Real Estate Webmasters and SEO Guy- Criminal Intent
By Mert on Oct 31, 2007 in Personal
Morgan Carey aka SEO Guy (in SEO Circles) or one of his clever programmers at Real Estate Webmasters (REW) has hacked my banned account in their Vbulletin forum and actually stole my forum password somehow from vbulletin by hacking it. Using that password, in the name of “reputation management”, they entered to my Moderator account in prorealestatenetwork.com and deleted any thread that bad mouthed them (three of them). This was identified by pure coincidence as I checked on a post I had read earlier. The admin went back to my moderator history and realized that the IPs that have done the action of deleting three seperate threads belong to the ISP that REW offices operate with.
Greg Boser’s post about this subject has the perfect summarizing quote”I think it’s safe to say that the concept of “Reputation Management” has been taken to a whole new level.”
The scary part is, Morgan Carey owns SEO Guy forums. He is the owner of a very large real estate forum. I dont even want to know what he does as a moderator of SEO Chat. Can this man ever be trusted in a Vbulletin atmosphere????
You can be rest assured that reports are being filed by the admin of the prorealestatenetwork.com forum to FBI, Nanaimo Police department, REW hosting and ISP services and VBulletin company itself. I will also report this to the SEO Chat forum owners.
Also here is the discussion in that forum about this subject. You can see a screenshot of one of the three deletions with the IP pointing out to REW (located in Nanaimo, Vancouver)’s ISP here.
UPDATE: Morgan Carey claimed that it was an employee that did the above crime. He did not disclose the name of the employee and said he was reprimended (not fired) for committing the crime. Words can not be describe this obvious allowance of unethical and illegal behaviour in that company. His claims of my giving him access to the passwords also need to be proven as I have not talked to an employee of REW for almost 1 1/2 years.
15 Comment(s)
By Jared Ritchey on Oct 31, 2007 | Reply
Hey, this is one of those situations you wish you could undo knowing about.
Its just one of those things you don’t want to believe but can’t escape the fact that evidence is pretty darn solid.
REW bans the hell out of people all the time for opposing them with very bold censorship practices but this is an ultimate shocker.
From one web guy to another I have a bit of concern for Morgan and his professional career. Regardless I hope this can be rectified with Peace.
Jared Ritchey - Designer
By raubin on Nov 4, 2007 | Reply
I won’t trust that site or the people running it as far as I could spit them.
They are a bunch of weird people there, I used to be a long term user of their forum until things started to become school like.
Anything you wrote that was not to their liking was deleted or edited, it is supposed to be a community - a place where you express your views with others. However, what ever you said was edited to what THEY want you to say.
And as for banning people! They ban people for the stupidest things, and what they promote in terms of SEO - it doesn’t surprise me that they have now taken that one step further and started to edit and delete what is said on other forums.
Can’t be trusted and other users should know this.
By Jared Ritchey on Nov 5, 2007 | Reply
I’ve said it before many times. The issue with banning and editing seems to be a real fast growing trend on the web where dictated speech is the norm.
If you don’t paint their picture you are deleted, edited, and or banned in forums all across the web.
I asked a simple question in a forum I’m a member of regarding the subject of Gun Control (I do sports shooting) and I simply asked.
“…..If bans work so well then why is it that we have cocaine, meth, and other banned substances so available when you consider that most are imported? Follow the same recipe you get the same results, the bad guy with all the…..”
That simple challenge in that question got me banned and its prolific everywhere on the web.
Tragic is all I can say.
By Ryan on Feb 6, 2008 | Reply
How did you managed to get banned at REW? heated discussion?
By Mert on Feb 6, 2008 | Reply
I tried to tell Morgan that 500 bucks a month (contextual link exchange program) is nothing but black hat link farming. He should get into a more expensive quality one way link building program. His response was that Realtors simply are not willing to pay any more than that for quality service.
I told people (that I thought I owed something to) in private that Morgan’s contextual link exchange program was a link farm and they would get caught eventually (this was last summer) and he eventually got caught two weeks ago. This happened right after the reciprocal link -30 penalty. This communication went to Morgan. In his super duper secret forum, he said to members (many, my friends), that I was trying to sell forum members a service in private. All denied, that I ever had a service that I offered them for money. And of course I was banned before I could even defend myself in public.
By Jared Ritchey on Feb 6, 2008 | Reply
Ryan, is that question for me?
If so, then I’ve not been banned by them as best I can tell.
By Ryan on Feb 6, 2008 | Reply
It was intended for Mert Jared. Thanks for the response Mert. Very interesting reading. Morgan will always have the next thing ready to go after the current one dies. It’s only a matter of days before the next thing comes. I am sure it will be new article/content creation or something of that nature.
Super Duper Secret Forum? Sounds like Animal House - Google: “Then Real Estate Webmasters is on Double Secret Probation!”
By Mert on Feb 6, 2008 | Reply
Article creation is too expensive. Remember 500 a month. That does not buy much SEO these days. Only schemes that are part of the Google no nos. If it is not Boser, I am sure it will hit another big time SEO’s client who will report.
By Jared Ritchey on Feb 6, 2008 | Reply
Hello Mert, as always I love your insight and input on matters such as these.
I am curious however because I’m not sure what you mean by $500 per month does not buy much.
As you know, Jamie writes articles that are impressive to say the least and $500 would get a person a lofty inventory of fresh content. Its my opinion that the 20 - 30 fresh articles a month that would buy would do wonders for SE Rank. Doesn’t it seem that google would like everyone to just write content worthy of linking that people do so without having to fall into link exchange schemes? Also, now that MSN may purchase Yahoo the game is going to keep you SEO’s on your feet. I’m willing to bet a few bucks that If I don’t get all tied up in the SEO game and just write content worthy of linking to I would be successful. It would take a scam artist or black hat guru to fake quality and knock off sites that are doing it honestly.
Maybe I’m wrong but is there too much emphasis being placed on links and link exchanges? Why not just produce content worth linking to?
Like Spam, maybe black hat unethical practices should be made a felony.
Jared Ritchey
By Mert on Feb 6, 2008 | Reply
Jared of course content is the king. There is absolutely no arguing that point of view.But it is the two end of a stick. You need a popular site (well linked) to have your content be read and linked. And most people dont have your wisdom in terms of white hat seo stuff and every one wants to get rich quick. As long as there is human greed and real estate agent laziness, Morgan can always create some cheap “alternative”. P.S. He charged 100 bucks an hour for copyrighting services if I am not mistaken(that was in his old prices list in the old rew design (page does not exist now so he might have lowered that) so he will never go that route you just said.
By Jared Ritchey on Feb 6, 2008 | Reply
Mert, it just gets better as it goes along it seems.
I get told recently that there was some sort of bulk notice to forum members that if they entertain a competing forum they get banned from his, then I get told that people are billed $100 an hour for support via email even if its just questions and now you tell me that its $100 per hour for copyrighting.
I would like to know where these customers are honestly. I mean where are these Realtors that pay $5000 for a site or $100 per hour for writing? Kinda makes $20 an article look like chump change. Seriously!
One of my clients from a long time back told me Saturday that his site is now #1 in google for the primary search term “cites name real estate” I wont mention which city. Then his competitor offered to buy back the first position because he makes $200k per year on advertising and can’t keep it unless he is back in #1. This guy had nothing to do with REW and it shows that Realtors may be hurting themselves by holding on to some beliefs.
Good feedback though, thanks Mert.
By Ryan on Feb 6, 2008 | Reply
Jared, Thanks for the insight & knowledge. Interesting comment…
By Jared Ritchey on Feb 6, 2008 | Reply
You are most welcome Ryan, I have enjoyed your comments as well.
By Ryan Trask on Feb 7, 2008 | Reply
Mert, that is pretty BS that REW is banning users at their forum board if a users posts to another real estate related forum board. If they want to ban me, what am I going to do… cry about it? Not much one can do.
I guess that makes it a cult then. Can you sell me some Amway products as well?
It has become more of a Realtor forum board VS. true “Real Estate Webmasters & Developers”. I find there are some very smart people outside that board.
Plenty of info out here in the online world, one just needs to dig and read enough.
By Jared Ritchey on Feb 11, 2008 | Reply
Actually Ryan its not BS even on the most basic level.
I am guest moderator on two real estate forums, administrator on two others and administrator on two forums that are not related to real estate and I’ve heard this across the board that REW does penalize members for becoming members of competing forums.
I know it does sound like BS that an administrator would do that by telling people to not join other forums. I would never do it myself because I’m a real fan of freedom and prison to me would suck. In the United States if you tell someone that “if you join a competitor I’ll ban you and remove your back links” is a crime here called Extortion not to mention a few trade violations that come to mind.
Does REW actually Ban or punish people for joining competing forums? Unfortunately, YES!
No one wants to believe it. Heck, I don’t want to either because such a practice would just insult to the already mounting negative discussions about REW.
I personally don’t want to be associated with negative talk in slinging poison without just cause. It could be easily mis construed as a jealous attack on a competitor. Luckily (thankfully) I’m not an REW competitor so I’ve managed to escape such allegations. What I say is based on discussions with American Realtors that feel they are obligated to REW because of exhaustive back link benefits and that their belief of the REW forums is more closely described as various grade levels in a high school with all the same antics and politics and adolescent conduct where Realtors sometimes (SOMETIMES) stop being professionals and resort to child like back biting.
For what its worth, I don’t believe Morgan to be an evil person or even a bad person. I believe him to be an intelligent, well planned, focused and competitive business minded person. But those in business can sometimes take on a king of the beast attitude in conducting business. Microsoft and Oracle did until they ended up in court. Its important to note that “The king of beasts” a Lion, is a predator and some of REW’s practices are clearly predatory.
~ Jared Ritchey / Not to be misunderstood.