The JAWA story continues. Yesterday, we posted about accusations from Verizon Wireless that JAWA was effectively "cramming" premium SMS charges onto users' bills, which came about following an investigation (and eventual lawsuit) by Texas regulators. The blog AZDisruptors.com has been highlighting some of the accusations against JAWA while most of the press had kept quiet on it. However, it appears the folks at JAWA don't like that. They sent a cease-and-desist to the operator of the blog (embedded below), Hamid Shojaee, that makes all sorts of accusations against him; claiming defamation, false light invasion of privacy, tortious interference with business relations and criminal harassment.

The letter also, oddly, accuses Shojaee of being a cyebersquatter, despite that having nothing whatsoever to do with what's being disputed here, and Shojaee clearly explains why he has the various domains he has. As for the specific legal threats against Shojaee, it's hard to see how the latter claims have any merit. The defamation claim is the key one, but considering that both the Texas attorney general and Verizon Wireless's lawsuits against JAWA seem to make similar claims, it's difficult to see the defamation claim standing. On top of that, since JAWA's CEO Jason Hope is clearly a public figure, the standard for defamation is much higher and, almost certainly, was not met by Shojaee. I'm guessing that JAWA wouldn't even want to get into the discovery phase of any such lawsuit -- meaning this threat letter feels a lot like a SLAPP. Arizona has an anti-SLAPP law... but it is very limited and almost certainly doesn't apply here, unfortunately (all the more reason for a federal anti-SLAPP law).

Separately, JAWA's lawyers contacted AZDisruptors.com's host, SquareSpace, and registrar, GoDaddy, demanding the site be taken down for these reasons. Ridiculously, SquareSpace complied -- without even contacting Shojaee first. This is problematic for a variety of reasons. First of all, SquareSpace has no legal requirement to takedown a site upon accusations of defamation. Section 230 protects it against liability in those circumstances. But, even more to the point, the fact that it would take down the site without first even hearing from Shojaee is really problematic and suggests that SquareSpace should not be trusted as a hosting provider.

Either way, Shojaee is fighting back. He got SquareSpace to put the site back up and has responded to JAWA's accusations against him with a lawyer, who seems well equipped to respond to such bullying. I've embedded the response letter below, but just a snippet:

Your letter, its accusations, and its conclusions are shocking. And you are wrong in every respect...

[...]

I can't close a letter without pointing out the obvious: your letter, instead of addressing Mr. Shojaee's accurate claims about Mr. Hope's business activities, maligns his character and accuses Mr. Shojaee of "fail[ing] to disclose your true motives to your readers." You then go on to list a number of web domains that Mr. Shojaee legally owns in connection with a legitimate business purpose.

The idea that Mr. Shojaee has done anything to apologize for is laughable. It is Mr. Hope who has built a company based on deception; it is Mr. Hope who has illegally used technology to bilk consumers out of millions; it is Mr. Hope who has chosen to interfere with my client's business...

Sounds like the attempt at intimidation isn't likely to work... Oh, and in the meantime, the press is starting to pick up on the story as well.

The various mobile operators have been making tons of revenue off of premium "short code" SMS programs. These are ways to add charges for various things directly to your phone bill. For example, they've become popular with various charities, so you can support them simply by texting a message to a particular short code. Of course, in many cases, the mobile operators charge you or take a cut for allowing this. And, of course, as with anything like this, it's been left open to scammers... and those scammers have moved in. Just as we saw with phone service cramming, where charges would be added to your landline phone bill, there's been a growing set of operations cramming premium SMS offerings.

Broadband Reports highlights the saga of JAWA, a Scottsdale, Arizona-based company that's at the center of allegations of cramming. The company and a bunch of shells allegedly send text messages to people that say:

"Text back STOP if you don't want to subscribe."

Most people, of course, don't text back because they think it's a scam. What they don't realize is that even if it's a scam, it's the not replying that lets the telcos start adding fees to your bill. The big question here: why does any mobile operator allow charges to be put on your phone bill for inaction?

The blog AZDisruptors (normally about Arizona startups) has been calling attention to the company, including putting together this video explaining how the cramming works, how JAWA's CEO Jason Hope is apparently building the largest house in the US (complete with a 3-story night club), and how AT&T pretends (falsely) that it can't do anything about it: Oh yeah, Broadband Reports also notes that Hope's former blog, which was all about the Lamborghinis and other luxury cars he was acquiring, has suddenly changed to point to a page about his philanthropic work.

The thing is, JAWA has been doing its thing for quite some time. After Texas regulators began investigating, Verizon Wireless finally realized it needed to do something and sued. Amusingly, JAWA's defense to the lawsuit appears to be that it employs lots of people and is good for Scottsdale. However, it also points out that it's made Verizon Wireless tons of money, and even complains that Verizon Wireless seems to be withholding money owed.

While it's nice that Verizon Wireless has filed suit, it appears this only happened after Texas regulators began investigating, and after they made money from JAWA for a period of nearly four years. AT&T now claims that it's investigating too, but only after AZDisruptors demonstrated company representatives blatantly lying to him about whether or not they make any money from this and whether or not they can stop it.

The big question in all of this really should be why the mobile operators allowed this to happen at all. Why would they ever allow charges to be added to an account as a result of inaction, rather than through direct acceptance?

We haven't heard much about cramming scams lately, but they still happen all the time. For those who don't know, cramming is when a third party company either illegally gets additional charges on your telephone bill or (more often) tricks you into agreeing to more charges on your phone bill. Four years ago, we wrote about some of the tricks used in cramming call centers, where they pretend they're just "verifying" information -- and then bundle a whole bunch of questions together, tricking people into saying yes to all of the questions, when they really mean to say yes to the last question. The companies later use those recordings (sometimes edited) to prove to people that they "approved" the charges and refuse to cancel the charges or refund the money. Various state governments and the FTC have tried cracking down on these companies for a while, and the FTC went after a bunch last summer -- which has resulted in a settlement. Unfortunately, while the companies took people for $24.7 million, they're only paying back $1.2 million (and not admitting any guilt). Apparently, the firms claim that the $1.2 million is all they can afford. Apparently lesson one if you're going to scam a bunch of people is to spend all that money before the authorities catch up with you.