Update 3:30 11/05/09: Glenn Younger of Grah Safe & Lock, forwarded me this piece from the RiverFrontTimes that details the scam and the charges. It’s a great read. A snippet:
The complaint alleges that telephone dispatchers for Dependable Locks were instructed by managers to quote a price of $54 for a car lockout, while the responding technician was instructed by managers to charge up to $179 once services had been provided.
The telephone dispatchers were instructed to misrepresent or understate the possibility of additional charges above the price quoted. The market rate for a standard car lockout is typically about $60. The locksmiths were instructed to charge significantly more than the price quoted, and significantly more than usual market rates. Technicians use techniques such as accusing the consumer who objects to the overcharge of “theft of services,” threatening to call the police, withholding the customer’s keys or driver’s license, or following the customer to an ATM machine to ensure payment.
The locksmith technicians allegedly are allowed to split the profits of the fraudulently procured locksmith services with the company, typically 50/50 or 60/40, and that the technicians are required to remit the company’s share of the proceeds by regularly purchasing and shipping money orders to the Dependable Locks location in Clearwater.
The affidavit states that Eliyahu Barhanun, David Peer and Moshe Aharoni conspired with the managers of Dependable Locks to implement a scheme to procure overcharges for locksmith services.
On November 4th, US Postal Inspectors stormed Dependable Locksmith’s headquarters in Clearwater, Fl. Dependable has been one of the companies frequently mentioned as it related to the national locksmith scams. The raid was coordinated with authorities in Missouri and apparently more arrests are to made. This is the same company that the Missouri Attorney General charged with “deceiving and overcharging customers in Kansas City” in April of this year. Their BBB report includes an F Rating and numerous complaints and has more the look of a rap sheet than a business review.
Things seem to be looking up in the Locksmith industry and legitimate locksmiths must, for the first time in several years, be seeing a glimmer of hope. It appears that Google is also making progress in their efforts to control and minimize the damage that scammers in this industry have wrought. More on that in a later post.
& to thought that the basis of those mega spammers & rip offers in the last 1.5 years is Google Maps!!! Think how many people suffered from their spams, scams & theft actions.
Thanks for publishing this, Mike!!!!
Just an update- their phone lines are dead in the US but in Canada they are still alive.
Is it the beginning of a new era in the Locksmith field in which the forces of light will rule the industry ?! If it’s depend(able) on Google- it’ll not happen… (that fast!!).
BTW- I started sending Google a super-lists of this companies’ trillion names, DBA, URLs, sites, etc.. 2.5 years ago, nothing helped..
(Mike, I’m sorry I always sounds pessimistic in your blog
)
Comment by PureSheer (42 comments) — November 5, 2009 @ 11:48 am
@PureSheer
It is has become a huge, international problem that will take as long, or longer to fix that it did to occur.
Are Dependable’s listing still in Maps? In US? In Canada?
Comment by Mike (866 comments) — November 5, 2009 @ 11:55 am
@Mike
They are still all over the place!! all over the 7 packs & all over the organic results. But their lines in the US are dead.
Comment by PureSheer (42 comments) — November 5, 2009 @ 12:01 pm
This is great news for everyone in Local Search. Perhaps a few more high-profile busts will deter even more scammers and spammers.
Comment by David Mihm (79 comments) — November 5, 2009 @ 12:10 pm
Based on Puresheer’s comments it could be said that Google might have been the #1 crime aider and abetter of the locksmith’s spams over the past 1.5 to 2.5 years.
I suspect their phone numbers and websites were reached more by searches in Google than from any other source.
Comment by earlpearl (319 comments) — November 5, 2009 @ 3:27 pm
@earlpearl
You got it!!
& without any costs- site is free by Weebly or others, advertising platform is free (Google Maps, Yahoo Local, etc..). Only salaries & DID (which costs $0.75 per month)
So hilarious
Comment by PureSheer (42 comments) — November 5, 2009 @ 3:38 pm
Nice to finally see some action from the law enforcement side.
No doubt, some of the folks ripped off by ‘Dependable’ found the listings via Google Maps, but locksmith scammers (and other phony ‘local’ businesses) have been placing local sounding name companies/fake addresses/remote call forwarding listings and running myriad ads in print Yellow Pages for years.
It’s not just a Google Maps problem, it’s a data problem created by low RCF costs coupled with publishers willing to sell out users for the right price. BTW, these listings appear to get tagged with zip codes based on the local exchange portion of the numbers (even without addresses) by phone number publishers.
The big data providers pick up the junk since it’s marked like real local info – and then further spread the pollution.
Little will change as long as the pipeline creating and feeding the data resolves to clean it up.
Comment by Cathy (33 comments) — November 5, 2009 @ 3:40 pm
Cathy has a great point about the complete food chain is polluted top to bottom and there is not real way to tell virtual from real any more.
The problem is that Google by virtue of how they have designed their clustering algo, sweeps ALL this stuff up, to some extent validates it and most definitely amplifies it. Giving what used to be a mostly local problem, a national platform.
Comment by Mike (866 comments) — November 5, 2009 @ 3:46 pm
Will definitely be forwarding this article to Glenn, my honest locksmith client, Mike. I bet he already knows, though.
Comment by MiriamEllis (333 comments) — November 5, 2009 @ 4:25 pm
@Miriam
He’s well updated with the details. Saw it in his blog..
Comment by PureSheer (42 comments) — November 5, 2009 @ 4:35 pm
Have to agree with Cathy regardign the entire food chain.
This goes back to the break up of Ma Bell. Phone companies required to share their lists, and all the directories that get the lists publish them as if they were all good.
I believe that the other shoe to fall will be insiders at the phone companies, or the phone company software provider Amdocs. The new phone listing just all came to fast to be generated normally. In one weeks time thousands of new numbers.
The cautionary tale for Google, Yahoo and others is that all data is not created equal.
They can not just publish things without scrubing first. Google is,at it’s heart, just a big directory.
We reamin hopeful!
Comment by Glenn Y (14 comments) — November 5, 2009 @ 5:07 pm
[...] Federal Bust of Dependable Locksmith in Florida Strikes at Heart of National Locksmith Scams, Mike Blumenthal [...]
Pingback by SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 5, 2009 — November 5, 2009 @ 6:07 pm
Mike the vid here starts AUTOMATICALLY and we can’t turn it off during the up front advert part…
a real irritation to me at least….specially when I want to re-read this one!
Jim
Comment by Jim Rudnick (19 comments) — November 6, 2009 @ 10:54 am
I struggled with that and I agree…I looked the code but couldn’t figure out how to shut it up….you have to listen to the ad and then pause it…
Anyone know their embed commands better than I that can suggest a way to keep it but keep it quiet?
Comment by Mike (866 comments) — November 6, 2009 @ 10:59 am
Which one is Dependable locksmith? Are they the same as Millenium Locksmith, Absolute Locksmith, Complete Locksmith, 1800 Locksmith?
Comment by Paul (9 comments) — November 12, 2009 @ 1:24 pm
@Paul
The ones you’ve mentioned & many more..
Comment by PureSheer (42 comments) — November 14, 2009 @ 5:50 pm
We’ve been working with the Arizona Attorney General’s Office over the past, I don’t know, six months. I reveiced a call from them last tuesday (November 17th). They told me that they have just filed a lawsuit against dependable locks as well. And I don’t know if it’s related or not, but in the last three weeks, I’ve received 5 calls for car lock outs…my first five in probably 8 months. I’m glad that the wheels are finally turning, and that these guys are under them.
Comment by Paul (9 comments) — November 20, 2009 @ 11:15 am
Paul
That’s great to hear!
Comment by Mike (866 comments) — November 20, 2009 @ 11:38 am