Cash4Gold Lawsuit Against Whistleblowers Over; Florida State Investigation Just Beginning

from the be-careful-what-dirt-you-kick-up dept

You may recall that, a year ago, the company Cash4Gold got into some hot water after some rather unflattering stories were written about the company and its practices. Some former employees acted as whistleblowers to explain some of the more questionable practices the company adhered to. In response, rather than proving them wrong or cleaning up its act, Cash4Gold threatened and then sued Consumerist, a complaints website, and two whistleblowers. Of course, the lawsuit just encouraged Consumerist to dig deeper and find even more questionable practices on the part of Cash4Gold. Late last year, the company seemed to realize that suing Consumerist was not a smart move and dropped the lawsuit against the site, though it continued its suit against the whistleblowers.

Consumerist is now reporting that the lawsuit against the whistleblowers is now over as well, but they don't explain exactly what happened. The implication is that Cash4Gold has finally dropped the lawsuits, though it doesn't say that exactly. Plus, the two former employees are reasonably upset that their names are splashed all over the news as being involved in a lawsuit over "breach of contract" from a former employer. Of course, in suing for breach of contract, the company was effectively admitting that what the whistleblowers said was true rather than false.

Separately, Consumerist notes that while this lawsuit is over, things keep looking worse for Cash4Gold, as the Florida state Attorney General has now started an investigation into the company's practices.

So, good work, Cash4Gold. Not only did your actions lead to significantly more attention to your questionable practices, your lawsuit against those who exposed you didn't accomplish anything other than giving them an opportunity to expose more of your practices, and the end result is an investigation from state officials. Maybe next time focus on improving your business, rather than suing those who expose your shady practices.

Filed Under: whistleblower
Companies: cash4gold

Cash4Gold Drops Lawsuit Against Consumerist... Still Suing Whistleblowers

from the dear-streisand... dept

It looks like the folks over at Cash4Gold have finally realized that it wasn't a particularly smart move to sue Consumerist for reporting on various allegations made against Cash4Gold. The company has dropped that part of the lawsuit, though it continues to sue the ex-employees it accuses of both defamation and "publishing any more confidential, proprietary information" (and, note, they don't say which info was defamatory or which was confidential and proprietary). Consumerist makes it very clear that this wasn't a settlement. They didn't ask to be dropped from the case or agree to anything. One would guess that somewhere down the line a lawyer explained to Cash4Gold that its likelihood of winning such a case was about as close to zero as you could imagine...

Filed Under: defamation, whistleblower
Companies: cash4gold, consumer reports, consumerist

Cash4Gold Sues Consumerist, Complaints Board Over Reports On Cash4Gold Practices

from the how-much-for-that-gold-Streisand-Effect? dept

Earlier this year, we wrote how odd it was that the company Cash4Gold (made famous by its cheesy late night commercials) was threatening to sue bloggers for defamation for merely repeating and linking to a Consumerist article that quoted a former Cash4Gold employee about allegedly underhanded tactics used by the company. The defamation threat was odd for a variety of reasons. First, Cash4Gold itself was talking about these same allegations on its own website (which is actually the best way to deal with them: respond to them, rather than trying to silence them). Second, going the legal route only guaranteed much more attention to the issue and questions surrounding Cash4Gold's activities. Third, it made little sense to threaten someone who was merely summarizing what others were saying.

While Cash4Gold apparently backed off such threats, it did go forward and get an injunction against the former employee to stop her from "publishing any more confidential, proprietary information, and any defamatory information on the internet." I like how it mixes in confidential, proprietary and defamatory information -- so now we don't know which the original reports were. Were they defamatory lies? Or were they just confidential, proprietary information?

Either way, with that injunction, the company contacted Complaints Board -- the site where the employee originally put forth the allegations -- and Consumerist, who also posted on the allegations, and demanded they remove the posts. Of course, with no legal order, both sites refused to do so. In response, Cash4Gold has now sued both sites, once again guaranteeing that much more media attention is paid to alleged claims of underhanded business practices by the company.

Of course, rather than backing down, Consumerist is fighting this and has posted a lengthy and detailed article reviewing the original claims, backing many of them up with additional reporting details and pointing out that this is an ongoing news story that it believes it has every right to write about. Once again, though, we're left wondering why Cash4Gold would do this. All it's doing is drawing that much more attention to the claims against it.

The Citizen Media Law Project post above details two additional factoids about how Cash4Gold's lawyers are trying to get around the rather obvious (it seems) Section 230 safe harbors that almost certainly protect Complaint Board. First, they claim that because Complaint Board edited the title of the post, they're no longer just a service provider, but "created, developed and published." That seems like a long shot. Perhaps more likely to succeed is a reference to the recent Barnes ruling, where Section 230 was tossed out the window after the company promised to delete the content in question (and then didn't). Of course, it's not clear if Complaint Board did, in fact, promise that, but Cash4Gold claims that it did.

Filed Under: defamation, whistleblower
Companies: cash4gold, complaints board, consumer reports, consumerist

Cash4Gold Apparently Threatening Bloggers With Defamation

from the that'll-work dept

Despite getting plenty of attention for its Superbowl ad that felt more like a late-night-TV cable ad, Cash4Gold hasn't really been having a very good month. The company was caught when a representative (the company claims he was "acting independently") offered cash to a blogger if he would take down a negative review. Then some sites, including Consumerist republished a list of "10 confessions" from a former employee, who described what appears to be somewhat questionable practices by the company -- allowing it to live up to the letter of what it promises people, but not quite the spirit. The company, not surprisingly, denies all of this, and says you can't trust a disgruntled former employee.

However, now it appears to be accusing folks who reposted even part of the Consumerist post with defamation. Allen Harkleroad writes in to let us know that after he wrote about the Consumerist article -- basically linking to Consumerist and including just the opening paragraph of the original article, the company had its PR firm threaten him with defamation. You know that's going to backfire.

What's especially odd about this, however, is that on the company's own blog they have reposted the same content in an attempt to refute it. That is the best way to respond to it. Threatening defamation charges is only going to serve to draw more negative attention to the company. Why wouldn't the PR people direct bloggers to the company's response instead?

Filed Under: blogging, defamation
Companies: cash4gold

If You're Thinking Of Paying People To Talk Nice About Your Company Online, It Probably Won't End Well

from the ethics? dept

A company called Cash4Gold, which pays people for unwanted gold items, gained some notoriety this week on the back of its Super Bowl ad, which featured Ed McMahon with a golden toilet and MC Hammer with a gold medallion of himself wearing a gold medallion. But it's also getting some more press online after somebody doing online "marketing" for it apparently emailed a guy that had written an unflattering story about the company and offered to pay him to take it down or rewrite it (via Boing Boing). The search results for the company feature some pretty unfavorable stories about it, but evidently instead of cleaning up its act, Cash4Gold would rather just splash out some Cash4Silence. This comes a few weeks after a Belkin employee got busted trying to pay people to write positive reviews about its products on Amazon. It's hardly surprising that companies do this sort of thing, but the potential downside of getting caught (not to mention the ethical concerns) should give them pause.

Filed Under: astroturf, reviews
Companies: cash4gold