The Davis Robbins Legal Services DMCA Scam | Skipblast

Image Copyright Backlink Scam: It’s Now A Trilogy! (with Updates)

Just when I thought that all the shady SEOs that were doing this scam were done with it, another one popped into my inbox.

Same shitty behavior, just a different asshole. (or is it?)

This new installment takes things up a notch with a fake lawyer and legal office.

Davis Robbins Legal Services And A DMCA Scam

I discovered an email from “Davis Robbins Legal Services” in my spam folder today.

Apparently it arrived 5 days ago but never made it to my inbox. Guess plenty of other site owners already marked it as spam.

Though I suspect a lot of gullible site owners have fallen for it.

In fact, a quick look at the recent new backlinks to the site the email wants me to link to shows that sites are falling for it:

dmca image scam

And you know, I can’t fault people for falling for this scam.

You get an email that looks official and it’s coming from what you think is a real lawyer at a real law firm.

And you panic.

You don’t want to be on the line for thousands of dollars.

So, instead of taking a minute to look into things, you just give them the link and thank your lucky stars that you’re not getting sued.

But the first clue is that the lawyer says he’s a trademark attorney…but image copyright is an entirely different thing.

Anyways…

Here’s what the email looks like:

dmca scam

But don’t worry, they don’t want to be compensated for this – just a backlink will suffice.

The truth of the matter is that they’re claiming copyright infringement for a Creative Commons image that was put on Pixabay before the Outdoor Cooking Pros domain was ever registered – and I also used the image before the Outdoor Cooking Pros domain was ever registered.

These scammers are never good at the details, are they?

What’s worse is if that if you Google them, then you find that they’re using the same “case ID” when they send these emails out to other people.

See for yourself in the screenshot at the Pocketables website, where the owner also received one of these scam emails.

These idiots also didn’t even buy an aged domain in the legal niche for this scam.

davis robbins legal scam whois

Is Davis Robbins Legal Services A Real Law Firm?

Not likely. Here’s my opinion as to what’s going on –

Initially, I thought what is likely is that we have some lazy ass SEO who can’t be arsed to do real link building for clients.

Instead, they’re trying to scam their way into links for clients with this little DMCA scam.

Why did I initially think this was the case?

Because these backlink scam emails they’re sending out all have different website domains that they want to you link out to.

  • one is an outdoor cooking ecommerce site (outdoorcookingpros DOT com)
  • one is a clothing ecommerce site (ruggedmotorbikejeans DOT com)
  • one is a site selling what seems to be a video editing filter (truecolorlab DOT com)

So, that’s three different industries, with two of the sites being Shopify sites.

With that in mind, I was thinking this is likely an SEO who focuses primarily on Shopify SEO.

I thought that I could find out because I actually emailed the site that was listed in my email from Davis Robbins Legal Services and told them about the scam email and asked for the name of the SEO agency….before I started looking into it and discovered who I think is behind this.

If this were a real company, then I think you could assume the company has no idea this is going on.

But while it is a real Shopify site that likely does drop shipping, the site owner is not a victim here.

This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

With SEOs like this, it is any wonder that this industry has such a terrible reputation?

Of course, I really feel bad for the site owners falling for this scam, who I assume are clueless about what’s going on.

As I mentioned above, I think that at least one of the ecommerce sites is owned by a SEO, probably the one who is behind this.

But I’ll keep that info to myself for a week until I see if I get a response to my email.

Anyways, if you missed the previous drama regarding image backlink scams –

And if I get an update on the SEO/SEO agency behind this, I’ll update this post with a new section right here.

One Week Later Update

So, I figured I would give it a week to see if anyone wanted to come clean about this scam.

As expected, I got zero response to my email.

But, there has been a new ‘About’ page added to the site now, with some nifty fake photos.

So, the site that was referenced in the fake lawyer email has had the following on the “Our Story” page (I won’t link to it, but you can see the URL in the screenshot below).

Outdoor Cooking Pros aboutpage
click to enlarge

I did a web search each of those names + “SEO” to see if either of these people are SEOs, and maybe one is the person behind all of this.

I got nothing for the first name.

But the second one did pop up a result on Facebook –

Content Editor in Chiang Mai Facebook 2021 09 08 14 18 23

So, the guy running the ecommerce site is working in SEO.

A bit more digging reveals that he now has his own SEO agency being run out of Chiang Mai and got his start with ecomm sites.

But who knows if he’s the one behind the fake lawyer backlink scam or not?

The real question is why does anyone think this is an okay thing to do?

Not to mention the fact that doing this is likely considered fraud.

ymlpY1K

Also, Taylor Wilson Smith Legal Services Is The Same Scam

Since whoever is behind this just can’t get enough scamming in with one site, I’ve also just noticed a new domain registered in the last week.

Taylor Wilson Smith Legal Services scam

You’ll notice that there was a bit of an oopsie made here.

This is what happens when you re-use a site without changing all of the fake business names.

The genius behind this also left the title tag for the new site reading as “Davis Robbins.”

Here’s where another blogger wrote about this scam with the email coming from the fake law firm Taylor Wilson Smith.

And Thornton Sims Legal Services Also Seems To Be The Same Scam

Yup, there’s another one to watch out for.

thornton sims legal services scam

I just can’t with this.

Is it really so difficult to not be shitty and have some ethics?

If you missed the other updates about this scam:

14 thoughts on “Image Copyright Backlink Scam: It’s Now A Trilogy! (with Updates)”

  1. Hi Shawna

    I got hit with this DMCA Copyright Infringement Notice myself couple of weeks back ans was too busy to really check it out so gave them a back link (now removed)
    These people show to barred from the internet and fling them down a hole Papillion style.
    Thanks for this article confirming my thoughts on this.

    Tom

    Reply
  2. The inventiveness of a few bad apples in SEO looking for short-cuts gets ever more creative. In a bad way.

    At least the scammer isn’t also asking for a bitcoin deposit, like in that “other” nasty “I have accessed your computer” email scam!

    Reply
  3. Hi Shawna,

    I would like to thank you for highlighting this scam for those of us in the niche website building community. You are really doing us a service by documenting and publishing your experiences in dealing with these trolls. Something that although I have yet to experience myself (knock on wood), but at least I know there’s a place I could reference, if I do experience this type of trolling scam.

    Thanks again!

    Reply
  4. Hi Shawna,
    thanks for posting this article! It really helped confirm my suspicion.
    I made a complaint with namecheap regarding this, hopefully they do something about it.

    Reply
  5. “Is it really so difficult to not be shitty and have some ethics?” says the woman who has made a career out of scraping the adthrive json files and wholesale duplicating other people’s site ideas and keyword lists (take Morten’s auto site for example).

    Reply
    • If you don’t know the ethical differences between impersonating a lawyer for your own gain and looking at a list of successful sites for niche ideas, then that’s on you. And I’ve never advocated for “wholesale duplicating other people’s site ideas and keyword lists” as a path to success.

      Reply
  6. Shawna,
    Thank you for writing this, I too received the scam email which is in my spam folder. The email does look pretty official, but my intuition was like no this is a scam. Thank you again for your due diligence!
    Mike

    Reply
  7. Just got one from “Taylor Wilson Smith” this morning. I assumed it was a scam as there were “matching” photos on my entry and they only claimed one, not both. Rather than a take down notice asking me to remove it, there was the link request. I’m like this is sketchy, let me do some searching and VOILA! Landed here. Thank you!

    Reply
  8. Shawna, thanks for shedding light on this! I got curious and went to the website of Taylor Wilson Smith because it was plain to me that we had full rights to use the image the email mentioned and the only way they could not see that is if they had some poorly coded copyright image-bot (which has happened) running loose unattended. Looking at their site it only took a minute for my spidey-sense to tingle, as one of the lawyers got their law degree at the “University of San Columbia,” which doesn’t exist, and the phone numbers on the site use “555” for the local exchange. A quick google of “taylor wilson smith scam” brought me here. I’m wondering if the websites who would be linked back to know what kind of underhanded tactics are being used. The one in my email was ling HYPHEN app DOT com.

    Reply
    • Yeah, I’m not sure how big this scam is – are the people who are running the image link scam also the owners of the sites they want you to link to, or are they doing this for clients? I’ve tried contacting a couple of the sites to ask who they are paying to do SEO, but I’ve never gotten a response.

      Reply
  9. Thanks for posting this. Yes, very believable scam. Elaborate law firm site that looks legit. But there are many fails on their end which give them away as a backlink scam. Afraid to post them here as they might fix them on the fake legal website.

    They are now Taylor Wilson Smith Legal.

    Reply

Leave a Reply to Terry Cancel reply