I had a nasty bout with an SEO marketer a few years ago. He had taken content from my website and other assets of mine without permission or advance request. I was willing to overlook it as an inevitable cost of doing business.

But when he started to steal my customer reviews word for word and posting them as fake reviews, I became irate. I guess I am OK with someone stealing from me but I felt the reviews were my customer's property, not mine. When I confronted him he started spamming my business and then wrote detailed fake blog posts about how I was criminal hacker that now works covertly for the FBI. My name and photoshopped images were posted on gay websites for bondage sex. I Googled very poorly for a while, especially my images. I lost many many nights of sleep over this and I probably lost a contract over it.

I eventually found where he lived and fortunately he owned his own home. I threatened to sue him and take his home. He removed all the libelous posts shortly after that.

After all had been settled, a few months later he wrote me asking if I wanted to partner with him on a project, demonstrating a pathological lack of awareness. Apparently tormenting me had just been another fun day at the office and not a memorable event. I ignored him and never heard back.

My personal experience does make me wonder if the subject in the parent article was motivated to kill his competitors just for profit. Or did he and his competitors have had a nasty on-going personal war that just kept escalating. Not that I would ever justify attempted murder. Just saying...

edits: grammar, clarity.