My contact details in the bitcointalk.org whois record went public a couple weeks ago, as I moved the domain to my Finnish ISP. Last week I got a cease-and-desist letter from a Finnish law firm hired by the forex company First National Innovation Brokers (
http://www.firstnationalib.com/). They demanded removal of this thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=51820.0. They have no real legal case and I'm not even a forum / server admin of Bitcointalk anymore, so I'm not going to react to that.
However, FNIB has been spamming false scam accusations all around the Internet to mess up my Google results (check out "martti malmi"). They've been posting inter-linked BS articles to forums, various complaint sites and their fake news site hpub.org. For example:
I got scammed for 22.440 euros by SC5. My key contact and team lead was Martti Malmi and the job was to produce a commerce site in HTML5. So they asked for a deposit to start the work. Then I noticed, after the first update, the very poor quality of their work and I started expressing my deep concerns. Then they stopped answering my calls. I got strange email answers that seemed to be in Indian style english.
After 3 weeks I found the truth; my Project was being handled in Bangalore, India, by programmers making on average US$12/hour. ( I investigated and spoke with several firms about this) I was in shock. I complained to Mr. Malmi but he said that the terms and conditions did not specify that SC5 could not outsource. This is a total misrepresentation of our contract and I feel absolutely betrayed. They say they will refund part of my money but not the part already spent. I can not beleive this fraud. Next stop is the Finnish courts.
Which is of course completely made up, I haven't even worked with foreign customers at my current job (the "customer" claimed to be from Nebraska). I'm surprised by the amount of effort they put into this. The motive is probably emotional, because profit-wise they're just wasting their time.
FNIB has been "defending" their own reputation and smearing Mitchell Bourne (worldly) among others, with similar SEO tactics on the same forums.
I'm not sure as to what extent FNIB is a scam business, but it sure seems scammy as hell. It's incorporated in New Zealand (
http://www.business.govt.nz/companies/app/ui/pages/companies/3473593/detail) and directed by Stuart Poppleton from Wakefield, UK. Can't tell if Mr. Poppleton is the actual person running the business, as 100% of the shares are owned by a Hong Kong company (
http://en.hkcomp.info/hongkong/cps.jsp?key=1634921-a797a24a). FNIB is also behind the obscure Swiftcoin "alternative cryptocurrency":
http://www.swiftcointalk.org/ - Funny Bitcointalk clone. Off-topic section description: "Other topics that might be of interest to bitcoiners". Oops.
http://www.firstnationalbnak.com/ - "MtGox of Swiftcoin"
http://www.oswift.com/ - eBay of Swiftcoin, apparently
http://www.fxboss.info/ - Tips on getting rich quick
They had photoshopped office pics on their site:
Oh God, how did this get here? I am not good with computers....
Regus.com Virtual Office Space Auckland Chancery
FNIB Promotional Picture
I guess everyone can decide for themselves if they want to trust their money to a company like First National Innovation Brokers.
EDIT: History of Changes at
http://www.business.govt.nz/fsp/app/ui/fsp/version/searchSummaryCompanyFSP/FSP154824/6.do:
Initiate De-Registration
01/02/2013 11:57:10
Time to move on to the next scheme, it seems.
