DUMB CRIMINAL OF THE WEEK: EXTORTED A COMPANY, RELEASED ON PAROLE, GOES ON THE ATTACK, BACK TO JAIL
by Hazed
When you’re released from jail on parole, it usually comes with a string of restrictions of things you aren’t supposed to do. One of the most important is: don’t get caught breaking the law again – and in particular, don’t repeat your earlier offence.
Words that William Stanley should have heeded. He was originally jailed for trying to extort a company by threatening to post negative reviews of the firm. He demanded money from General Equity (GE), a Texas-based financial services firm. He said if they didn’t pay up he’d post bad reviews and then use SEO to promote the reviews to the top of search results.
Well, this didn’t go down well, and he was consequently charged with one count of extortion, to which he pleaded guilty. He served half of a 37-month sentence and was then released to a halfway house.
And what was the first thing he did on his release? He decided to get his revenge on the company by writing a negative review on Yelp and compiling a blog page, optimised for SEO, that displayed negative articles about GE.
What’s more, he didn’t do it anonymously – he used his own name in the review. Investigators then traced traffic that posted other bad reviews about GE back to Stanley’s halfway house.
So he was charged with new offences: retaliation against a witness, victim or informant. He now been jailed for three times as long as his initial sentence.
I do hope that when he finally gets out he decides not to continue his campaign against GE!
Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/25/extortionist_prison_yelp/
