For years, a Chris Dinota told businesses and individuals across the nation that for $50,000 to $300,000 he would help them block out negative online reviews. Dinota’s online reputation management company, Solvera Group, said it would “de-index” websites carrying negative reviews, using lawsuits and other means to remove them from search engines like Google.
But this week Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said he had launched his own lawsuit against Dinota and Solvera, claiming they abused the legal system to dupe Texas state judges in Houston and search engines like Google into suppressing potentially legitimate comments posted in the review section of websites.
The Texas Attorney General claims that Dinota filed phony lawsuits to get state judges to sign off on bogus agreements to convince Internet search engines to de-index websites carrying negative reviews. The way Paxton describes it, such “take down” orders showing reviews are defamatory or illegitimate are generally the only way to get Google to de-index a website or online posting.
According to the 15-page complaint filed in Houston’s Texas state court, Solvera had a basic playbook to fool the judges and Google: Solvera would get small businesses or individuals who approached the company with negative information about them posted online to sign a contract. Then Solvera would hire a blogger in California to post another comment or review to the offending web page.
The next step was for Solvera to hire local lawyers in Houston, telling a lawyer that Solvera had identified the person who had posted the negative comments and providing a draft lawsuit for the lawyer to file. The lawyer would file the lawsuit and later an agreement provided by Solvera between the company targeted by negative comments and the hired blogger. The judge would sign off on the agreement that admitted defamation, which Solvera took to Google and other search engines, convincing them to de-index a website.
At each step of the playbook, Solvera and Dinota “employ a variety of false, deceptive, and misleading acts and practices through which they deceive and confuse customers, attorneys, Internet search providers, and Texas courts,” the complaint say.
The lawsuit even alleges that Dinota’s clients didn’t know about the lawsuits and were told that the legal process Solvera used would remove the offending complaint as opposed to getting the website carrying it de-indexed. The complaint says Solvera would get lawsuits filed on behalf of plaintiffs with similar names to its clients and tell the lawyers filing the complaints that Solvera had already identified the person who had posted the negative review and reached a settlement agreeing the posted comments were defamatory.
In other words, Paxton claims Solvera duped the lawyers into believing plaintiffs had authorized the lawsuit and that a deal had been stuck with the defendant, who was never actually the person who posted the initial comment and was instead a hired California blogger who made an additional posting on the website.
“Identifying the person consumers believe originally posted negative information would be nearly impossible to accomplish from the often anonymous complaints posted on the Internet,” Paxton’s lawsuit points out.
Prosecutors in Texas found as many as 12 lawsuits filed in Houston alone connected to Solvera. One of them includes a plaintiff that has a similar name to a Dallas area realtor for luxury homes and a defendant named Alejandro Baroro. This lawsuit, filed by a Houston attorney, alleges that Baroro published false statements on the website ripoffreport.com, including that the plaintiff’s business was “untrustworthy, unethical, deceptive, and cheater.”
Dinota operated through websites like instantcomplaintremovers.com that are no longer operational, advertising that he could “remove complaints in as little as 48 hours.” To promote the business, Dinota, whose business operated out of Walnut Creek, Calif., scored an article on CNN Money called “How The Rich Protect Their Online Identity.” Solvera claimed it had removed 4,203 complaints and de-indexed 2,647 URLs.
Forbes was unable to reach Dinota for comment, or confirm that he even exists. A search in two public record databases did not yield a single result for a Chris Dinota in the U.S. The California house where Texas prosecutors are seeking to serve Dinota with their complaint is owned by another man. “We have spoken to someone representing himself to be Chris Dinota,” said Beth Chun, assistant Texas attorney general of the consumer protection division.
There is, however, evidence linking Solvera to other controversial practices in the reputation management industry. Owen T. Mascott is listed in California business records as the initial agent for Solvera Group. A California lawyer, Mascott was sued last year by a company that owns pissedconsumer.com, claiming that Mascott helped reputation management companies file bogus lawsuits. Mascott did not respond to requests for comment. A federal judge tossed the lawsuit against him for lack of jurisdiction.
Texas is seeking an injunction and civil penalties against Dinota and Solvera. Texas AG Paxton claims that Solvera’s scheme didn’t always work, for example with mobile-optimized websites. Some of the postings Dinota worked to suppress “have now been re-listed by Google and other search engines,” Paxton’s complaint says.
