Complaint Review: Guardian Liberty Voice

Guardian Liberty Voice online newspaper is running a scam and a fraud, and let me explain exactly why. First off, this appears to be the third Rip-Off Report filed on this company, so be sure to read the other ones too. The biggest aspect of the scam is that the owner tells new recruits that the company is worth 25 million dollars when in fact that is not true, and anyone who knows anything about business will know it's not true. This is a purposeful misrepresentation of the facts for the purpose of running an illegal labor camp with improper compsensation that is in violation of labor laws based on the accounts of others who have filed reports here about this company and based on what I saw firsthand.

During the boot camp training classes, in which the owner swindles desperate writers looking to break into the industry, he shows a report from a company called "Worth of Web." This report does indeed claim that the company is worth around 25 million dollars. However, a quick search for other "web value" calculators online that also calculate the worth of a website, reveals that Worth of Web is very unreliable and drastcially overblown.

In fact, if you Google "find worth of website" or "find value of website" and you search some of the top results, you will see that the estimates for the worth of Guardianlv.com range from a low of $54 (yes that is right: fifty four dollars!!!), to $700 to $400,000 to $1.7 million to $4 million to $11 million and so on, up to and including the ridiculous 25 million estimate from Worth of Web. Quickly, you will see clearly that all of these so-called "website worth calculators," including Worth of Web, are totally inaccurate and therefore, entirely meaningless.

The fact is, a company is worth exacly how much someone is willing to pay for it, and no more. Now think about this: who will pay for a business that is no more than a Wordpress website, and there is nothing whatsoever that is propriatary about the website or the business? It appears to be no more than a basic free Wordpress template with some ads plugged in. It is said that the company is very unstable, with huge turnover and no writers on a salary.

Who would buy a company like that? The other reports on here detail how the editors work very long hours, like up to 16 or 18 hours in a day, and yet get paid nearly nothing. The owner uses the drastcially inflated false number of 25 million dollars to lure in writers and editors to make them work the long hours, and he promises them an equity percentage, but an equity percentage of what? 54 dollars? $500,000? Or however much someone would actually be willing to pay? Nope, he promises them equity of the fraudulent number of 25 million dollars, and he must know, if he is a businessman, that the company is not worth but a tiny fraction of that...on a good day.

Think about it, go look up how much websites and businesses are selling for nowadays. You can access plenty of online listings of businesses and established websites for sale. You will see that websites with comparable traffic (he has widely published that the site gets 9 million visitors per month) are on sale for a few hundred thousand dollars to a million at the absolute most. From what I saw at the training, the traffic numbers being realizd on the website right now would make it worth, at best, a couple hundred thousand dollars, and that's if a buyer could even be found for a website business that could be replicated by anyone who knows how to use a Wordpress template and get people to write for pennies. 

So how are the editors and writers buying into this huge lie? From what I saw in the boot camp class, the owner uses snake oil salesman tactics, I could smell scam a mile away. Then I started researching the numbers I just listed here. Don't believe me? Do the research yourself! Go to sitevaluecheck. They think the site is worth $710! Siteprice thinks it's worth just over 1 million, checkwebsiteprice says it's worth $497,938. As you can see, with such drastically varying estimates, it is impossible to put a real valuation on it, but one thing I do promise is that is not worth anywhere near the 25 million he represents it to be worth, and he must know that, and for this reason, he is running a huge fraud and a scam.

If he is getting editors to work the long hours detailed in the other reports here, and in an expose written by a prominent blogger Carol Tice, then he is also in violation of many labor laws as well. One editor on another report mentioned that he calls people at all hours of the night, this is similar to brainwashing tactics used by cult leaders, how every moment of every day must revolve around the cult and, not to mention, sleep deprivation is a common, well known brainwashing technique. Also mentioned is, he likes to humiliate people, this is another cult tactic. This is a flat-out fraud, scam company. Period. Run, do not walk, away from this company, whose owner has been called "a really great con artist" by his ex employer, and a con and scam artist by countless ex writers of his. Remember, people, where there's smoke, there's fire.