Glenn Roberts Jr. at Inman has written a great article about Vlad’s plight and ePerks in which we were interviewed. It is worth noting that the exposure this article brings to ePerks is yet another clear defeat for ePerks and CEO Ben Behrouzi. Even if they had a possibility of a courtroom win, they and their brand are by and far the clear losers in any scenario involving litigation regardless of the outcome. Their actions are clearly an ego driven reaction and the results of having no strategy reflect that. The only victory they can obtain is by leaving the stage altogether and worrying less about others’ opinions and more about their customers.

From the Interview:

In an Inman News interview, Richardson said, “There is a principle involved of the ability of the blogger to express an opinion. To write a critical piece. That affects us all.”

He said he has been contacted by ePerks officials about his writings at the site, and he offered, “If anything is printed that’s wrong, we’ll print a retraction — make corrections.”

Richardson said that if he, too, is hit with a lawsuit from ePerks, he expects to prevail. “If you have to do it, you have to do it. When we win, we will have that much more leverage in the future when people come to us,” he said.

Read The Full Story »

Leapfish / Ben Behrouzi Bombshell

Since BrokerScience first began covering LeapFish and ePerks CEO Ben Behrouzi, we have received a lot of reader submitted information in the form of: stories of first hand experiences with LeapFish / ePerks / Ben Behrouzi (as employees and customers), emails, voice mails, and other miscellaneous information and data relating to Ben and company. We have published virtually none of it and do not plan on publishing it in the future unless it is pertinent to the facts involved in our coverage. The following voice mails are an exception. They help establish a pattern of legal harassment by Ben Behrouzi that goes all the way back to his days at Reply.com.

One common theme among all current and former employees we speak to that have worked under Ben Behrouzi at Reply.com or ePerks.com is that they fear the consequences involved with sharing their story. The legal harassment and worse that ePerks critics such as Vlad Zablotzkyy (link removed due to page removal as part of terms of legal settlement with Ben), Dennis Pease and BrokerScience have endured are a testament to those concerns.

One person that is not afraid of Ben Behrouzi is former Reply.com employee Scott Chestnut. Scott worked under Ben Behrouzi (who was the Chief Technology Officer despite the fact that he was still in school working on a philosophy degree) as a Senior Network Engineer. While building out what was to be a million dollar network, Scott realized that working for Ben was an unworkable situation, so he walked out in frustration. The following voice mail from Ben Behrouzi chronicles Ben’s threats to blackball Scott and insure he is unable to gain employment, insinuating this will affect him for life and have deep reaching effects.

“My new goal in life is going to become to ruin your name across this entire East Bay……..you can take that to the bank, you can put your future kids or your girlfriend or whoever you want to put on it.” – ePerks CEO, Ben Behrouzi to employee that left the company

Ben Behrouzi Threatening to Blackball and “Ruin the Name” of Former Employee

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Later, Ben left another message regarding a vendor, CDW. He again makes false allegations and threatens legal action. Even though he claims he is in the process of preparing legal action, no legal action ever took place, an experience similar to what others have faced.

Read The Full Story »

Realtor.com is clearly in disarray. They not only refuse to acknowledge or communicate with their community, I have come to question whether or not they even recognize that a Realtor community exists. More importantly, I ask myself, if I were charged with rebuilding Realtor.com, reversing the brand and community damage and making a genuine effort to start a new relationship with Realtors, how would I do it?

A good starting point would be to review Loic Le Meur’s 10 Rules for Success. While the list is geared for startups, many of the ideas work just as well for established businesses.

1. Don’t wait for a revolutionary idea. It will never happen. Just focus on a simple, exciting, empty space and execute as fast as possible
2. Share your idea. The more you share, the more you get advice and the more you learn. Meet and talk to your competitors.
3. Build a community. Use blogging and social software to make sure people hear about you.
4. Listen to your community. Answer questions and build your product with their feedback.
5. Gather a great team. Select those with very different skills from you. Look for people who are better than you.
6. Be the first to recognise a problem. Everyone makes mistakes. Address the issue in public, learn about and correct it.
7. Don’t spend time on market research. Launch test versions as early as possible. Keep improving the product in the open.
8. Don’t obsess over spreadsheet business plans. They are not going to turn out as you predict, in any case.
9. Don’t plan a big marketing effort. It’s much more important and powerful that your community loves the product.
10. Don’t focus on getting rich. Focus on your users. Money is a consequence of success, not a goal.

(via Financial Times)

When you are passionate about what you do, good isn’t good enough. You know it can be done better and so you do it. There is no alternative.

Learn How to Make Signs the Greg Swann / BloodHound Way

Once daily posts halted for a week. 36 hour delay in acknowledging hack. 19 hours of downtime. No communication with the Realtor community as to whether their personal data was compromised or even an acknowledgment that the site was even hacked.

Previous Coverage: It all started here.

I just noticed BrokerScience articles coming up in an odd looking feed along with articles from Inman and Bloodhound, among others. I traced feed to this non working domain (update: it is now working) indicates it is the future home of a Feedburner “ Real Estate and Mortgage Blogging Group“. TechCrunch reported testing on feedburner blogging groups over a year and a half ago, so perhaps there is a roll out coming soon or perhaps just more testing. Although it’s hard to tell, this does not look like a user generated group, but if that’s the case, we will follow up.

Oddly enough a google search for “feedburner blogging groups” only returns the real estate and mortgage blogging group mentioned above.

UPDATE: Shortly after publishing this story, the above domain in question, was working and is down again. It looks like the Real Estate and Blogging Group is official. Unfortunately it looks like BrokerScience is not included in the final blogroll.

UPDATE 2: Link is down again….. testing it is. Here is a link for the google cache.

UPDATE 3: Dan Green confirmed this is a group he created but as of yet, creating groups is not a feature available to the public.

When BrokerScience published our analysis of ePerk’s brand destruction ( ePerks.com: A Case Study in Greed and Self-Imposed Brand Destruction ) on May 30th, we did not know that just nine days later, Vlad Zablotzkyy would be served with a lawsuit from ePerks/ CEO Ben Behrouzi.

Quite frankly, in light of the growing attention and coverage Ben Behrouzi’s cease & desist letter and legal threats to Vlad, we didn’t think Ben and company would be so foolish stupid as to continue in such a self defeating manner. We have a lot to learn. Ben has continued his tour de force of driving ePerks into the ground by threatening BrokerScience with legal action and following up with a lawsuit against Vlad which will ultimately prove to be his coup de grace.

Read The Full Story »

For the seventh day in a row Realtor.com is failing to communicate with its community regarding the hack that we first reported on June 4th. Realtor.com is approaching one week with no blog posts, no communication with its paid users and increasing doubt in its ability to run a blog, let alone one of the largest real estate portals in the world, Realtor.com. This is bad folks.

Another stunning story comes from 4Realz.net with news that weeks ago, following in Zillow’s footsteps, Realtor.com launched a new home estimates feature. Again, nobody noticed and nobody cared. Perhaps this is why Realtor.com thinks they can behave in the manner they have and  get away with it. The fact is that if nobody notices what you do or don’t do and you are a company with the reach and funding of Realtor.com / NAR, that should be a warning that you are not doing things right, not something to be used as a shield to hide behind.

The original posts that had spam injected to them have been removed. The daily blog posts have halted and communication about the situation is non-existent. This is turning uglier by the minute. Where is Blaine Cooke when you need him? {sarcasm}

In yet another blow to embattled ePerks and Brabus Ventures Corporation CEO, Ben Behrouzi, BrokerScience has acquired exclusive ownership of the following internet domain names:

• BenBehrouzi.com
• BenBehrouzi.net
• BehzadBehrouzi.com
• BrabusVentures.net
• BrabusVentures.org
• BrabusVentures.biz

Internet domain name case law provides that these names can be used in a capacity that does not create confusion in the market place. In the future they may be used to host and support a Defense Fund for bloggers that are sued by ePerks / Ben Behrouzi / Brabus Ventures Corporation. Have an idea for what we can use them for? Drop us a line!

We left BehnamBehrouzi.com (Ben’s legal name) for Ben if he so chooses to use it. We’ve also left most of the Behzad (Ben’s Brother, “Director of Product for Brabus Ventures”) domain names untouched. We are disappointed to report that Behzad’s preferred pseudonym (as anonymously reported by current ePerks employees), Kevin Morris is not available as a domain name.

When ePerks.com CEO Ben Behrouzi originally hired blogger Vlad Zablotzkyy of Go-Beyond-MLS.com to write a paid review of ePerks.com, he never expected the barrage of user complaints that were posted in the comment section of Vlad’s blog and he never expected the fallout that would occur when he threatened Vlad and sent him a Cease & Desist letter to take down the comments.

While it is not uncommon for CEO’s to be upset with criticism that their companies receive, it is highly unusual, perhaps unheard of, for CEO’s to follow the path that Ben Behrouzi has in single handedly destroying his reputation, brand and likely becoming liable for slander and defamation. The secondary effect that is as the story continues to grow it only serves to increase his exposure to growing murmurs regarding a Class Action lawsuit by dissatisfied ePerks users. To date: 8 of the top 10 results in a Google search for “eperks.com”and likewise “ben behrouzi” point to content that has negative commentary or comments about ePerks and ePerks CEO Ben Behrzouzi.

This morning, Vlad Zablotzkyy was served with a civil action from Brabus Ventures Corporation (ePerks parent company, owned by Behnam Behrouzi) claiming unspecified damages for posting information on his blog about a false child molestation allegation that was made against him. Vlad made no accusations but simply presented anecdotal evidence indicating that ePerks was possibly linked to the false charges. The evidence showed that user names used by the person posting false child molestation allegations matched user names used by persons leaving comments on Vlad blog originating from ePerks.com corporate IP address.

Read The Full Story »

(Previous Realtor.com coverage – Realtor.com Hacked Day 1 / Realtor.com Hacked Day 2 / Realtor.com Hacked Day 3 )

In an unfortunate turn of events, Realtor.com has failed to acknowledge its website and or servers were breached and has failed to inform users whether or not personal data was compromised. This is disturbing on a number of levels. While the breach may have been as simple as a flawed wordpress plugin or much worse, nobody can know for sure due to Realtor.com’s failure to communicate.

Realtor.com Failure to Communicate Fallout:

• It signals to users that they are not valued and builds distrust and disloyalty in users.
• Fails to inform users if their data was compromised, on a legal basis, my guess is that users have a right to be informed as such.
• Is counterproductive to fostering community.
• Shows lack of leadership on the part of Realtor.com team members.
• Gives credence to criticism that Realtor.com does not act in members’ best interests.

Common Courtesy. After repeatedly informing Realtor.com that their website had been compromised, they failed to acknowledge our requests and failed to give us any feedback on the situation at hand. Oddly enough, despite their lack of communication with BrokerScience and Realtor.com users, their IP Address, 209.74.96.62, shows up as one of the most frequent visitors in BrokerScience traffic logs.

To be more specific, the IP Address of HomeStore.com shows up. It is not clear whether HomeStore is now considered a parent or partner of Realtor.com or whether it only shows up because the ARIN record has not been updated since 2001. It does, however, serve as a reminder of Realtor.com’s past and may provide a clue to the company culture that exists that would allow such a basic, preventable and unheard of gaffe to occur.

BrokerScience IP Address Traffic Log

NetRange:   209.74.96.0 - 209.74.127.255

OrgName:    Homestore.com, Inc
OrgID:      HOMEST-7
Address:    30700 Russell Ranch Rd
City:       Westlake Village
StateProv:  CA
PostalCode: 91362
Country:    US

Brabus Ventures (BrabusVentures.com), owned by embattled CEO Ben Behrouzi and parent company of ePerks.com, LeapFish and DotNextInc has updated it’s website and added new “Values” and “Culture” pages to combat the barrage of negative publicity their business practices have earned them. There is only one problem: the pages are STOLEN virtually verbatim from Chevron.com and Mervyns.com. Oh, the irony, in stealing “Values” and “Culture” pages.

This is no surprise, CEO Ben Behrouzi and his companies have a proven track record of engaging in unethical behavior and marketing and his latest debacle of adding “copyright infringement” to his resume are par for the course. This is a time that one would think, as CEO, he should be apologizing to the victims of his harassment and focusing on his failed startup, iHype.com which one of his employees humorously defended as a “soft launch” when it failed to launch as announced on June 2nd.

BrabusVentures.com Steals Culture Page from Mervyns.com

(Click Thumbnail Below For Full Size Image)

Screenshot of Original Mervyns.com Page / Screenshot of Offending BrabusVentures.com Page

BrabusVentures.com Steals Values Page from Chevron.com

(Click Thumbnail Below For Full Size Image)

Screenshot of Original Chevron.com Page / Screenshot of Offending BrabusVentures.com Page

Dissasemble. I really want to make this story go away, but it’s the gift that keeps on giving. I REALLY want to write some positive stories here.

While it is fairly common for content to be recycled on real estate and mortgage websites (especially privacy pages, legal pages, glossaries and even basic content that define general concepts) it is never ok for a CEO or Founder to steal a Mission Statement, Values Statement, or Definition of Company Culture. Never. Ever.

These are the documents that define the moral, ethical and business code of your company and are the basis for the culture that is created through the actions and leadership of company founders and management. These are to be created with care, sensitivity and purpose. Without positive core beliefs, philosophies and morals, one is truly lost.

UPDATE: BrabusVentures.com has been abandoned due to bad press with no redirect or mention to the new site at Dotnextinc.com.

(Previous Realtor.com coverage – Realtor.com Hacked Day 1 / Realtor.com Hacked Day 2)

At around 7 PM last night the Realtor.com Blog was taken offline. 17 hours later and counting, they are still down. The speculation is that a wordpress plugin was at fault, but that remains to be seen.

We are still scratching our heads over how nobody at Realtor.com noticed the hack in their RSS readers, why no action was taken when we notified them of the hack for over 36 hours and why securing the website and servers is taking 17 hours and counting.

Realtor.com is not a mom and pop shop, they take in millions from hard working Realtors and should be held to a higher standard. Have you ever seen Trulia, Zillow, Redfin or HomeGain down for 17 hours? Of course not.

Realtor.com has yet to release comment or respond to our request for comment.

Update: As of 2:30 PM, the site is back up minus the specific posts that had injected spam for a total downtime of around 19 hours. Wow. Still waiting for an official response from a Realtor.com spokesperson. My hope is that they do not fail to address the issue and communicate with the Realtor.com community and bloggers that use their service. Failure to make users aware of the circumstances involved with the hack (considering its anyone’s guess whether personal data was compromised) would be unfortunate for the Realtor.com blogging community.

BrokerScience Response to LeapFish CEO, Ben Behrouzi:

In the transcript below, we asked you to provide us proof of any factual inaccuracies we have published, you failed to do so.

You state that what we are publishing is “completely false and now damaging the company“, yet failed to list even one “false item” or “fabrication” and failed to prove how we are damaging your company.

More importantly, you have failed to take responsibility for your own actions, those of your employees and the consequences that have befallen you as a result of the behaviors you engage in.

While your harassment of bloggers like Vlad Zablotkyy, Dennis Pease, myself & others speaks volumes about your character, the feedback I have been getting from your employees is even more telling. While I have been given the green light by my legal team to share my conversations with a handful of your employees, it is not my intention to do so at this time.

You claim that I have threatened a suit against and harassed your employees. That is categorically false. For the record, my only complaint against your employees is that they suck for sending me spam.

You claim that I have shown up at one of your employees’ homes. That is categorically false. In a conversation with one of your employees (the conversation lasted one and a half hours), I indicated that I had seen proof that the domain name they personally owned and sent ePerks spam from was registered to a private residence, not a business. I simply used Google Maps Street View to make this confirmation. If they falsely concluded that I trekked from Los Angeles to San Francisco to see their home, they were mistaken.

If you care to continue this dialog in the courtroom of public opinion, it will be my pleasure to disassemble you and your argument at will using nothing more than your own words against you from here on out.

If you are so stupid as to think you have something to gain by continuing this dialog in Superior Court, I want to thank you in advance for the recognition, traffic and revenue you will bring to BrokerScience as the story goes national and you become personally responsible for being the tipping point that puts BrokerScience.com on the map.

Trace Richardson / BrokerScience

Email Transcript