01 TPS/Prashant Telang had been hired to build inventory management software + public facing website for the sale of gemstones and jewelry (NSC’s primary business). TPS had an intimate understanding of every function of these systems. Through 3rd party verification (Exhibit 49) (Exhibit 48) NSC confirmed that TPS had built a multitude of ‘backdoor’ controlling access and functions in NSC’s internal systems. These ‘backdoors’ security breaches were meticulously designed and built without any knowledge to NSC. Over a period of approximately 3 months (1/2011 - 3/ 2011) TPS caused a massive amount of harm to NSC.

The attacks included, but were not limited to:

• Deleted selective parts of NSC’s database, often slowly so NSC would not be aware that TPS had access to NSC’s internal systems.
• Deleted image files, slowly and randomly so NSC would not be aware that TPS had access to NSC’s systems.
• Changing prices of products, (example: 75% below normal) selectively and at random.
• ‘Kill Switches’ which disabled NSC’s inventory software system from being used by selected users at random times to create confusion as to the cause of the issue.

• SQL injections, etc. which caused NSC’s website to be inaccessible or significantly broken and unusable.
• Hidden code in NSC’s website that would automatically BCC incoming order confirmation emails directed to Prashant Telang/TPS personal and alias email accounts. Then TPS would anonymously harass clients for ordering from NSC.

02 Stealing the domain www.NaturalSapphireCompany.com This domain was purchased by NSC 6+ years previously in 2004 for customers who forgot to add “the” to NSC’s main URL address: ‘TheNaturalSapphireCompany.com’. Prashant Telang/TPS stole the URL by taking over the domain registration account which he had user/password credentials for. Prashant updated the ownership registration to include his name. Prashant/TPS then created a new website without our ‘the’ (NaturalSapphireCompany.com) and posted horrible malicious lies about NSC to dissuade customers from shopping with the real TheNaturalSapphireCompany.com. January 2011

Furthermore; Prashant Telang/TPS created email addresses using the stolen domain name, pretending to be real employees of NSC, and emailing NSC’s vendors to get information from them about NSC’s business dealings. March 2011

NSC filed a legal case disputing the ownership with the registrar.

Exhibits 1-5: National Arbitration Forum ICANN Uniform Dispute Resolution Filing

Exhibit 6: Establishing Copyright Precedence

Exhibit 7-12: Theft of URL evidence

Exhibit 13-18: National Arbitration Forum ICANN DECISION

Prashant Telang/TPS lied in their sworn testimony in the most egregious way; and hence the ICANN decision was unresolved, yet resulted in the domain being ‘frozen’ pending the result of a court order to decide how the URL should be released. This achieved some relief for NSC as the stolen URL was disabled and Prashant Telang/TPS was no longer able to control the website.

03 Prashant Telang/TPS made great efforts to have NSC’s URL outgoing emails ‘blacklisted’ and added to URIBL, UBE/UCE (Unsolicited Bulk and/or Commercial Email registrar, see definition here) so NSC’s emails would be blocked or automatically filtered to recipients spam folders of most major email hosts (gmail, hotmail, aol, yahoo). This was undetected by NSC for quite a long time. After NSC discovered these fraudulent reportings to URIBL/UBE/UCE and resolved the issues; Prashant/TPS continued to work on getting NSC’s URL ‘blacklisted’ (Evidence of these attacks from 2011 can be provided as requested).

04 Prashant Telang/TPS registered many similar URL’s to NSC (2 examples TheNaturalSapphireCompany.org / NaturalSapphireCompany.co.uk), and posted terrible false and defamatory remarks about NSC. TPS made great efforts to improve the organic rankings (SEO) of these websites so they would rank in search engine results next to NSC’s URL results. (All through 2011-2012)

See Exhibit 55, which shows similar URL/naming and extortion.

05 Prashant Telang/TPS having archived backup database’s of NSC’s past customers emails/orders; emailed NSC’s best clients from a newly created anonymous email address telling them not to shop with us.

Many of these customers were told that NSC would be selling their credit card information and that NSC was a complete scam operation. Prashant Telang/TPS even included the customers credit card information to create fear of identity theft in NSC and NSC’s customers.

Prashant Telang/TPS would email NSC through anonymous email submission forms on NSC’s website demanding extortion money being paid or ALL of NSC’s past customers would be emailed their personal credit card information and that NSC should be reported as a scam operation to credit card processors. (All through 2011)

(Exhibit 19 one of many examples)

06 Defamation; Extraordinary Subjection: Prashant Telang/TPS posted approximately 500-600 (2011-2015) false and defamatory ‘reviews’ or similar on dozens of popular industry and consumer websites, scam and complaint websites, etc of horrible lies about NSC.

Prashant Telang/TPS sought out positive comments made by real customers of NSC on countless blogs, forums, news/media websites, etc that had ever mentioned NSC in a positive manner. Then posted completely false, malicious, defamatory and unfounded comments about NSC on the same websites and pushed viewers to review URLs that Prashant Telang/ TPS created for the sole purpose of compiling extraordinary lies about NSC.

Prashant Telang/TPS created dozens of false aliases on very popular industry chat-forums pretending to be extremely unhappy customers.

Great efforts were made to mask his identity and fool viewers at exponential levels of effort. 100’s if not 1000’s of posts were made over an 18 month period+. (Exhibit 20 ) (Exhibit 47 Prashant referencing thousands of false links he created in threatening anonymous emails) (All 2011-2015+).

07 Click Fraud: NSC’s Pay-Per-Click ads on Google: Prashant Telang/TPS openly taunted NSC about the hundreds of dollars per day in false clicks they were incurring to NSC’s advertising campaigns (Exhibit 21). An established and consistent baseline of NSC’s PPC costs per month prior to attacks by Prashant Telang was $5-6k. It is conservatively calculated that click fraud over a 16 month period totaled at least $115,000. In additional costs. (Exhibit 46) NSC has shown evidence to Google PPC billing department showing Prashant/TPS’s boasts of the attacks, his methods, and how they have gotten past Google’s click fraud filters. Google refused to credit NSC’s account or assist in any way during the hardship. (Exhibit 58) (Exhibit 57) (Feb 2010 - May 2012)

08 Prashant Telang/TPS made great efforts to report NSC’s Ebay and Amazon stores as fraud/scam attempts so they would be disabled and closed down. Prashant used his network of false reviews and defamatory websites in his efforts to persuade admin’s inside Amazon and Ebay. See (Exhibit 22)

09 Prashant Telang/TPS attempted to register NSC’s proprietary software as Prashant/TPS’s own property. Then issued a DMCA to NSC’s web hosting company in an attempt to have NSC’s entire website taken down. This caused enormous stress and employee hours to fight this near successful attack. September 2011

10 Prashant Telang/TPS attempted to sell NSC’s software/source code to NSC’s competitors (rumors have been told to us by ex-employees of TPS). Prashant would boast about doing such activities. It is unknown if he has been successful at this. NSC has seen many Indian based gemstones and jewelry websites that have extreme similarities to NSC’s database and even art/layout structure. (All of 2011, 2012 and ongoing…) See (Exhibit 23)

11 Near-Daily harassment emails to NSC employees and on NSC ‘s website through live-chat/sales-support. (All 2011, 2012) Taunting and crushing morale among employees that NSC would go out of business and they should quit before they got laid off. (All 2011, 2012) See (Exhibit 24)

12 Prashant Telang/TPS continued to attack any legitimate customer review websites. Yelp.com was constantly deleting blatantly bogus reviews, but not quickly enough to maintain a star-rating for NSC that was respectable (Exhibit 45).

13 NSC’s Wikipedia page is taken down after Prashant/TPS convinced Wikipedia moderators that NSC is a scam company through submitting evidence of hundreds of fake reviews and websites created by Prashant/TPS attacking NSC. Wikipedia editors believed Prashant and deleted NSC’s Wikipedia page. NSC’s organic SEO rankings continued to drop precipitously. (2012)

14 Extortion: Prashant Telang/TPS constantly demanded wide ranging amounts of money to stop his attacks (extortion). NSC went to the FBI many many times for help. Finally the FBI took NSC’s case after NSC provided hard evidence to bring a formal complaint. Through a sting operation initiated by the FBI; Prashant was recorded on a recorded line demanding money to stop his attacks. While in the FBI’s Manhattan headquarters with special agents in attendance a ‘negotiated’ amount of $250,000. USD was suggested by Prashant to stop the attacks. Prashant admitted to most of the attacks outlined in this document and would stop terrorizing NSC if the payment was made.

The FBI now had undisputed proof of NSC being terrorized and extorted. (Feb 2012)

Further evidence is provided to the FBI of Prashant’s home IP address being captured through the assistance of a customer-review-website (weddingBee.com). The FBI had what they needed to bring a formal complaint to the Indian Authorities and notified NSC that the complaint was in process of being issued. (See Exhibit 25)

After months and months of waiting; the FBI then told NSC they had to drop the case because the Indian Authorities would not agree to work with them on any extradition or transfer of charges against Prashant Telang/TPS.

15 Financial Loss: NSC suffered irreparable damages to its reputation with existing customers and direct loss of potential customers. (See Exhibit 43 lost sales examples)

Further NSC suffered near-irreparable loss of confidence from the intimately small and insulated precious gemstone trading community in New York City. NSC was not able to make payments to vendors in a timely matter; in addition to the fog of suspicion from the immense false reviews and rumors within the dealer community, NSC has never been able to fully recover its once perfect credit history within the industry old family business.

(See Exhibit 42, Testimony of industry colleague on the critical importance of reputation within the gemstone industry)

Additionally, NSC incurred 6-figure ($) losses in direct costs of employee staffing to fight off the constant attacks.

The loss of potential sales to NSC was exponential and continued to plague the company through 2017-2018 when this document was created.

16 NSC sought the assistance of local representatives:

A. Rep. Carolyn Maloney
B. Rep. Nydia Velazquez
C. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand
D. Sen. Charles Schumer
E. Sen. Hillary Clinton
F. NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman
G. US Department of State: Joanie Simon Bartholomaus, Economic Officer India Desk

After many many attempts for assistance with local representatives NSC’s case was never given any legitimate attention. See Exhibit 27

17 Indian Legal System: NSC hired Mumbai based attorney Prasad Borkar.

NSC presented a tremendous amount of well organized documentation to file suit against Prashant Telang in India. NSC created a public facing website [www.DontOutSource.com] which presented all the documentation of Prashant’s attacks on NSC (NSC removed this website at a later date which is explained later in this document See clause #20; here is a screen-capture from an internet archive). The hope was that the American and India Press would report on NSC’s hardship story, which would hopefully put pressure on the Indian Authorities to go after Prashant.

The plan seemed to work and Prashant Telang was ordered by a Mumbai judge to turn himself into police for investigation.

Apparently due to corruption within the legal system in India (Prashant Telang’s father was once a ranking police official (years prior)), Prashant was let go very quickly, and soon the case was thrown out. (Feb 2011)

NSC’s hopes in the Indian Cyber Crimes authorities were lost when NSC’s Indian attorney explained that the only way to make forward progress in India would be if NSC contacted the head of the Cyber Crimes division on his personal email/cell phone, and offered to pay a bribe.

The suggested amount was $10,000 USD, or our case wouldn’t go anywhere.

See Exhibit 28 Case filed against Prashant/TPS; Judge initially orders his arrest See Exhibit 29 Payments Made to Indian Layer See Exhibit 30 Cyber Crimes drops the case, says we need to file in the USA

NSC was now being attacked with more fervor than ever before by Prashant/TPS.

18 Federal Court: NSC was in a total crisis situation after almost a full year of being systematically attacked without mercy by Prashant Telang/TPS. Regardless if Prashant Telang would stop the attacks; the hundreds of false negative reviews posted all over the internet was taking a terrible toll on NSC’s sales.

NSC hired a Brooklyn, NYC based attorney specializing in internet law. Brett Lewis Esq took NSC’s case to Federal Court to sue Prashant Telang/TPS in the hopes of receiving summary judgement to have fake reviews removed from the internet. A painfully long due-process ensued which included hiring a servicing agent in India to find Prashant so he could be legally-served about NSC’s suit against him.

NSC hired a private investigator in Mumbai to try and gain information about Prashant’s physical home and office locations. See Exhibit 32

Finally on October 26, 2012, default Judgement was ordered in favor of NSC (Prashant never replied to the servicing or hired counsel to represent him in court). “Ordering TPS to remove all such false reviews, including, but not limited to, the reviews listed below [in court order doc]”
See Exhibit 31

19 Costs and losses become unbearable: NSC spent at least $90,000. on lawyers filing cases and motions in various courts. NSC spent at least $150,000. In staff time fighting to protect and defend itself. NSC spent approximately $115,000 in click fraud to Google.

Due to the horrible reputation (literally hundreds of false defamatory reviews online) NSC conservatively estimates lost sales in the range of $500,000 - $750,000.
Post-Attack Costs: It took NSC 2-3 years to rebuild NSC’s software systems and website from the ground up. Cost: $650,000. utilizing American developers.
Est. Net losses 1.7million USD

20 Extortion Payments: After NSC had exhausted all legal options and was on the brink of collapsing from 18 months of non stop attacks; extortion payments were negotiated through NSC’s attorney and Prashant Telang himself. The Extortion payments were negotiated to be paid out over 24 months so Prashant would be motivated to refrain from continued attacks. In total $72,000. was paid to Prashant Telang. (Prashant demanded that NSC agree to take down the public facing website which itemized each of Prashant/TPS’s attacks; DontOutSource.com mentioned in clause 17)

The ‘settlement agreement’ See Exhibit 33 ‘agreement’ (extortion)outlined many of Prashant’s terrorizing attacks against NSC. Prashant signed the document on each page with his signature and stamped with his TPS company seal; further solidifying his direct admission having committed heinous and relentless attacks against NSC. (July 2012 - July 2014)

See Exhibit 34 extortion payments made to Prashant Telang

21 NSC was not able to make timely payments on approx $20k in overdue legal fees to its primary attorney which represented NSC in the Federal Court suit. Google’s legal department was inconsistent in complying to the court order and many new defamatory URLs were being found that were not listed on the original court order. Further it had become impossible to establish any direct line of communication with Google’s legal department.

Henceforth, Google ‘ran the clock out’ by not responding to NSC’s attorney and submitted court order. This was a critical problem now that 30 days had passed since summary judgement of the courts order. Therefore NSC was told by their attorney that amendments wouldn’t be possible to add to the court order. NSC was told unless they could pay overdue legal fees to their attorney there was nothing else that could be done. (January 2013)

See Exhibit 36

22 NSC pays down overdue legal fees and NSC’s attorney continues to reach out to Google’s legal department to comply with the court order. Google ignores requests without any explanation or consistency. See Exhibit 53 (during 2013, approx 1 year after court ruling)

23 Brand.com Legal Department: NSC was being contacted very frequently by ‘reputation management’ companies soliciting services to help with the hundreds of defamatory reviews still online. Google’s legal department was not responding with any consistency to removal requests from NSC’s attorney.

The following is a statement from Michael Arnstein about his history and interactions with Brand.com’s legal department: View Statement

24 Michael Arnstein alters court order and submits to Google’s Legal Dept

After conversations with Brand.com ‘legal dept’ rep, the original court order was edited by Michael Arnstein to include additional defamatory URL addresses.

Google replies approximately 2-6 weeks later with inconsistent deindexing of the URL’s listed on the court order (no explanation as to why some but not other url links were deindexed).

Over the next 3 years approximately 10 altered orders with defamatory URL’s related to defamation reviews which Prashant Telang posted were sent to Google. Google sometimes did not respond at all to the submissions or was inconsistent in deindexing links.

NONE of the urls submitted were from genuine customers of NSC. The URL’s sent to Google’s legal department were defamation created by Prashant Telang.

25 Michael Arnstein, President of NSC is arrested on April 17, 2017 by Federal US Marshal’s and charged with 3 counts related to forgery of a judge’s signature after being reported by Google for submitting requests to de-index false and defamatory reviews from Google’s search algorithm. Arnstein faces up to 15 years in prison (5 years for each count). See Exhibit 39

26 April 2017 it’s worth noting that NSC had paid Google over $2,446,000. dollars up to this point in advertising fees. See last page of Exhibit 21 which shows $2.4m in total payments to Google.

This shows how little effort was made on the part of Google to work with their customers who had proven defamation in a Federal Court.

27 Prashant Continues to post negative reviews

(as early as 2015)

See Exhibit 41

28 Prashant harasses NSC Immediately after Michael Arnstein’s criminal charges are reported in the Press: Prashant immediately starts to harass NSC again. Prashant directly emails NSC’s attorney saying that he was worried about his reputation online….

See Exhibit 40

29 May 31, 2017 update: Attorney Brett Lewis Esq emails Google’s Legal Dept with original court order. Google refuses repeatedly to comply in any way. The irony of Google turning-in one of their customers to the Justice Dept who was being extorted and defamed, while at the same time refusing to honor a Federal Judge’s Court Order is appalling.

See Exhibit 56

30 Witness Testimony:Attorney Brett Lewis who was hired by NSC’s in the federal court case against Prashant/TPS wrote this statement of experience. His opening statement is extraordinary. “We represented The Natural Sapphire Company in connection with what was the most malicious, cold-blooded, and sustained attack against a business online that I have ever witnessed in 17 years of practicing law.” See Exhibit 37 for full witness statement.

All of NSC’s current NYC based employees have been with the company for 5 years or more; many have been with the company for more than 10 years. Witness testimony of NSC’s staff share additional personal experiences and supporting evidence of Prashant Telang/TPS attacks. See Exhibit 42

31 July 2017 US Attorney’s Office declines any and all ‘plea’ deals related to an application for a Deferred Prosecution even in light of being given extensive documentation related to the mitigating circumstances of TPS/Prashant’s attacks against NSC. (A deferred prosecution agreement (DPA), which is very similar to a non-prosecution agreement (NPA), is a voluntary alternative to adjudication in which a prosecutor agrees to grant amnesty in exchange for the defendant agreeing to fulfill certain requirements.)

32 Critically important note of concern: Google’s Legal Dept brought this case to the FBI. Should Michael Arnstein/NSC be found guilty as charged it is very probable that Google will drop NSC as an advertiser and de-index NSC’s organic search engine listings. This belief can be exhibited through multiple similar experiences of other companies. This will effectively put NSC out of business overnight.

Here is one example:
Ascentive, LLC v. Google, Inc., 2:09-cv-02871-JS

33 August 7, 2017: US Attorney’s Office informs Michael Arnstein’s attorney they will offer no ‘plea-deal’ for non trial guilty admission. Further they are recommending 12-18 months prison followed with probation; felony conviction.

34 August 2, 2017: Prashant Telang starts sending harassing/threatening emails to Michael Arnstein. (Earlier in the year Prashant had made it clear through anonymous ‘chat’ that he would destroy our company if his name was defamed in any way in the criminal case of USA vs Michael Arnstein). Exhibit 60.

35 Real Customer Reviews: As the extortion payments were made to Prashant Telang; most of his attacks stopped. NSC signed up with a 3rd party independent customer review service that carefully validates genuine customer reviews.

By 2018, NSC has a near-flawless record of over 1000 5-star reviews on TrustPilot.com (see live rank here).

36 September 15, 2017: Michael Arnstein formally pleads guilty in Federal Court, Southern District of New York. Judge Andrew Carter sets a sentencing date of April 20, 2018.

37 April 2018, FBI office in Philadelphia contacts sentencing Judge asking for a postponement of sentencing. Request is granted so the FBI office can use Michael Arnstein as a witness and support in investigating Brand.com

38 FBI office in Philadelphia claims their caseload is very heavy and they still have not had time to allocate resources to their Brand.com investigation. They continue to ask for more time from the sentencing judge. The judge delays sentencing again, but states the final date as October 19, 2018.

39 October 19 2018:Federal Judge Andrew Carter states in his sentencing that ‘general deterrent’ is the primary need to follow a guideline-sentence. Mitigating circumstances are not weighted in his decision.

A legal expert writes to Judge Carter on the injustice of Google’s immunity to aid online defamation victims. This Excellent submission (Exhibit) clearly documents the history and current laws that do not offer protection to defamation victims.

Letters to sentencing judge on Michael Arnstein’s behalf.