by Structured Settlement Watchdog™
For 14 months Sovereign Funding Group and David Springer have been embroiled as Defendants in an ongoing lawsuit with Woodbridge Structured Funding that is pending in Maryland District Court. On February 10, 2013, a company representative named "Greg Maynard" went to a very public Google webmaster forum to seek an expert for Sovereign's case. Download Google search result "Greg Maynard" Sovereign Funding 2-10-2013 Google Product Forum discussing Woodbridge case
The posting, by "Greg Maynard" titled "We Will Pay For A Legal Seo Opinion Letter"on February 10, 2013 at 1255pm included affidavits by Josue Benitez (an employee of Woodbridge) as well as a screen shot of a Google search result. It included some very candid information, such as the purported state of the Sovereign Funding kitty, Woodbridge's "deep pockets", and describing the Woodbridge case as frivolous. "Greg Maynard" also bemoaned the difficulties in the Court's comprehension of the technical aspects of SEO. Download Sovereign Funding We Will Pay For a Legal SEO Opinion Letter - Google Groups
As of February 15, 2013, the Google webmaster forum notes that the post was deleted however, the comments to that post remain at the time of posting. One of the most interesting observations is by "Rise and Shine" one of the other webmasters is the cynical "wow 22k back links just in the last 60 days" and from Barry Schwartz who stated "any reason why you didn't post the actual legal complaint?" and an uber interesting comment from one of the webmasters "Stevie D", a voice of skepticism who alleges, with the support of the link research tool Majectic SEO, that Sovereign's current SEO contains some real manipulative back links:
due diligence and check out their client before hand and they
will find nearly 400,000 backlinks according to Majestic
the best of them and I don't think it can be done".
The Google+ profile for "Greg Maynard", who purported therein to be from Owings Mills, Maryland and attended Florida A&T University, had mysteriously disappeared. as of February 15, 2013.
Woodbridge alleged in its November 28, 2011 complaint "that Sovereign Funding has not been content with simply using its own name and webuypayments.net to promote its services. Instead, upon information and belief, Sovereign Funding embarked on a campaign and scheme to both misappropriate the marks of and malign its competitors through a re-direct scheme that drove traffic to webuypayments.net (i.e. Sovereign Funding)".
According to the civil complaint filed against David Springer, 47 of Mt. Airy Maryland* and Sovereign Funding Group in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, Defendants David Springer and Sovereign Funding are alleged to have committed:
- Trademark Infringement
- False Advertisement
- Unfair Competition and False Designation of Origin
- Common Law Trade Libel
- Product Disparagement
- Common Law Defamation
For a copy of the Complaint against Sovereign Funding Group and David Springer, see Woodbridge Structured Funding, LLC v Sovereign Funding et al. Civil action No. MJG-11-3421 at www.pacer.gov. Signing up for Pacer is free, but you will have to pay a small fee to access the case documents.
On December 28, 2012, I reported that the domain webuypayments.net was up for sale.
*David Springer is currently listed as Senior VP of Capital Limited Partners and Lifetime Capital Partners Ottawa, Canada area on his Canadian Linkedin Profile.
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