Fraudster Attempts To Manage His Reputation With Bogus DMCA Takedown Notices

[Wilhelm]

Say, folks: has this ever happened to you? You're performing vanity searches via your favorite search engine and wouldn't you know it, it keeps bringing up news reports and government press releases about your involvement in widespread city pension corruption?

It could happen to any of us. But what can you do about it? It seems like nothing can make the internet forget. What if I told you a simple online tool could fix this for you… GUARANTEED!*

*Not a guarantee. Offer not valid in the United States.

DMCA notices, folks! It's what gets stuff done. Let's follow along with convicted investment advisor Chauncey Mayfield as he attempts to reclaim his search engine results from dozens of news websites, the FBI, the DOJ, and Wikipedia.

Copyright claim #1

KIND OF WORK:
Unspecified

DESCRIPTION:
I am a well respected person in the society that I come from, the US, and other parts of the world where I am known as an author or high net worth investor in private equity and real estate. However, recently, there are a number of websites that utilize my image to attract traction for people go through their content. My images and name can be seen at these websites. We want google to remove such sites from the search. Thanks.

Soooooo…

First off, "well-respected" may be a term of art I'm not familiar with, but being a participant in the rampant misuse of public funds would seem to undercut that claim, even when extended to "other parts of the world."

Second, the use of "your image" isn't infringement, even if these sites were using your image. But almost none of the 200+ URLs listed in Mayfield's bogus DMCA notices make use of any images of him. Certainly the FBI's doesn't. All it contains is Mayfield's guilty plea and more details about the bribery, extortion, and misuse of public funds by a number of Detroit public officials.

Whatever "attention" is being "tractioned" by stories about criminal activity by city employees doesn't rely on "images" Mayfield might possibly own. Chauncey Mayfield is a key player in the scenarios depicted by the articles he wants delisted. As the CEO of MayfieldGentry, he was apparently instrumental in securing the city's pension fund management contract through highly-questionable (and highly-illegal) means before sinking a few million into a failed shopping mall investment that led to the investigation of the city's fund management.

Unsurprisingly, Google has refused to delist any of the URLs submitted by the "highly respected" Chauncey Mayfield under the name of "Portfolio Property Management Global, LLC." I'm sure finding so many articles about your involvement in bribery, extortion, and mismanagement of a city's pension fund ruins vanity searches and makes people hesitant to do business with you, but that's nothing that can be solved by abusing the DMCA takedown system. If anything, it makes you look even more shady than the search results would suggest.