In my last blog I let you know of one instance where someone was infringing on my copyright material, in this blog I am calling out everyone (that I know of) who has ever violated my copyright so as to bring attention to an serious issue that many are not aware of that is and has been happening with information products, in specific with Broker Price Opinion eBooks.
Here is a list of other people (most are past customers) who have infringed on my copyrighted material in some way and a brief history about who they are and what they did to me. They are:
1. Chad Williams, who is a real estate salesperson and was also a past customer of mine who purchased my BPO Manual. Some of the websites he uses to promote his ‘similiar’ BPO products are: bpokit.com and reokit.com I wouldn’t be surprised if he passed my BPO Manual around to everyone he knew for free.
(P.S. Everyone reading this, please do not email or send someone an eBook that they have not purchased themselves, by doing this you are doing a HUGE disservice to the author and are actually infringing on the author’s copyright. Instead send a link to the website where they can purchase their own copy)
I stumbled upon finding out that Chad infringed on my in October of 2007, just months after purchasing my BPO Manual. He was guilty of copying and pasting some of my customer testimonials to post on his website as his own. Plus, he also stole content from some of my eBay auction ads to use on his own website that is no longer active: bporealestate.net. He was the first person to do this to me. After confronting him and directly dealing with it I was able to get him to take down my customer’s information and my content from his website within 1 month of when I initiated contact with him.
2. Ray Soriano, a past eBay customer and real estate agent in California at the time, he purchased my list of 120 BPO, REO and Asset Mgmt companies for $19.99 and then tried to turn around and sell ‘his own list’ that he likely recreated (hopefully) from using mine as a template. He was trying to sell his list for three times more than I sell mine for, but his website is no longer active. I found him by Googling, “Broker Price Opinion,” and seeing something suspicious in a search result that pointed to an ad on Craigslist. I followed up by emailing for more information to kind out what he was really doing.
This type of thing has happened to me countless times since I first started selling Broker Price Opinion information and eBooks in January 2007. These copyright infringers found me online through my website, through the items I sold on eBay and elsewhere. Plus, many of my infringers are past customers.
3. I have had Kimberly Ramer of Kimclass and NABPOP, used an employee or used a fictious name to try to purchase one of my lists of companies for $19.99 in May of 2007. I am sure that they would have used it to make their list more up to date, because I update my list every few months. I made sure that they didn’t get their hands on it and refunded their money.
4. A past eBay customer and real estate salesperson in California, Sherie Corsello, bought and tried to resell my list of BPO, REO and Asset Management companies. She purchased my eBook for $19.99 and tried to resell ‘her own list,’ for $49.00. She denied that she used any part of my list of information in my eBook as her own, but it is painfully clear how much of a help my information was to her recreating her list.
5. I’ve had many of my other competitors purchase my BPO Manual so that they can get a point of reference, this is ok. The Owner of ForeclosureU did this as well as a few others.
My main problem with all of this is that I didn’t expect that other real estate professionals would take advantage of me in such a personal way and try to exploit all that I created to use as if they themselves created it.
This to me is the biggest slap in the face that I have encountered next to getting phone calls from countless strangers who let me know that their friend emailed them my BPO Manual eBook (In which, they themselves did not pay for it!) and that they had some questions for me. That was an even worse situation to deal with. In all instances it feels like I have been kicked square in the gut!
I hope you learned something useful from this post. Any constructive comments would be appreciated! Thanks so much for taking the time to read this blog!
Best to you,
Nicole Ocean
BPO Trainer/Realtor
