social media from fake profiles, often with stolen photos of real people. They claim to be a &#8220;PR agency&#8221; but their business appears to actually involve charging for paid placements in low quality media. Mogul Press didn&#8217;t much like our article. At [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14256,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[88],"tags":[232,191,210],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Image_removed_DMCA.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14247"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14247"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14258,"href":"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14247\/revisions\/14258"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}