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What was the threat?

Yesterday, on May 19, "Jim Rickson" called my home phone number. My wife answered and told him I couldn't take his call and hung up. He called back... repeatedly. I finally picked up the phone. He asked me if I was "Earl". I didn't answer his question, but instead asked him "Who is this?" He said something like "I specialize in defamation on the internet, removing it... and adding it." I asked him, "So you engage in illegal activity?" I asked him again, "Who are you? What business are you with?" He answered "Jim Rickson", but did not name his company. After I got him to spell out his name, I hung up the phone.

He continued calling our home repeatedly (from his number of xxx-xxx-xxxx) and left a message on our answering machine saying "Earl, I'm not going away."

My wife promptly changed our home phone number. The calls stopped.

The email

Last night I received the following email:

The email continues to spew lie after lie. Doing an easy search online revealed that he simply copied and pasted the disturbing write-up from another website. He obviously changed the name of the accused to my name.

Defamation posted online

Within hours of the email, many pages appeared online with the repulsive comments, mostly regarding sexually immoral acts, designed to hurt me personally. Ironically, I would never tolerate this kind of abuse to a doctor on this site. If a doctor feels that someone has lied about them, there are simple guidelines which includes just sending us a simple email. We treat doctors with respect and want to protect them from libel and defamation. We have deleted libelous comments from this site.

This spammer never asked us to delete or edit comments from any specific doctor. Why? I think because Dr. Boothe has paid him to carry out these activities and Dr. Boothe does not want to be easily detected... since it's illegal. It's illegal because it is obviously defamation, libel, harassment, and now property damage.

Today, a team of spammers defaced the website. The attacks came from Romania, Vietnam, China, Mexico, Turkey, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and USA (Keene, New Hampshire). Fortunately, we have safe guards in place for exactly such an attack so all of the spam has been removed from the site. However, I fully expect them to keep trying. So for short periods of time you might see some spam get through on the site until we get it corrected. We would appreciate your help... tell us if you see something unusual on the site and we will investigate.

Who made the threat?

On May 9, 2008, an email was sent by Dave Boothe (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

I noticed on your website that we could send an email if we were not happy with comments posted about our doctor on your website.

there are a several comments that completely not true and are very hurtful to Dr. Boothe's reputation. Some of the comments are not even from patients. Is it possible to have our profile completely removed? We would prefer if Dr. Boothe was not listed on your website at all.

Feel free to email me or call our office at xxx-xxx-xxxx (ask for David Boothe) to discuss options reguarding the comments on your website.

thank you very much

-David Boothe

I did not reply or call David Boothe.

On May 10, 2008, an email was sent by This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.):

Subject: re: dr boothe

I noticed that you have slanderous material about me in your website. One entry indicates that they are not even a patient. My recommendation would be that you remove my name from the site. I spent a million dollars getting a site removed over three years ago. Therefore you have to know that I have a lot of resolve to protect my reputation. I will start with the easy steps first and go from there. I would appreciate some correspondence in short order or I will proceed to the next step.

I didn't respond to the email. I felt his email was threatening and he did not state how the comments about him were slanderous. If he could have stated how the comments about him were slanderous, the comments would have been removed.

Identity of caller

As stated earlier, the next communication was from many phone calls on May-19-2008 from a man identifying himself as:

"Jim Rickson"

Doing some searching online reveals that this is an alias used by a major spammer.

Court records show that this man was taken to court by ripoffreport.com

court records

Text from image:

WILLIAM “BILL” STANLEY, an
individual; WILLIAM “BILL” STANLEY
d/b/a DEFAMATION ACTION.COM;
WILLIAM “BILL” STANLEY d/b/a
COMPLAINTREMOVER.COM; WILLIAM
“BILL” STANLEY aka JIM RICKSON;
WILLIAM “BILL” STANLEY aka MATT
JOHNSON; ROBERT RUSSO, an
individual; ROBERT RUSSO d/b/a
COMPLAINTREMOVER.COM; ROBERT
RUSSO d/b/a DEFENDMYNAME.COM;
ROBERT RUSSO d/b/a QED MEDIA
GROUP, L.L.C.; QED MEDIA GROUP,
L.L.C.; QED MEDIA GROUP, L.L.C. d/b/a
DEFENDMYNAME.COM; QED MEDIA
GROUP, L.L.C. d/b/a
COMPLAINTREMOVER.COM;
DEFAMATION ACTION LEAGUE, an
unincorporated association; and INTERNET
DEFAMATION LEAGUE, an
unincorporated association

 

  • Jim Rickson is clearly an alias for Bill Stanley.
  • Bill Stanley appears to be the spammer's real name.



According to SpamHaus.org, Bill Stanley has ties to Romania and Austria. The email he sent with the alias "Matt Henley" was sent from IP 80.96.120.30 (stud.usv.ro), which is in Romania.

On ZDNetAsia, Matt Henley is shown to work for eBay in their anti-fraud department. The real Matt Henley was quoted as saying:

A huge percentage of the fraud we were seeing was from Romania.

His efforts helped get hundreds of arrests in Romania. Bill Stanley, the spammer with ties to Romania, is probably continuing his abuse by claiming to be Matt Henley, the eBay employee. Bill Stanley must hate Matt Henly for getting many Romanian spammers arrested. By using "Matt Henly" as an alias, he his trying to defame his character as well.

William Stanley / Ironserver.com is listed as one of the world's top 200 spammers.

Why I believe Dr. Boothe is employing this spammer

  1. Negative comments he doesn't want you to see... If you do a Google search for Dr. William A Boothe on Google, DoctorScorecard is shown as the #2 website, preceded only by Dr. Boothe's main business website.

    Unfortunately for Dr. Boothe, some patients wrote some negative comments about his business. Dr. Boothe doesn't want people to see what is at DoctorScorecard.

  2. Dr. Boothe's email... An email from Dr. Boothe's email address was sent just days before the spammer called. The email from Dr. Boothe threatened that he would "proceed to the next step". Getting the spammer to attack must be the "next step" he was referring to.
     
  3. Dr. Boothe is shown favorably on many websites registered by Bill Stanley. There are many sites created on the internet for Dr. William A Boothe by Bill Stanley.

    SpamHaus.org has a huge collection of data on this spammer. Spamhaus lists just about everything you would want to know about Bill Stanley. (Link is tricky to open... open once. Answer Yes. Close and open link again. Then the site should show you everything.)

    Description: Non-stop spammer and spam host, sells "bullet-proof hosting" to other spammers to host spam websites. Stanley is an American from Texas.

    From Texas? That's where Dr. Boothe is located as well.

    He claims to operate "offshore" in Austria and has connections with Austria and Romania.

    Stanley works with other criminal method spammers to set up "off-shore" hosting, mostly in Romania.

    Yep, we have received a lot of spam on our site today from Romania.

    He is constantly searching for fresh hosting and continuously sets up accounts with Internet providers in Austria, Romania and the US. He normally either uses the account to host his 'Ironserver' spam service on, or sometimes gets (BGP) routing for his own (RIPE-allocated) IPs on which he then hosts spam service sites.

    He is constantly being terminated by hosts. Each time he is terminated he leaves without paying his hosting bills.

    Stanley claims he is not traceable by the authorities.

    Here is a small sample of the many sites that Bill Stanley, the spammer, has registered:

    drwilliamboothelasik.com
    aboutdrwilliamboothe.com
    allaboutdrboothe.com
    BOOTHE-LASIK.COM

    According to SpamHaus, here are more domains either owned by or being promoted by Stanley's spam gang:

    bootheeyecare.com
    boothelasercenter.com
    boothelasikcenter.com
    BOOTHELASIKDIRECTORY.COM
    BOOTHELASIKEYECARE.COM
    BOOTHELASIKINFO.COM
    BOOTHELASIKNEWS.COM
    LASIKBOOTHE.COM
    LASIKDALLASBOOTHE.COM

    My favorite site is:

    drwilliambootheblog.com

    Dr. Boothe's blog

    In that lengthy blog about "Dr. William Boothe", there are numerous inconsistencies...

    Dr. Willam Boothe was born in the German town of Sweath, Germany on March 16, 1924.

    Dr. William Boothe was born in Quebec, Ontario, Canada, on March 28, 1938.

    Dr. William Boothe was born in Smyrna, Georgia, in 1950.

    Dr. William Boothe (1950-2007), born in San Diego, California, came from a family of modest income.

    Dr. William Boothe was born in the village of Cairo, near Egypt, in 1899. After spending his youth in his native Africa, which was at the time part of the African tribe Chowart.

    LOL! If he were born in 1899, Dr. Boothe is over 100 years old!?

Why would Dr. Boothe want all of these sites with his name in it?

Answer: To manipulate search engines (like Google) to not pay attention to the valid sites where there are negative comments about him. Drown the real websites out with a bunch of crap. Unfortunately for Dr. Boothe, some search engines are not so easily fooled, at least in the case of Google.

Hmmm, since all the facts about Dr. Boothe are messed up so badly, how can we know he is associated with all these spam sites?

We know that Bill Stanley, the spammer, registered the sites for him, according to SpamHaus.org.

On the blog for Dr. Boothe, there are a bunch of links on the top of the page going to digitalreachinc.com.

Digital Reach Inc.

Where is Digital Reach?

Digital Reach and Dr. Boothe


Digital Reach and Dr. William A Boothe are both located in Plano, Texas. The blog is about Dr. Boothe. The blog links to a business in Dr. Boothe's city. The blog was registered by Bill Stanley. It appears Dr. Boothe hired Bill Stanley to make spam sites on his behalf.

How is David Boothe related to Dr. William Boothe? How is Digital Reach related to the Boothes? Tell us if you know.

Now, spam is getting posted on DoctorScorecard by Bill Stanley. They are defacing the pages of other doctors on this site. Fortunately, the spam is getting deleted as fast as it's being placed on the site. But the spammers are destroying property and that is a crime. They are also adding libel and posting defamation about other doctors.

What are we doing?

The site will remain online. We stand up for you to protect your right to speak freely about your experiences.

We will contact the FBI. One reason for making this blog so detailed is to share it with them.

What can you do?

If you notice spam on the site, please tell us.

If you are a lawyer or would like to help investigate this case, please contact us.

Donations could help cover court costs and investigations to prosecute the spammers and Dr. Boothe if we have enough evidence against him. You could support us by becoming an advertising sponsor for your business or website, as long as it fits well with this site. If you would like to donate, you would help us keep this site up and running.

Also, please tell us if you have or find additional information that could help in our investigation.

Conclusion

This is the first doctor to resort to these unethical tactics. Most doctors are good and this one lone doctor does not represent the majority.

Dr. Boothe: When you read this, I suggest you contact Bill Stanley, the spammer, and tell him to stop damaging your reputation more than you already have done for yourself.

Bill Stanley, the spammer, with the help of his international team, is filling websites with hateful attacks about me and my family and even worse... he is damaging the reputations of innocent doctors on this site by posting false information about them, which we have been deleting all day. The spammer is committing crimes of harassment, defamation, libel, and destruction of property.

For everyone else: We stand up for your right to speak freely. Don't let anyone ever intimidate you to give up your rights.

Rate your doctor!

FBI notified

by Earl Thurston Email

Categories: News
Permalink05/21/08 11:01:33 pm, 1 comment »Send a trackback »

Did Dr. Boothe Violate An Injunction?

In the above referenced email sent to Mr. Thurston:
On May 10, 2008, an email was sent by This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ):

Subject: re: dr boothe

I noticed that you have slanderous material about me in your website. One entry indicates that they are not even a patient. My recommendation would be that you remove my name from the site. I spent a million dollars getting a site removed over three years ago. Therefore you have to know that I have a lot of resolve to protect my reputation. I will start with the easy steps first and go from there. I would appreciate some correspondence in short order or I will proceed to the next step.

The above references a lawsuit between Boothe and Brent Hanson (see below). Each has an injunction issued by the state to not discuss any mention of the case.


Why I Know The Above Is True

I am the previous owner of lasiksucks4u.com and the owner of LasikDecision.com.

 

Some time ago, Dr. Boothe contacted me asking if I would consider removing some of the material then posted on lasiksucks4u.com. I’m not exactly sure of when it was, but given the creation date of the word document titled ‘boothe response’ whereas my response was no, I would say February, 2007.

 

On October 9 2007, I received a phone call from a person identifying himself as Jim Rickson. He claimed he was a damaged LASIK patient from Austria who was interested in purchasing lasiksucks4u.com. His claims were that Austrian defamation laws were tougher in Europe, and that he wanted a website that existed for some time because he wanted to remain anonymous.

 

I sold him the website.

 

A sales agreement was delivered to me via UPS on October 16, 2007 with the name William Stanley as the sender.

 

On May 23 2008, I became aware of the posting on www.doctorscorecard.com. Upon reading the post on Mr. Thurston’s blog titled “Spammers attacked site – appears to be linked to a doctor”, I realized it was the same person he wrote about (Jim Rickson/William Stanley) that purchased lasikdecision.com.

 

I went to the backend/server of lasiksucks4u and the website itself throughout the weekend (the site has been down since 05/24). On the site, with the exception of Drs. Nevyas and Nevyas-Wallace, all of the links showed a 404 error, meaning the pages were no longer available.

 

The information in the ‘doctors’ section on the backend of the site (admin area) had all of the doctors previously listed with the exception of Dr. William Boothe.

 

I hereby state this is true to the best of my knowledge, information, and belief. I understand that these statements are made subject to penalties relating to unsworn falsification to authorities.


Hackers break into site - which doctor paid them?

Obtained from DoctorScoreCard

07/02/09

A month ago, hackers once again attacked the site. We believe that the hackers are once again working for Dr. Boothe, an eye doctor that performs LASIK in Plano, TX. We immediately fixed the website vulnerability that allowed the hackers access. I did not document it immediately because I wanted to wait and see if the hackers would try anything else and it appears they have stopped. Our corrective actions must have worked.

What did the hackers do?

The hackers uploaded a trojan. The trojan appeared to give them the ability to edit several files on our server. The hackers accessed the site from an IP address in Dallas, TX. Plano, where Dr. Boothe has his business, is a northern suburb of Dallas. The hackers worked from the same area where the Boothe Eye Care and Laser Center is located.

What did the hackers edit in the server files?

The files are what run the website. It's where the code is located, which allows the site to display doctor information to you when you search for it. The hackers made some telling edits to the files. Everything they touched was related to Dr Boothe and no other doctor.

For example, they changed the robots.txt file to disallow the search engines, like Google, from visiting Dr. Boothe's scorecard page. When Google visited DoctorScorecard, it saw the instruction from the hackers telling Google to keep out of Dr. Boothe's scorecard page. As a result, Google no longer shows his scorecard if you search for Dr. Boothe. We found the change and removed the code the hackers put in place, but it was too late. Google has already buried comments written by the public about Dr. Boothe. It's still there, but it's not on the first couple pages of search results any more. So the hackers had some success in hiding what people are saying about Dr. Boothe. All of the information is still here at DoctorScorecard, but Google is no longer showing it to the public in its top results.

What do other search engines show for Dr. Boothe?

When I searched for him on Yahoo today, I clicked on one of the results shown. I was surprised to see that the website about Dr. Boothe was trying to upload a trojan to my computer.

Dr. William Boothe website tries to upload trojan

Luckily, my anti-virus program caught it.

Would you want to trust your health to a doctor that pays hackers to hide what the public says about him?

 

 


Disturbing Sales Tactics (and More) at Dr. William Boothe’s “Boothe Eye Care & Laser Center” in Plano, Texas

 

SOURCE

The Boothe Eye Care & Laser Center in Plano, Texas advertises constantly on the radio in the Dallas area about Dr. Boothe being the “world’s most experienced” laser surgeon. Well, my wife was thinking about getting this done, and she did a little poking around on their Web site and noticed that they offered a FREE consultation, so she decided to go see if she was eligible.

(I should point out here that she’d pretty much made up her mind to do it, so this “client” was theirs to loose!) So, anyway, she made an appointment to go in and find out what all was entailed with this surgery, being pretty sure she wanted to do it, but a little anxious about it. Perfectly normal I would say… Everything seemed fine until she arrived to the office, where she learned she needed to pay $150 to have the consultation!

It should be noted that they advertise on the radio and internet that the consultation is FREE (um, see the image above). And she called them out on this, but their excuse was, “well, the money goes towards the surgery if you decide to have it.” She actually got roped into giving them her credit card and taking a seat before she called me because she was so uncomfortable with the “bait and switch” tactic they were employing.

By the way, now that I do a little research, Dr. Booth has a TERRIBLE rating on DoctorScoreCard.com. Just 4 out of 10! But I’ll get to that in a moment…
 

On With the Story…

When we talked she told me what was going on and I advised her to just go tell the woman she changed her mind, and that she didn’t want the appointment and to refund the money. Somehow though, the lady talked her into staying (they must be awfully smooth to override a husband). So she went ahead with the consultation and determined that she is actually a candidate for eye surgery, after which came the high-pressure sales pitch!

At this point, she had the information we needed to make an informed decision, and she told them that she wanted to talk it over with her husband before moving forward, at which time they told her that the pricing she had been given prior to the consultation was only good while she was in the office. If she left and then wanted the surgery it was going to cost $200 more because the pricing would no longer be valid!

Now, I don’t know about you, but I find this type of behavior to be outrageous and completely out of character with what I would expect from a “doctor”. I guess that Dr. Boothe must have hired people who used to sell vacation packages or used cars to sell his eye surgery. But whatever the case, it is absolutely unethical to pressure people into making a snap decision on a surgical operation. My guess is that they only continue this practice because no one is talking loudly about it, or because they can’t cut through the noise of the Internet. We’ll see if this blog post does the trick, shall we?

Some Bad, Bad Experiences

So, why should anyone trust a doctor who begins his relationship with clients this way? Frankly, I can’t answer that question. I wouldn’t. But in my investigation after the fact, things got much worse. Here are some direct quotes from DoctorScoreCard.com about other people’s experiences with Dr. Boothe:

  • From someone who had a similar experience to my wife’s:
     

    But I soon found out I would not get to meet with Dr. Boothe unless I paid a $150 deposit toward the surgery! So, that was it…I was out of there!! They were herding people around like cattle and I couldn’t wait to escape.

  • From someone who had tear duct surgery:
     

    He’s very matter-of-factly condescending, and is quite capable of making you feel quite stupid in the event you have the audacity to disagree. So, he attempted to do the surgery and it hurt a lot. I’m not sure if he didn’t use enough anesthetic, didn’t wait long enough, or what, but it was terrible. My mother and I protested mid-surgery and left right away never to return again. Later I found a new family doctor in the area and decided to ask her what the eye issue could be. She said it wasn’t an eye issue at all, it was an issue related to allergies. She said Boothe should have known this and redirected me to an allergist and should never have attempted surgery.

  • From a former employee of Dr. Boothe’s who Dr. Boothe is suing:
     

    It bothers me to see a man who has almost blinded people, talks to his staff in the manner he does and hides behind his papers. if you dont want people to say bad things about you, or disstroy your reputation then maybe you should do your job, maybe you should get off your high horse and rejoin reality and treat people as humans and not door mates, it truely makes me wonder how you treat your family.

  • By someone who claims to have felt treated like cattle:
     

    My counselor’ (not a doctor) finally came and explained the procedure. I finally agreed (I shouldn’t have) and showed up at 6:45 am for an 8:00 am surgery. I got to the waiting room at 7:35 with 4 people ahead of me. At 10:00 I was finally escorted to the surgery room AFTER more than 6 people who had arrived after me. At 11:00 I left the surgery, not performed, because they took every last person in the room before me. I asked, NO EXPLANATION. I told them why I was leaving…not one person spoke to me. This business is run like a cattlecall with very little regard to the individual.

  • This one from a patient with multiple problems:
     

    I would highly recommend not using Dr. Boothe. The man is rude, egotistical, arrogant, unprofessional, and uncaring. He yells at and threatens his employees within earshot of his patients (I witnessed this in the operating room, of all places). He has no personality and no people skills. The only thing you’ll get out of him is specifically what you ask him, so you’d better hope you know the right questions to ask. He’s really only interested in getting your money and offers you a discount if you get your procedure done the same week you have your first consultation. Don’t fall for this — you really need to take the time to research this and make sure you’re making the right decision.

  • This supposedly from another employee:
     

    I have read over other comments and would like to confirm that as a former employees wife Dr. Boothe is an out of control employer. He belittles employees infront of patients and peers. He uses profanity while doing this. Patients call frequently to the office to complain about this but he praises himself that he rules his office with an iron fist. (Something he is quite proud of). His employees are afraid of him but apparently need a job so sit back and take it. While this one didn’t and I wish the others were able to do the same. As for his number of lasiks performed. He does 120-150 in one day. Ask which one you will be if you plan on scheduling. Advertising every 10 minutes on the radio brings in alot of people. Not too many patients come referred by others. Too bad they don’t know what kind of physician they are supporting.

  • Here is another very bad complaint:
     

    Now I can’t see near or far….everything is blurry and I can read up close ONE WORD AT A TIME….don’t ask me to read a sentence or a street sign. the office tried to rush me into doing the second eye before the first healed…Then I would be almost blind in both eyes and unable to work DO NOT TRUST THIS MAN ….he just wants your money and thinks he’s above the law because he makes you sign the desclaimers. On the lasik…they did not want me to read the warnings but I had to write in my own handwriting that i read and understood it but they didn’t let me read it. i CANNOT BELIEVE I WAS SO STUPID.

  • Another client complaining about their treatment:
     

    The lasik surgeon I chose does not meet the reputation thought. Long wait times, numbers mean more than quality and an unfriendly atmosphere along with a surgeon who has no personality have left me with subpar lasik at this point. I was told to give it a year but my review is based on my experience. I will follow up in 6 months and let you know if it gets better. I feel like when your wait 6 hours just for your pre surgery and 2.5 hours each followup you should get better service and have experience employees who have college degrees.

  • And the complaints range back to at least 2006:
     

    This doctor has committed malpractice in his employees eyes but threatens them with legal action of a non-disclosure agreement they have sign. He has also fallen asleep during surgery (This can be confirmed by his staff). He also treats his staff like they are slaves and not human beings, yes they are getting paid but even I wouldn’t work for what I’m hearing them say he calls them and the way he treats them. He is always firing his office staff because of incompetency when he is the one who is incompetent. Today he has had two of his staff walk out of the surgery room and quit. One being a technician and another being an ophthalmologist. His office is also out of regulations concerning health laws. I highly do not recommend going to this doctor.

  • Even the owner of DoctorScoreCard.com believes Dr. Boothe hired someone to illegally threaten, defame and spam him.
     

    This is the first doctor to resort to these unethical tactics. Most doctors are good and this one lone doctor does not represent the majority.

    Dr. Boothe: When you read this, I suggest you contact Bill Stanley, the spammer, and tell him to stop damaging your reputation more than you already have done for yourself.

    Bill Stanley, the spammer, with the help of his international team, is filling websites with hateful lies about me and my family and even worse… he is damaging the reputations of innocent doctors on this site by posting false information about them, which we have been deleting all day. The spammer is committing crimes of harassment, defamation, libel, and destruction of property.

    For everyone else: We stand up for your right to speak freely. Don’t let anyone ever intimidate you to give up your rights.

Further reading:

So, I guess people have to make their own mind up. But as for me, I’m not letting my wife subject her vision to this physician’s practice.

Dr. William A. Boothe
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