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Four people who reside in Canada have settled 2008 charges brought by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that charged them with scamming small business owners by sending them phony bills for their Internet services. Other victims were billed by the company, Internet Listing Service, for bogus “Search Optimization” services that were supposed to drive traffic to their web sites.

A default judgment order was entered against Steven E. Dale, ordering him to return $4,261,876 to victims. In the order, other defendants Isaac Benlolo, Kirk Mulveney, Pearl Keslassy and 1646153 Ontario Inc., agreed to pay $10,000.

In 2008, the FTC had a federal district court judge in Chicago order the group’s business, Internet Listing Service of Toronto, to stop making the deceptive claims and froze its assets, pending a trial. The settlement and default judgment orders that were announced today bring the litigation to a close.

FTC story here: FTC Halts Cross Border Domain Name Registration Scam

Tom Kelchner