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Attorneys Accused of Filing Bogus Suits in Alleged Scheme to Stamp Out Negative Web Reviews

By By Ross Todd
November 01, 2016

Two California lawyers have been accused of participating in a scheme that used sham lawsuits to suppress negative online reviews of businesses.

Consumer Opinion LLC, the company that runs pissedconsumer.com, claims in a suit last month that attorneys Mark W. Lapham of Danville and Owen T. Mascott of Palm Desert manipulated California's legal system to fraudulently obtain court orders that were used to persuade search engines such as Google to de-index review pages — effectively putting them out of sight of consumers.

The 27-page complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California claims the lawyers employed the “rather brilliant but incredibly unethical” scheme on behalf of so-called reputation management companies that scrub negative information about businesses from the Web.

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