We Were Sued. We Stood Up. We Prevailed.

byKyle

2.4M followers

Updated 7 months ago

I want to share a story with you. One that involves an article, a lawsuit, an injustice, and then actual justice.

I am going to walk you through the entire story, including the timeline of events that took place. It was a very complex procedure, but I am going to do my best to simplify it for you to help you understand how, operating out of principle, ethics and truth eventually prevail.

December 23rd, 2015. We Were Served With a Lawsuit.

Back in 2015, just a few days before Christmas we were sued by a company called MOBE, Ltd on the basis that we allegedly defamed them within an article called “Another Obvious Scam”, that I researched, wrote, and then published in January of 2014.

You can read the article I wrote here:

My Online Business Empire - Another Obvious Scam

Within my article, I presented “facts” to people about the MOBE scheme. I indicated many drawbacks to the program based on my thorough assessment and analysis, and subsequently it resulted in many people reading about MOBE, Ltd, realizing what it was, and in some cases avoiding the program.

Not everyone was so lucky though. Many people lost a lot of money, and according to the FTC this was to the tune of over $125 MILLION dollars essentially depleting unsuspecting opportunity seekers’ bank accounts. These people were from all over the world, they were moms, dads, grandparents, students, and veterans. More often than not the people being scammed out of their money were people that could not afford it.

In fact, if you are reading this you may have succumb to the MOBE scam yourself.

As with many similar schemes/scams online, they have the tendency to “sue” companies and individuals when they don’t like what is said about their operations, even when it is true. The original lawsuit was an attempt to “muffle” freedom of speech and facts. This is a common approach as it allows the deception to the public to continue if there is no negative (and factual) publicity about what their companies are actually doing. This stifles truth and free speech by scaring publishers to remove their content.

Consequently, it allows companies to continue their misleading operations and continue to lure unsuspecting customers into their sales process. The MOBE sales funnel on the surface was one that started with a seemingly harmless $49 offer, but quickly turned into $10,000’s of financial outlay, high pressure coaching sessions, and forced upsells that were required in order to make higher commissions. Some people lost upwards of $100,000+ to the MOBE scheme, often times money they didn’t have or they had to borrow.

The program worked by luring folks in with the “idea” of making massive commissions online, with minimal work. There was also a refund guarantee claim process that was very appealing. These were both fabrications of what the reality actually was.

After consumers pay, however, MOBE required these consumers to sign post-purchase agreements that seek to impose onerous conditions for obtaining a refund, or that claim in other instances that the purchases are nonrefundable and final. MOBE often cite to the language in these post-purchase agreements to deny refund requests or dispute chargebacks (reference, FTC complaint).

Not only were MOST people losing money to the MOBE scheme, very few people ever got a refund that requested it.

MOBE was found by the FTC to be an unethical scheme, one that set out to take advantage of the vulnerable. These customers were convinced they could make loads of money, and do so fast with so many independent claims within their marketing.

The MOBE scheme had defrauded thousands of consumers who collectively have paid over $125,000,000 (Yes, 125 MILLION dollars) based on their misrepresentations. Numerous consumers have lost more than $20,000 from Defendants’ scheme.

This entire case against us felt strange from the outset. I wrote an article that outlined the truth about a product, and as a result I was sued for it. In this article I want to help you understand what we have gone through, what we have learned, and ultimately what/who we have been defending through the course of this THREE year case in the Supreme Court of British Columbia.

Carson and I both feel it is important to share this information because a lot of people may have been completely oblivious to the real facts and what really was taking place. There was a lot of misinformation campaigns that have been spread around the Internet.

The facts are about to be set straight.

First, What Was in the Claim Against Us?

The Notice of Civil Claim, served on December 23rd, 2015 was a defamation lawsuit, in this case, of a company. You can’t technically hurt a company’s feelings, so the claim was that the resulting impact of things that I said within my “Another Obvious Scam” article were defamatory, and as a result lead to company losses.

The reality is, what we were being sued for in the first place wasn’t even defamation. The meanings were innocuous, regardless of the validity of them.

In Canadian courts, the defamation laws are much more archaic than other jurisdictions, and in British Columbia we don’t have the Anti-SLAPP legislation that exists in Ontario and parts of the United States that can put an early end to bogus claims such as this one. In parts of the United States Anti-SLAPP legislation offers defendants compensation (usually in $3 to $1 multiple) if a company sues for the purpose of muzzling free speech.

In the case of our lawsuit against MOBE, everything that was sued upon was what I believed to be factual based on my research. We were certainly prepared to defend on this basis, although there are many other types of defences that you can utilize in Canada when defending against defamation.

When you get a lawsuit of this nature, it is important to get legal counsel. In this, we hired one of the top defamation lawyers in Canada.

One thing that was consistent from the outset though was our confidence in the strength of our case. We knew we could defend all the “defamatory” statements in truth, and fair comment, along with a few other defenses. We had plenty of resources and documents to prove TRUTH and we were more than ready to do so.

But what we came to find out, in the legal world, litigation is often not about the substance of the case, rather it becomes a case about the case. This was the central theme of the Plaintiff’s arguments (MOBE Ltd), starting to form early on. It was apparent they weren’t interested in arguing the substance, rather they were launching suit for the pure purpose of consuming our financial resources. We spent well over half a million dollars mounting our defense.

The John Doe Effect. We Were Also Sued for Content That Wasn’t Ours.

When we were sued, we were also sued for “other” people’s content.

Content that I had no involvement with, content that Carson had no involvement with, that neither of us wrote, and that we didn’t know existed until the lawsuit was initiated.

These other publications and authors were added to the case and were deemed as “John Does”. These were apparent content publishers that shared similar views of the MOBE program to those I had expressed but, written in their own words, unique to them. This included other people’s content that predated my content, and content written by major authorities and scambusters in the industry.

It didn’t make sense that I could defame someone through content that wasn’t mine and that I had no involvement with. But as a defendant and with a very aggressive litigation lawyer on the other side, it became something that we were required to defend. Hence the case within the case.

MOBE Ltd and their counsel employed a powerful bullying tactic to argue my ONE article, was responsible for what appeared to be the entirety of the internet. This included past customers’ complaints, comments on Facebook, some of the most popular forums online, and some of the most authoritative bloggers and respected scambusters of the industry, warning consumers of this program. We were even sued for content on WarriorForum.com, for content predating mine.

This case became as much about us protecting our right to freedom of speech and facts, as it was protecting the other whistleblowers out there. We didn’t want any individual or other company to be bullied as we were.

We were willing to fight not just for our rights, but fight for the rights of others and fight for consumers all over the world that could potentially succumb to $10,000’s in losses (and in many cases ruin their lives).

We were not only protecting our content and willing to defend our freedom of speech and the TRUTH, we were put in a position where we set out to defend other bloggers, authorities, and website owners in the industry that had shared their concerns about the MOBE scam.

But this wasn’t the only thing we were insistent on protecting….

We Fought Hard and Ultimately Protected YOUR Private Data.

We were consistently asked by the Plaintiff, MOBE Ltd to basically hand over a significant chunk of private customer data. We were not willing to compromise ANY private information about any customer, and we certainly weren’t going to hand over your personal information to a fraudulent company.

It was like a revolving door of information they requested, they were trying to poke their nose wherever it would take them. One day they would be asking for one subset of user data, the next day it would be something completely different.

We were willing to defend your privacy, and defended this to the bitter end, even to the point where we were deemed as “reprehensible” by a judge in the Supreme Court of British Columbia.

We were assigned an early judge, per request by us, that completely backfired. We got a brand new judge, one that was formerly a family law lawyer, and one that immediately appeared to have an incredible misunderstanding of our case . It felt as though we had been deemed the cheating “husband” of the case from the very commencement.

In a typical family law case, the “husband” can be someone that is trying to hide assets from the “wife”, thus judges often order all sorts of financially related documents to be handed over. There is the tendency for lawyers to request all sorts of personal documents, and the judges to order them.

But we certainly were not the husband, and we certainly were not hiding the ball.

And this was far from a husband/wife situation. A sophisticated technology company being sued for defamation is much different then a divorce. In particular a company like ours with millions of records of sensitive, secure, and private data. We have been very stringent about following all of the major privacy conventions over the years to safeguard YOUR data from anyone.

In addition to that, we got a judge that we thought failed to understand the substance of the case. None of the decisions appeared to be rooted in the FACTS that we provided, rather they were a complete adoption of what the plaintiff’s counsel presented. It was as if we weren’t being heard, which was incredibly tiring.

Many of the plaintiff’s arguments were rooted in inaccuracies and misinterpretations of the facts, but I suppose if you say that consistently to someone it can become their reality. That is what happened.

The reality is this though. In the long run truths will override untruths. We live in a world where facts are becoming less important and sometimes it can feel like society has reached a real low, but truth will eventually prevail… right?

That was the idea anyways.

This is also advice we were given early and often by our unbelievable counsel, who is one of the most respected lawyers in British Columbia and holds Queen’s Counsel status. This is assigned to “exceptional” lawyers in Canada (and less than 5% ever achieve this designation).

Anyways, back to the case and mounting our defense.

We decided as part of our defense we would also lean on specific laws in Canada, under the Competition Act, that prevent Multi-Level-Marketing companies from operating in the way that MOBE was operating. In fact, there are two major components of Canadian criminal law, under Sections 55 and 55.1 of the Competition Act, that we felt were almost templated as to what MOBE Ltd was.

Thus, that was part of our defense in our response to the initial Notice of Civil Claim. We argued the criminality of MOBE Ltd on the basis that they weren’t abiding by the Competition Act laws in Canada.

Consequently, the opposing legal counsel decided to remove the criminal aspect from our claim in the summer of 2016. They filed an application to “strike” the criminal language within our response, and we agreed to remove it, simply because the meanings sued upon weren’t related to any criminal statements.

But then a few weeks later something very interesting happened.

A Second Lawsuit Was Served Upon Us, With More Serious Meanings Added.

In mid-June of 2016, MOBE filed and served us with a SECOND lawsuit. This time this lawsuit indicated that we had called MOBE a “fraud” and that I had indicated MOBE Ltd was a criminal organization within my Another Obvious Scam post. These are much more serious meanings and would most definitely constitute defamation, if they were unfounded statements.

The fact that we were being sued on these meanings seemed really strange. This, considering they had just wanted to remove our statements indicating they were criminal within our response to their initial claim. This appeared to be another litigation tactic. We add it, they request to remove it, we abide, then a few weeks later they add it again.

The thing is, we had already been prepared to prove this, and this was something that we were now going to need to argue in our defence. In Canadian law there are at least 4 different defences that you have, one of them being “truth”. Although the most difficult of the bunch to argue, it was the one we felt we had more than enough information to go with.

From the very beginning our counsel warned us that if we plead the defence of “truth” in a defamation case and if you are subsequently unable to prove “truth”, then you are obligated to pay aggravated damages (which are much higher than damages paid for unsuccessful deployment of a different defence tactic). Knowing the consequence of pleading truth, we confidently chose to move forward and plead it in our defence.

We stood up. We got ready. We prepared.

We spent almost the entirety of the next year getting ready to defend these new allegations, obtaining and aligning ourselves of the most distinguished experts/authorities in Canada on the subject of “pyramid schemes of selling”, which is a criminal offence under Canadian Law.

This wasn’t conjecture. We were establishing concise proof and evidence to argue our case of criminality.

The Plaintiff, MOBE Ltd, on the other end slowly started to realize this within interlocutory arguments and the way we were telegraphing that we were in fact, more than prepared and confident in proving this.

As a result, they began to retreat from the second lawsuit and the “criminal” and far more serious meanings they added within that suit. I don’t want to speculate, but perhaps this was because they were worried about bringing the attention of the authorities to their business operations, causing further investigation.

MOBE Ltd’s counsel specifically mentioned in their arguments that MOBE was not willing to divulge the financial information about their company and that is the reason they only claimed the lesser “General Damages”, not ‘Special Damages”. If a party claims Special Damages, they have to prove it with financial documents, something that it was more than evident MOBE was unwilling to hand over.

MOBE then decided to file an application to REMOVE the more serious meanings from the case, any that alleged we defamed them by calling them a fraud/criminal.

Unfortunately, a year later on August 4th of 2017, the judge allowed the removal of the more serious meanings. There were no repercussions for their pirouette after an ENTIRE year of us working hard setting up our defense on this. The Judge in essence stripped us of our entire defence, on those serious allegations, and the incredible sum of money we spent setting up for this, hiring experts, and ongoing legal fees (multi 6 figures).

How could this be allowed? It baffled our minds that this could be allowed, but it was a consistent behaviour that we were met with by our sitting judge.

On this day, there were several other applications that we had filed that were denied by our Judge. To our mind she didn’t adequately explain why all of our applications were denied (one of them being that MOBE Ltd didn’t even exist when I wrote the article). She ruled against us on 9 separate applications. It was unbelievable.

Unfortunately for us, this was just the start of the one-sided judgements...

September 2017, Our Defense Was Struck (Our Ability to Argue)

After close to 2 years of argument and senseless litigation, the early assigned trial judge decided to strike our defense. This is a “draconian” remedy used in Canadian law in circumstances where someone is “hiding the ball”. We were not, far from it.

Our behaviour was deemed “reprehensible” by the judge, without basis. We apparently didn’t hand over documents, but they were not specified. There was no basis to hand over documents.

And there were a lot of misstatements within the actual reasons by the court, in fact, it seemed there was even an odd occurrence that arose when that sitting Judge appeared to change her reasons for judgment between the verbal (where she announces her reasons to counsel) and the written ones (that are provided as the official court documents).

The judge had indicated that we only provided 8 documents since the start of the case, and that was part of the core basis for striking our case. The reality was that we had provided 174 documents (Part 1), which consisted of more than 1,000 pages and we listed 159 documents in the privilege portion which consisted of more than 5,000 pages and we continued to list the documents as and when the documents came in our possession. I had also submitted 9 very thorough and sophisticated affidavits, along with being through two lengthy examinations.

So now we had a decision against us, and it was based on incorrect information that the judge appeared to have revised after the fact between her verbal declaration, and her edited transcript.

To us, it felt like a failure of our court system.

It was frustrating, but we anticipated the strike decision was coming based on the judge’s past behaviour and her overt view of the facts against us. We had filed many “common sense” and powerful applications leading up to this, and EVERY SINGLE judgment went against us. In fact, over 10 judgements in total. It was such a disappointing pattern that we now had ZERO confidence in our sitting judge.

We didn’t panic.

The strength of our case and arguments didn’t change. We were incredibly confident as we had the TRUTH on our side, something that was ALWAYS on our side.

We had provided 100’s of pages of documents, and had remained consistent with our arguments since day one, through the entire process of attempts that we be “bullied” out of speech by the opposing counsel and plaintiff.

It is a really unnerving feeling. It also made me really appreciate the pain and struggle that those who have been wrongly accused out there go through. We have to realize that in life, no judge is perfect, and unfortunately, there are judges that probably should not be sitting judges. Their unwarranted and baseless decisions can have a real adverse impact on people’s lives.

It was a real learning experience and it is actually quite scary to think that the innocent can be found guilty of something by ONE judge, a human that can make grave mistakes.

Fortunately, there is an appeal process in most legal systems, including Canada. We anticipated the strike happening, and we were more than ready (and capable) to take on this blatantly wrong decision through an appeal. In fact, we had filed 2 different appeals based on the senseless judgments, all with the same relative “rule of law” sort of strength.

We were faced with what would appear to be a difficult scenario, but the strength of FACTS and the reality of what was going on, gave us a great deal of confidence even after the Strike of our defense. Shortly after the strike, we filed an appeal.

An appeal date for two of the appeals was eventually set out for September 21st, 2018.

Again, we got ready and prepared for what was going to be the pivotal moment in our case. The appeal was to be heard in front of three very senior judges, with a great deal of experience in a wide range of topics, including defamation.

We had a lot of hope.

But then, something interesting happened.

June 4th, 2018. The FTC Hammer Came Down on MOBE Ltd.

On June 4th, 2018 the cavalry came over the horizon. MOBE Ltd, 8 other MOBE companies, Matthew Lloyd McPhee aka Matt Lloyd, Susan Zhangi, and Russell Whitney were sued by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) of the United States of America.

The MOBE business operations were immediately shutdown and their assets were assigned to a receiver. It was also ordered to seize all business activities of MOBE Ltd until the Receiver could provide a report as to whether or not these corporations could legally, and profitably operate.

The FTC simply does not launch baseless cases. With over 1,400 pages of evidence, they were more than prepared to take on these companies.

You can read the initial FTC complaint here.

The complaint was well thought out, articulated, and a lot of research had gone into the complaint. It was apparent they acted based on adequate evidence. The FTC had even gone to the effort to send moles (undercover agents) to the satellite MOBE conferences that were used to recruit people into the scheme and milk as much money as they could.

In fact, within their initial press release, the FTC claimed that MOBE Ltd and related entities bilked more than $125 MILLION out of customers.

Within the documentation of their complaint, some clear statements and allegations were made in respect to how the business was run. Here is the Summary of the Case, taken directly from the FTC Complaint against MOBE.

Since 2013, Defendants have used online advertisements, social media, and live events held throughout the United States to promote a fraudulent business education program called “My Online Business Education” or “MOBE.” Through their program, Defendants claim to reveal a simple 21-step system that will show consumers how to quickly and easily start their own online business and make substantial income.

Although the initial entry fee for Defendants’ 21-Step System is relatively modest—typically $49 or less—as consumers proceed through the steps, they are bombarded with sales pitches for various MOBE membership packages costing thousands of dollars that consumers must buy in order to continue through and complete the 21-Step System.

Defendants eventually reveal, as consumers progress through the steps, that the way to make money through MOBE is by luring other consumers into the MOBE program and earning commissions when these consumers buy the same costly memberships.

In fact, the vast majority of consumers who join the MOBE program and purchase the costly MOBE memberships lose money. In income disclosures buried on their website, Defendants acknowledge that the average “active consultant” makes only a few hundred dollars a year from their program—far less than the thousands of dollars consumers pay for their MOBE memberships.

In addition to their false and unsubstantiated claims that consumers will earn substantial income by joining the MOBE program and purchasing these costly memberships, Defendants also make false and misleading refund and money-back guarantees to induce consumers to purchase MOBE memberships. After consumers pay, however, Defendants require these consumers to sign post-purchase agreements that seek to impose onerous conditions for obtaining a refund, or that claim in other instances that the purchases are nonrefundable and final. Defendants often cite to the language in these post-purchase agreements to deny refund requests or dispute chargebacks.

In sum, Defendants’ scheme has defrauded thousands of consumers who collectively have paid over $125,000,000 to Defendants based on their misrepresentations - 3 - about how much money they will earn by purchasing the MOBE program and memberships. Numerous consumers have individually lost more than $20,000 from Defendants’ scheme.

These statements are much more harsh than any of the statements sued upon within the case brought against us. They certainly were directed towards the “fraud” aspect of the secondary case as well, one that MOBE Ltd and Matt Lloyd avoided at all costs.

The Founder of MOBE Ltd, Decided Not to Defend the FTC Allegations

In light of what happened, Matthew Lloyd McPhee, the operating mind behind MOBE Ltd, indicated he had no intention in defending the companies, as indicated in the Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) filing on July 3, 2018.

“Defendant McPhee has informed the FTC that the MOBE corporate defendants will not be retaining counsel or taking steps to defend themselves against the allegations in the complaint. Accordingly, the FTC will be moving for default judgments against these corporations once service of all corporate entities is complete. Thus, as it currently stands, Defendant McPhee is the only defendant who may still contest the preliminary injunction and would be implicated by the proposed rescheduling of the preliminary injunction hearing.”

Perhaps he felt that it wasn’t worthwhile to defend his corporate assets against the allegations, thus making them truthful and factual statements. The entire basis of the case against us was rooted on the idea of muzzling our speech, even though the founder knew or ought to have known the statements were true during the entire 3 years of heavy litigation. A real abuse of the Canadian Court system and something that is taken very seriously by the high level, Supreme Courts of Canada.

As it stands now, the Receiver of MOBE Ltd. is currently in the process of recovering and repatriating assets from these companies. They are collecting money from the deemed and admitted fraudulent companies which will then eventually be returned to customers (or a portion thereof).

This will likely be followed by the corporations being completely dissolved. It won’t end here, there were a lot of people knowingly ripping off folks out of their hard earned money and the FTC and the Receiver typically work very diligently to recoup as much money as they can, including those incomes earned erroneously through dishonest and deceitful participants.

September 14th, 2018 - A Week Before our BIG Appeal

We were less than a week away from our appeal. We absolutely deserved the opportunity to appeal, it was our right as a defendant to rectify this decision, and we had already spent an incredible amount of time preparing for it.

But then we made a decision. Instead of expending more resources, time, energy and prolonging what was a senseless case, we decided to get a consent order submitted before the British Columbia Supreme Court.

This was just as effective as moving forward with an appeal and would be just as useful to vindicate our reputation and the “John Does” that had published content warning the general public about the MOBE Ltd scam.

In the Consent Order, the Plaintiff (Receiver) indicated amongst other things, the following:

“And upon the Receiver having satisfied himself that the imputations sued upon were Justified;”

This means, all of the imputations SUED upon, all of the meanings written within the Obvious Scam article and elsewhere were completely justified.

The Consent Order also included the following, which was pronounced and ordered by our sitting trial Judge:

“THIS COURT ORDERS that:

1. The consolidated action be, and hereby is dismissed and;

2. The security for costs posted herein in the amount of $130, 000 be paid out of

Court to the credit of the Defendants…”

Here is a link to the Consent Order, entered into the Supreme Court of British Columbia September 17, 2018.

Our statements were completely justified. Our actions were vindicated. The case was dismissed. We were awarded all of the security of costs that MOBE Ltd was required to put into escrow to commence the case.

We won and did so in extraordinary fashion.

Everything we said was indicated to be justified.

We told the truth from day 1, now it came to light. My original article was actually much more tame than the allegations put forth by the FTC. Matthew Lloyd Mcphee made it apparent that the corporate entities were fraudulent by not defending against the allegations, thus making them true in a court of law.

The MOBE fraud business is officially coming to a close. People no longer are able to get ripped off by this scam. We have won the case, on full consent that everything we had said was true and that we didn’t in fact obstruct justice the way the opposing counsel attempted to portray us as doing - a line of thought that the judge simply adopted, in our view without justification.

At the Trial Management Conference hearing (where the consent order was brought up), Mark Bernet, the court-appointed Receiver of MOBE Ltd., indicated to the Judge that this case should have never started in the first place. And we agree, it shouldn’t have.

Here is a direct statement from court transcript of Mark Bernet, the Receiver of MOBE Ltd., at the consent hearing:

“I became aware of this particular lawsuit, which as I understand was -- is some sort of a defamation lawsuit, and that the unique procedural posture of this case is that we are to proceed to a trial which largely would be limited to the damages which MOBE would demonstrate were caused by virtue of allegedly defamatory statements made concerning the company.

That is very problematic for me, because the -- quite frankly, this lawsuit should not have been brought. MOBE was operating unlawfully. That is my opinion. I have filed a written report so stating, and certainly, more importantly, it is the opinion of the district judge here in Florida.”

Fraudulent companies shouldn’t be able to abuse court systems, and they certainly shouldn’t be allowed to abuse people that are sharing TRUTHS. That is the exact reason why we stood up to this scam and this baseless lawsuit. Thankfully, through 3 years of litigation and a whole lot of money/time spent, we were able to stand up to the bully and prevail.

And About the $130,000 Awarded to Us? We Donated Half of it Back to MOBE Customers.

There are certain times when arguing out of principle doesn’t make sense, financially, emotionally or in terms of the time needed to dedicate to this.

This case was almost 3 years in length, without much break in litigation. Most of it was completely senseless and turned into being a case about the case -- very little to do with actual defamation. The costs were ongoing and incredibly high.

The financial side of the case was likely a bullying tactic in the early stages; to try to “outspend” the other party (us). It is a common approach that works when you have a goliath trying to feast on the smaller guy.

When you are a company BILKING people out of $125 MILLION, MOBE’s litigation budget was significant to bully other companies, and past customers out of free speech (so they could continue scamming people). This was met with ongoing resistance from our end and we were not about to be pushed out of our truthful and factual speech.

Within the Consent Order and the dismissal of the case, we were awarded the full $130,000 that was held in escrow on behalf of MOBE Ltd for Security for Costs. .

Though our legal costs to operate this lawsuit were MUCH more than the amount we were awarded, we decided to donate half ($65,000 Canadian Dollars) of the awarded settlement to the repatriation efforts of the FTC and Receiver for consumers who were victim of this scheme.

This case was never a case about defending out of fear, it was defending out of principle. Fortunately we have the budget and resources to defend against such abusive litigation tactics like this. We were certainly not going to be bullied by a scam that was cheating millions of dollars monthly from consumers.

As much as we were defending our case for freedom of speech purposes, the initial intent of the article I wrote was to prevent consumers from getting scammed.

Carson and I wanted to follow through on this very idea, which is why we felt it was very important to donate $65,000 (or half) back to MOBE Ltd customers through the Receiver Mark Bernet. Hopefully this will help a few people that lost money to MOBE Ltd get back on their feet and hopefully this entire case can help folks regain a bit of confidence that there are in fact ETHICAL and caring companies in this industry that are putting PEOPLE first, not money.

We stand true to our ethics to this day and we will continue to fight for folks who may not have funding to take on the unscrupulous of this world.

Where Do We Go From Here?

This case has reaffirmed our ethical positioning within this industry. Some would think that such a case would change the way we now think and act, but it hasn’t in any way shifted our focus. We now have a much more astute understanding of the legal world and how that operates. We aligned ourselves with some of the top lawyers in the world. We have worked directly with the FTC, Receiver, Competition Bureau of Canada, and the Dean of Forensic Accounting of Canada. Lots of powerful relationships we will certainly be leveraging in the future. We have learned a lot.

What I can also tell you is that a great deal of time and money has been freed up on our end. These are resources that we are going to dedicate directly back into the community at Wealthy Affiliate.

Our intention is and always will be to offer a world class service, but not just that. To act as an ethical stakeholder in the affiliate marketing space and one that helps evolve this industry in a positive direction.

We are going to continue protecting the industry, protecting consumers, and protecting freedom of speech from the bullies and scammers out there.

It is our promise to you to continue down this path.

Lawsuits are never fun, but surely this was a useful learning experience.

There are certain things in life that we can and should stand up for. Two of these are honesty and truth. Without those, we would live in a world of calamity. Don’t let yourself be bullied out of THE TRUTH. The impact of allowing this will have a profound (and negative) impact on a much larger group of people. Stand up for what is right. Stand up for principle. And stand up against scams, and unethical bullies.

We are and will remain in your corner and we are excited for a bright future ahead. We will continue to reside as an ethical safehouse within an online world that is riddled with scams and unscrupulous companies. That is our promise to you.

If you have any questions, feedback, or anything at all you would like to share, we would love to hear it. Please feel free to leave them below