Legal Affairs

A public relations representative contacted my office today and claimed to have a written retraction by Robert Danoff.  Since I have never seen Bob’s signature, I cannot verify if it is actually his or not.  I am happy to post the letter if I can verify from Bob himself that he did willingly sign this letter and the conditions in which he is signing it.

The letter is direct and plain.  Having spoken to Bob in the past, it appears to be inconsistent with his writing style.  It looks like someone wrote a letter and, at best, told him to sign it.

After all the time and energy Bob has given, why a retraction now?  From my understanding, neither party is allowed to discuss it.

Having dealt with the court system myself as a plaintiff, it sounds like a settlement was reached.  The “only” thing Bob has to do is agree to sign to the contents of the letter which says he was a disgruntled employee and other descriptions and Incredible Discoveries would drop all lawsuits against him.  That is only an educated guess on my part and I had thought this might eventually happen.

Having learned a little bit about his personal situation over the past few months, I suppose it was inevitable this would happen.  After all, why would he want to continue to fight this?  He had very little to gain monetarily.  It is way easier to simply stop fighting.  And if that is the case, so be it.

To be clear, I have no dog in this fight at all.  What I dislike is having my time wasted and having someone or some company solicit my business and asking $75,000 from me with little more than an attractive website.  Are you kidding me?  It takes nerve to do so.  I also find it very suspicious that I have seen in Florida public records a variety of lawsuits filed against or by the parent company of Incredible Discoveries vs. various individuals.  Basically, I tend to think “where there is smoke, there is fire”.

Having spoken to an employee within a direct response publication, a fellow entrepreneur friend who was also approached by Incredible Discoveries, and a couple of other entrepreneurs whom I do not know that complained, other people clearly share a similar distrust and suspicion of the Incredible Discoveries operation.

In the interest of fairness, from my singular perspective, this is mostly my opinion.  However, it is not entirely unfounded.  I have found enough information in the Florida public records that would make me say to people “let the buyer beware” or “go find another company and listen to their pitch”.  I have also kept all the communications of those who have complained or communicated with me regarding Incredible Discoveries.

It also does not help when I ask the public relations person about whether other people were unhappy, she was in denial of it.  Clearly, she did not want to talk about it and basically I could care less because I don’t want to waste time digging.  So I let it go.  My antenna is up and my gut instincts screams loudly regarding them.

I have no interest whatsoever to dig or find any more information within the public records.  There is no reason for me to do so.  I did find the public relations woman I spoke to to be relatively professional, polite, pleasant, and respectful.  Good thing because I was expecting some ugliness.  I was happy I was wrong.  I must admit I did ask her, “Are you going to threaten to sue me now?”  I told her I half expected it.  She said they were not that way.

And so, I hope I do not have to write any more about Incredible Discoveries.  I know those folks have communicated to me that they would be quite happy for me to delete all postings relating to them.  But, they did contact me first even when I told them I wasn’t interested.  And I do document interesting business interactions.  They certainly qualify.

I may eventually remove my opinions of Incredible Discoveries and their disputes with others if things stay quiet long enough.

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The latest information can be found on The Incredible Discoveries Information Page.

This is Part 2 of my commentary of the case of Immediate Capital Group Inc. dba Incredible Discoveries vs. Robert Danoff (filed in the District Court of Palm Beach County, Florida.

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In looking over the Plaintiff’s Petition, I tried to keep an objective eye and see it from Immediate Capital Group dba Incredible Discoveries (ICG) point of view but it is difficult because I have such differing opinions and philosophy of doing business.

And I have to say, if ICG is a legitimate business as they claim, it strikes to me they are being a bit paranoid and pointing out things that, in my opinion, are very weak.

In reviewing the points ICG made, these are my impressions.

Point 2 – ICG appears to be playing the sympathy card by phrasing their employees as “50 Florida residents…. with their families.” Well, how are they different from any other company that have layoffs, downsizes, or goes out of business? Very few people talk about the family situations and it is not really relevant to the case. It is a sympathy play.

Point 3 – There is probably some truth to Bob Danoff being a disgruntled, former employee that happens to know how to use the Internet. However, it is a bit melodramatic to believe that any one disgruntled employee can bring down an entire company and business. If that is in fact the case, you have to wonder about how strong and solid the business was to begin with.

Having dealt first-hand with the Cobra Collection Scam, people give me credit for helping them shut down. And yet, it really wasn’t me alone. It was the waves of angry, disgusted, and frustrated ex-employees, ex-clients, and ex-debtors that came out and rallied around the website I had created. Likewise, I don’t think Bob is that “powerful” by himself. There has to be a lot of negative karma going on for Bob to have any real power as was the case with the Cobra Collection Scam. There was so much negative karma going on, it hit a boiling point. Is there negative karma going on with ICG / Incredible Discoveries? I simply don’t know.

Point 4 – There are negative comments for almost every established company and product in the Google search engine. There are also disgruntled employees in every company that has been in business any number of years. I have negative reviews on my books but that does not put my publishing company out of business. I have unhappy ex-tenants whom I evicted, sued, and garnished for non-payment. I also have some people who I have fired who might be unhappy with me.

Fundamentally, no one can please 100% of the people but I strive to run my business well. That goodwill and success more than offsets the small number of complaints I get from customers or ex-employees. I also issue credit or refunds if I need to unhappy customers. What I do is no different than what most reputable businesses do. But most companies will not be brought down by this small amount of negative karma. How can Bob’s lone comments (if any) on Google bring any one company down? Give me a break. If ICG has truly been damaged, they need to look elsewhere and not a scapegoat.

Point 5 – ICG is upset with Bob for asking for legal assistance on the Internet. So what? Asking does not mean he will get it. And if he does get the help he wants, we have to assume that Bob and the attorney agreed to it. If ICG is afraid of being perceived as litigious, then maybe they should stop suing so much.

Personally, I don’t mind having the reputation of being a bit litigious. It tells people I am not goofing around when I do business. If you do wrong by me, I will not sit back and be silent. I have sued and will continue to sue if it is absolutely necessary. I also do not like going to court but I do what is necessary to protect our interests.

In browsing through the Broward County Courthouse records searching “Incredible Discoveries” and “Immediate Capital Group”, ICG does seem to indicate they do sue a fair amount of people. But then again, so do we. We have successfully sued lots of deadbeat tenants and we win all our cases. It does not hurt our feelings that if it our newer tenants know we will sue anyone who does not pay. It keeps the deadbeat types away and the others in line.

Last thing, ICG wants to go after Bob because he does not want to list his home phone or cell phone publicly on the Internet? How ridiculous is that? If I was a private citizen and did not have a business, the only way I would want incoming communication is email. Giving out your personal phone number is too risky today. Too many kooks on the Internet. And who wants strangers to burn up their cell phone minutes or fill up their voicemails with junk? Certainly, not me.

Point 6 – I have nothing to say on that as I cannot even find Bob’s Myspace page. I am a pretty good Google user and I couldn’t find it. Again, I think ICG is being a bit paranoid here. Besides, who would seriously pay attention to the content on most Myspace pages?  I have seen many Myspace pages.  They are either goofy personal stuff or blatant advertisements.

Point 7 – This is the one most relevant to me as parts of my blog are being used as a court Exhibit. I do take exception to this as ICG never asked my permission to reprint the contents of my blog for use besides personal reading.  Do they not know that the contents of my blog is copyrighted?

ICG is most focused on the comment by “AndJusticeForSome”. ICG has clearly made the wrong assumption on the true identity of “AndJusticeForSome”. I know for a fact it is not Bob. It is a woman who contacted me through private email. And if it is Bob, he is one hell of an actor capable of a gender change. I have also compared the writing styles of Bob’s public articles and “Justice”. “Justice” writes very well. Bob simply writes adequately on the articles I have seen.

Points 8 to 11 – I have no specific comments on these items.

Bottom line: I think that ICG just needs to let this case go. They are spending way too much time and energy over one ex-employee that I believe has marginal impact on the world at large.  If ICG is supposedly as successful as they claim, one disgruntled employee should not be able to bring them down. They are being paranoid. And if one disgruntled employee can bring their business down, they need to see what is wrong with their business model and operations that is so vulnerable to a “few” customer complaints and negative comments.

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The latest information can be found on The Incredible Discoveries Information Page.