Gerald Barja aka Gerry Barja is part of a Flippa scam ring made up of at least 3 indivuals. And his other main accomplice is Connor Paddon, also in the Greater Toronto area.
The Report against Connor is listed here:ripoffreport.com/reports/connor-paddon/burlington-l7l3z2/connor-paddon-flippa-scammer-auction-fraud-online-fraud-burlington-ontario-1381126And extensive investigations also here: connorpaddon.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/connor-paddon-scam-artist.html
Gerald and Connor have de-frauded at least 3 victims out of a combined total of $50,000 USD by selling SEO companies which were worthless.
The sales all occurred in late 2013-2014 and we have been unsuccessful in recovering our money. Partly due to financial constraints, as bringing a lawsuit from abroad is extremely expensive.
(1) flippa.com/2964466-torontoranking-com (TorontoRanking.com) $30,000+
(2) flippa.com/3007603-philiboost-com (PhiliBoost.com) $4,100
(3)flippa.com/3047558-losangelesrank-com (losangelesrank.com) $11,501
At the time of listing, these 3 sites appeared to be making an income and were in fact ranking for various keywords for their cities.
I.e. according to the listing Torontoranking.com ranked in the top spot for “toronto seo prices”, number 2 for “toronto seo” and ranked in the top 5 for many others. This was in fact true and accounted for the traffic and customers that were driven to the site.
However, after handing over payment, rankings dropped dramatically – much faster than normal and all 3 victims were left with useless websites, which didn’t rank anywhere near the top for any keywords and had almost zero traffic. How did it happen?
Well, according to the Connor they always maintained in each case - “it’s a Google update and we can’t control that”. End of story right? Not necessarily..
Had that been the case, how would they have then ranked at least 3 other SEO companies, competing in the same cities as our sites and then sold these straight after?
According to this listing (on May 2015):
flippa.com/4454003-vancouverjump-comThe seller “cpaddoncpaddon” (Connor Paddon) confirms that he owns these 3 companies - searchboost.ca, laranking.com(later rebranded to riserev.com) and seophili.com - which all effectively acted as competitors of the SEO companies he sold the 3 victims.
Note: Linking Gerry to these frauds is in the images I've attached to this listing.
Gerry is also mentioned in Connors listings, where he says"
we worked together on several different businesses over the years until Gerry moved out west to Vancouver":
flippa.com/4454003-vancouverjump-com
Gerry also answers any enquiries for SEO on riserev.com (screenshot attached)
Gerry is on the whois enquiry for TorontoBoost (after they sold TorontoRanking to the first victim) :
whois.com/whois/torontoboost.com
Gerald Barja was located in Mississauga, Ontario but current location in unknown.