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Comment by ikeboy | Hacker News Reader

> They insisted I never talk to any LEO

Nothing wrong with this ...

>PTR records, Enabling Spam

Doesn't say why that's illegal. At best it says they had customers that broke the law.

>Often both the CEO and Vice President would talk openly about how one of our clients was violating the TOS of several companies.

Not criminal even for the client, at least assuming the HiQ v Linkedin case is upheld. And not illegal for the company. Maybe civil liability under tortious interference? Pretty high bar there, though. And that's all assuming there's an actual ToS - the one example given is of Google search results. Manipulating your own website in the hopes Google treats it favorably can't be seen as violating any agreed ToS.

The stuff Micfo was accused of in court, and the stuff OP is claiming are criminal acts, are disjoint.

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>At best it says they had customers that broke the law.

Did you see the part at the top where the CEO admitted to being all of those "customers"? They were playing a shell game, and while this guy didn't do the criminal activities he definitely was working for the "legitimate front end" of a larger criminal organization.

Even if you take the OP at face value, they're an unreliable narrator at best.

They have questionable character and moral standards by their own admission. That's before even considering the effects of their mental illness.

I would never hire this "perpetually unemployed" person. Everything they say points to something being off.

Flipside: This criminal enterprise spotted those same exact attributes, but the mitigating factor was technical competence and submissiveness. And if it came to be where they thought it would never end up (the situation today), someone would discredit them as crazy, given their background.

Absolutely they did. I'm not discounting OP's story, I'm basically suggesting exactly what you're saying.

I've seen a similar scenario play out before with another spammer and the kind of people he hired.

Gotcha. I misunderstood - I thought you were saying they were crazy and not to believe them etc.

I read the entire post. Can you please quote the part you're referring to?

"Within a week I was convinced Micfo encompassed more than just Micfo, but a handful of shell companies:

This was later proved to be true when the CEO(Amir), admitted in the ARIN(American Registry for Internet Numbers) trial, he was really behind these entities."

As far as I can tell, those shell companies were to get additional IP addresses out of ARIN. It's not been alleged that they were customers of Micfo running spamming etc services, by anyone except you.

And the author.

But your claim was that this was unrelated to the trial. The response was that, no, it actually corroborated the core allegation in the Micfo case.

It's true that it alleges other stuff. That doesn't make the IP fraud point somehow not corroboration.

The author does not allege that.

>But your claim was that this was unrelated to the trial. The response was that, no, it actually corroborated the core allegation in the Micfo case.

Now you're misreading both OP and the response to my comment. ghostbrainalpha claimed that the OP says the CEO was the same as the customers that were allegedly committing crimes like spamming. The OP does not say this.

>That doesn't make the IP fraud point somehow not corroboration.

OP never mentions this as one of the crimes he's listing. He lists:

1. Mishandling of warrants

2. Child endangerment

3. Enabling spamming

4. Enabling ToS violations

None of the things OP says are crimes are actually illegal, and none of them were at issue during the trial. That's what I pointed out.

I'm sorry, you've completely lost me. The core allegation in the Micfo case is that the company fraudulently obtained 800k IP addresses from ARIN using fake companies. The author of this post corroborates handling large quantities of the the PTR record changes for these companies in exactly the manner described at trial. I mean, this is quite clearly related behavior.

And yet you're all like "I can't believe anyone thinks this is related!" based on the fact that some other stuff alleged (which seems reasonably credible to me, and also plausibly illegal if you infer some context) wasn't part of the trial. But... so what?

(Also: I don't understand why you're saying Child Endangerment isn't "actually illegal", it's literally a term of art in the field used in statutes all across the US! Obviously that's not proof of a crime here, but... no, you're wrong, "child endangerment" is an actual crime.)

>The core allegation in the Micfo case is that the company fraudulently obtained 800k IP addresses from ARIN using fake companies. The author of this post corroborates handling large quantities of the the PTR record changes for these companies in exactly the manner described at trial.

What? He says it was done for customers. Not for shell companies.

>And yet you're all like "I can't believe anyone thinks this is related!" based on the fact that some other stuff alleged (which seems reasonably credible to me, and also plausibly illegal if you infer some context) wasn't part of the trial. But... so what?

My main point is that nothing alleged in OP is actually illegal. OP implying otherwise is just ignorant of the law. Unethical, perhaps, although I'd defend at least some of the stuff described. The fact that it mentions the trial and mentions the (legal) practice of having multiple shell companies doesn't change anything. They weren't charged with having shell companies, but with using those companies to commit fraud. OP mentions none of that fraud.

>I don't understand why you're saying Child Endangerment isn't "actually illegal", it's literally a term of art in the field used in statutes all across the US! Obviously that's not proof of a crime here, but... no, you're wrong, "child endangerment" is an actual crime.

I'm saying the actions alleged in OP are not illegal, including the actions described in the child endangerment section.

> What? He says it was done for customers. Not for shell companies.

The "customers" that just happen to be the very same shell companies described at trial, engaged in the very same shenannigans with "their" IP addresses? Those customers?

I mean, come on. I think at this point you're just retreating into pedantry, arguing that the linked article doesn't meet appropriate evidentiary standards when presented in a blog post and therefore we need to assume that Micfo is innocent in the sense of this one article not meeting a sufficient burden of proof. So... OK.

But anyone with a brain can see that this is a personal story about exactly what was going on, and thus that it's clearly describing related activities. Some of which, again, were clearly illegal.

>The "customers" that just happen to be the very same shell companies described at trial, engaged in the very same shenannigans with "their" IP addresses? Those customers?

Where are you getting this from? I admittedly have not watched the trial or read through trial transcripts. Are you asserting that the trial produced evidence that the shell companies mentioned were involved in spamming (as opposed to renting out the IP addresses to customers who ultimately used them for spamming?) I haven't seen this allegation in any of the articles I've read about the case. The blog post doesn't identify any customers.

>But anyone with a brain can see that this is a personal story about exactly what was going on, and thus that it's clearly describing related activities. Some of which, again, were clearly illegal.

No need for personal attacks. It's far from clear that anything described in the blog post is illegal. I already went point by point in my initial comment on this. You're making allegations the blog post never made that Micfo was itself involved in spamming. I doubt this, being as it wasn't charged and nobody but commenters in this thread have alleged it.

To spell this out:

OP appears to be saying that the "channel partners" were the shell companies. Hence why Micfo was responding as the channel partners and why subpoenas went to them.

He also says:

>Our largest customer would submit PTR deletions, additions, and changes to our channel partners, I would log into the channel partner portal, and recieve them then act on them.

It's clear he's not saying that this customer was a channel partner/shell company. I don't know how you could possibly read the post and come off with that impression.

So 1%'ers can use shell companies to get what they want, but ordinary corporations can't use their free speech rights to spend money for the same?

>> They insisted I never talk to any LEO

> Nothing wrong with this ...

Depending on where they're located, failure to report certain types of crime to law enforcement may itself be a crime.

In many, if not most companies, taking legal matters into your own hands without involving your company’s legal team will surely get you reprimanded if not fired.

Just like how you would get fired if you sent out a legal demand letter to another company without legal being in the loop. Law enforcement is no different: they are not your friend.

Your employer isn't your friend either and most of them will gladly throw you under the law enforcement bus if it comes to that.

You employer isn't your friend, but there are aligned incentives when it comes to the business continuity and your continued employment as affected by general business health (even if not necessarily aligned when it comes to your benefits and salary).

Law enforcement doesn't even have that aligned incentive. You might say you are aligned in that you want the law to be followed, but their incentive is more along the lines of making sure they bring in and prosecute cases. If the only way to make the case work is to throw the company that reported it (and by extension, its employees) into the grinder because that's all they think they can successfully do, then that's likely what they'll do.

Reporting the issues to the legal department, which then deals with it could be a ways around this.

For blatant issues (i.e. there's a dead body) you'd still be expected to act on your own, but on any greyer area you'd be covered.

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