Legal Advice requested...

[Redstone]

I am just wondering if anyone may have any legal suggestions for me, for a problem I am having...This is sort of a long story...We enter the twilight zone...

Ok I shall begin here...I bought a domain name and started a website called: CashConnects.com - it is an affiliate site where people can go to find financial services. I do not lend money myself, and it is only based on affiliate links and banners. I was making approx $30 per week (nothing special) in commission from those affiliates.

About 5 months or so into operating the site, I started receiving very strange emails from enraged customers, who were accusing me of riping them off and taking large amounts of money from their bank account! I never did this, I dont touch, handle or request any personal information from anyone to the site...as I dont offer loans myself. So my next thought was that one of my affiliate companies that I had signed up with were ripping people off.

I sent emails to everyone who had contacted me...Let me tell you very angry people..threatening to sue me, call the police and the local new on me...
Ok this was now becoming a nightmare. In the emails that I returned to these people, I told them the story..a) I dont loan money, and am only an affiliate site..b) I requested that they tell me which banner they had clicked on, and I would get to the bottom of it, and that I took such things very seriously, and told them that I would remove such affiliates from my site. I never heard back from them.

It got quite for a bit..then a few months back they started again...people complaining that they were being ripped off...and threatening legal action...but I did find something out from these last emails...Appearantly there is/was a loan company in Indiana that had set up shop & were ripping people off..one gentleman explained to me that he went back to the shop and it was closed down, yet money was coming out of his account..now I sort of laughed..it was not my affiliates ripping people off it was some company in Indiana..I felt alot better. I sent emails back to these people, telling them the story, that I was just a website, unfortunate enough to have the same name as a company in indiana who was ripping people off..I agreed that I too would be very angry if someone was taking money out of my account. I advised them that if they felt they had been ripped off, to call the police or news media for them to investgate. To make things easier on myself I had also created a note on my contact form for anyone else who should wish to contact me about this..So it ended or so I thought...For a while now by site has been dead..I have not made money in like the last 3 months or so...not a penny...I just checked google for all sites that contain the word: cashconnects.com, my jaw dropped when I noticed that my site is now featured on an indiana news website! They are claiming that my site is the one responsible for ripping people off..here is the article they wrote about me...

CashConnects.Com says it was giving customers rebates when they signed up for a year of Internet access. The Indiana attorney general's office and the State Department of Financial Institutions say it was making illegal loans -- some with interest rates as high as 700 percent.

On Wednesday, Monroe Circuit Judge David Welch ordered CashConnects.Com to stop making any of the "rebates" and to freeze any of the deals it already had in effect.

State officials say consumers went into the web site's office in Bloomington to take out loans, and walked out with cash. They say they didn't realize the membership contracts they signed obligated them to pay hundreds, or even thousands of dollars.

State officials have been seeking court injunctions against nine similar operations around the state.

(Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

Here is the link: http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1720967

So there is a good chance this is the main reason my site is dead, and not making any money...So this new station has likely featured me on the news, and has a direct link to my site..I have not yet contacted them about this..just found the article about 15 mins before writing this. Can I not sue them for putting up this incorrect negative publicity for my site? Any suggestions? I realize the site is not that great to begin with...I would like to fix it up...but now I have all sorts of links that claim that my site is responsible, when in fact it is not..

 

[Redstone]

Oops..just realized that I am also featured on other sites as well, including government sites...

http://www.topix.net/com/fisi
http://www.in.gov/dfi/Documents/123737_1.DOC
http://www.homeboundmortgage.com/Mortgage_Info/Mortgage11_1_03/Mortgage2_Refinancing1.htm
www.consumerfed.org/pdlrentabankreport.pdf
http://www.us-news-watch.com/Ohio/Allen_County.html
http://www.refinancing7.ame-libor.com/
http://www.home1.mortgage--refinancing.info/
www.home1.mortgage--refinancing.info/
www.home1.mortgage-news.org/
www.home.mortgage-loan-refinancing.org/
www.car3.auto-loan-news.org/
www.home5.mortgage-rates-news.com/
www.home2.loan-news.com/
www.home4.mortgage-rates-news.com/
www.home8.loan-news.com/
Lots more where that came from..

After searching Google some more, I found this article that mentions cash-connects.com, it seems that the company owned this site, and that would make sence, but the first news site, puts a link directly to my site without the hyphen...
http://www.nwitimes.com/articles/2004/03/18/roundups/roundups/b226e7e113df464d86256e5b0063b24d.txt

 

[namedropper]

OK, you probably want to hire a lawyer to sort this out.

If you don't have the money for that, basically waht you need to do is contact all of those people and point out politely that cashconnects.com is not affiliated in any way with the cash-connects.com, that they, presumably, are the ones responsible for those illegal actions, and that their negligent reporting is costing your site money. Firmly demand that they change all mention of cashconnects.com to cash-connects.com on their websites, change the links as appropriate, and run a correction.

Contact the editors of each of these sites, and the legal departments to if you can find that contact info. Negligently misreporting facts and labeling the wrong person as a criminal is libel. You've got a pretty good case that their negligence harmed you financially (though the damages are kind of low to be paying for a lawsuit versus all these people, so don't volunteer an exact number). Anyone in journalism should have a pretty firm grasp on libel law, realize that they screwed up bad and should scramble to fix it. Of course, that's the ideal scenario, some places don't care. Contacting the legal departments is just to show you are serious and to let people who are more likely to understand the legal nature of the mistake know and hopefully light a fire under the editorial staff and web folks to fix it.

Don't expect huge corrections as large as the original stories, but do demand that the references are clear that it's not CashConnect.com that was doing this. Once the sites are down and the links fixed it should help you some.

Really though, if you got the money (or can get the money), a lawyer is probably a good investment on this one.

 

[Redstone]

Thanks very much for the advice Namedropper, much appreciated. Basically that is what I have just done, I have sent an email to a US lawyer basically telling him the story of what has occured, they seem to specialize in internet law, and they state in some cases they are willing to take on a case pro bono (would be great) but I am financially not in a position to pay for legal fees at this time unfortunatly, so I also offered if they would be willing to help on a contingency basis. The main site I would like to go after is the tv news station, as I feel they should definatly be more careful when it comes to posting things as fact. Chances are my site was likely featured on a news broadcast as well.

I have contacted several other websites that have placed the article on their site, most of them seem to be owned by the same person, and they claim that they only grab news articles from other sources.

I sent him this email:

Hello, I am contacting you regarding your news article concerning "CashConnects.com". I am the owner & webmaster of "CashConnects.com" Please note that the news article concerning my site is incorrect. I do not live in Indiana, and have nothing to do with that incident of an indiana loan company "ripping people off". My site is comprised of only affiliate links to reputable financial service providers, I do not, nor have not ever been involved in any loan handling myself, especially "ripping people off". I notice that you have more that one site incorrectly using my website in your news article. Since these such articles were published my site has gone down hill..I used to make money off the affiliate links, but feel that incorrect, negative publicity to my site, has caused people not to visit.

I understand that you are not an actual media outlet, and also you are not the
only site incorrectly mentioning my site. One is also a large News station that has placed a direct link to my site, and as such in their case, I will have my lawyer contact them in regards to the financial & reputation damage that has been done to my site as a result of being "featured" in the news.

In regards to your sites containing the wrong information, I would like to ask that this be corrected immediatly, as it is hurting my sites reputation. The majority of links seem to be coming from your sites.

After doing more searching on Google, I beleive the correct site that should be mentioned in that article is: cash-connects.com.

Here is a link that mentions this: http://www.nwitimes.com/articles/20...e5b0063b24d.txt

I would very much appreciate it if you could include on your sites a correction notice as well.

Your attention & cooperation in this matter is greatly appreciated.

Best Regards

So hopefully I will hear back from the lawyer, and maybe he can give me a better idea of what steps I should take next. Hopefully I can get someone to do it free or contingency basis..

I also found this article online that seems to be a similar case in which someone sued a company because of a sort of similar incident.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/media/media_watch/july-dec02/australia_12-10.html

Thanks again for your advice..

 

[domnet]

This reminds me of when Consumer Reports blasted Godaddy for trying to make money off of September 11th. All Godaddy was doing was providing a standard parking page for a customer who had bought a domain name. You would think Consumer Reports of all people could have figured that one out after two seconds of research.

 

[jberryhill]

"The main site I would like to go after is the tv news station, as I feel they should definatly be more careful when it comes to posting things as fact."

If they were reporting based on the typo in the AG's report, then I doubt you are going to show they did not use reasonable care. The relevant court order is here:

http://www.in.gov/dfi/Documents/eff564.pdf

...and the court, at least, seems to have gotten it right.

Missing from your account is any mention of a monetary amount by which you believe you have been damaged. Given that the various news outlets were probably entitled to rely on the information they received from the state, and given the state's sovereign immunity, simply trying to get the various web sites to correct their links and references seems like the most fruitful avenue here.

 

[carlomrx]

Also, if you're making $30 a month or so, what are the damages you would go to court for? I think the best thing to do would be to make sure your name/personal information isn't confused with the other business and ditch the name because has been rendered useless by all that bad press.

 

[Redstone]

Thanks for all your suggestions. I just thought it was a bigger deal that should warrent action against that news company. It really is a shame that I must get rid of my domain name because of a mistake that they made. It is true that the site has not earned me a substantail amount of income to warrent me spending like $5000 or more on legal costs. The main idea that I had for the site were much different than it is today, as I did not have the time to work at it, I figured I would throw something up rather than have a parked page. I have sent emails to all the sites that placed the incorrect information a few days ago, and still have not heard back from any of them, as well, none of the articles have been changed. I guess its not important to them that they feel they should have to waste their time correcting the incorrect info that has crippled my site. Personally I find that shameful & really disappointing.