Search engine optimization (SEO) professional William Stanley, 53, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge David C. Godbey to 37 months in federal prison and ordered to pay financial restitution for
attempting to extort money from a business in Dallas, according to U.S. Attorney John Parker of the Northern District of Texas.
The court ordered Stanley to pay $174,888 in restitution
to a dozen victims, including the Dallas-based GE, for extortion.
Stanley threatened individuals and companies to engage in illegitimate SEO work by posting “fraudulent comments and
creating negative reviews online, if the victim did not pay him a certain sum of money.”
It turns out that GE entered into a contract with Stanley for SEO services in
2009. Stanley was hired because of his ability to improve a firm’s online reputation through search results, but after one year GE sought to terminate its relationship after it determined
he had acted outside of his contract.
“Stanley also created Web sites that had the ability to damage GE’s reputation by associating GE with a scam,” per the United States
Attorney’s Office document. “Stanley demanded
additional payments to end his contractual relationship with GE and to surrender the administrator rights to the websites to GE. From November 2010 through January 2011, GE paid Stanley a total of
$80,000 to terminate the relationship.”
Stanley and his sister, Lynn Faust, who assisted in operating the SEO company, were indicted in 2014. Stanley pleaded guilty last month to one
count of Hobbs Act, Extortion. Faust, 55, who was arrested in Sweden in May 2014, pleaded guilty in July 2015 to a Superseding Information charging one count of receiving the proceeds of extortion and
aiding and abetting. She faces a maximum penalty of three years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine. Sentencing is set for Feb. 1, 2016, before Judge Godbey.