Complaint Review: Vaughter Wellness

This is the story on how a Californian criminal named Mark Nelson stole our property and tried to shut down our company.

Mark Nelson currently claims to be “President” of “Commerce Venture Group LLC” and “Managing Editor” of Annenberg Communications Institute as well as “Director of Business and Technology” for Radarbrand.com. However, there is no such company or website as Radarbrand.com – it does not exist. Nelson’s last known address is 511 N Prospect Ave., Redondo Beach, California 90277. His email address is menelson@gmail.com and his phone number is (310) 874-4386. Mr. Nelson has given us explicit permission to publish these details.

The story started when Mr. Nelson decided he wanted to do something about his skin problem. We do not know what skin problem exactly he wanted to improve, but that does not matter – he bought our flagship product, the Derminator®, a digitally controlled skin needling machine. The device costs $199. Mr. Nelson unfortunately became victim of extreme delays in USPS’ mail processing of mail from Europe. As has been established beyond any doubt, USPS delayed countless tracked shipments sent in January and February and did not ever scan those shipments for import. Instead, for up to twelve weeks in some cases, tracking showed: “Origin Post is Preparing Shipment”, “Pre-shipment” and “We have received notice that the originating post is preparing to dispatch this mail piece”. A thousand affected sellers and hundreds of American buyers signed the petition to persuade USPS to come clean on the delays and stop misrepresenting the tracking status. Mr. Nelson did not believe a word of it. Instead, he went on the attack.

We replied to Mark Nelson that he had been informed at the checkout stage of possible USPS delays (because they occur every year in increasing severity, after the Christmas period) and that he had explicitly agreed to our T&C that state that the buyer will file no payment dispute for a tracked, delayed shipment or public blacklisting will ensue. We also pointed him to an announcement on our site pertaining these delays, and we showed him various online evidence and articles that made it very clear that there really was a severe USPS issue at play for virtually the entirety of European outbound mail for Jan-Feb 2015. Smaller vendors were going bankrupt or had to borrow money to refund their US customers. Others suspended selling to the US. Etsy sellers to the US were getting increasingly desperate. Mark Nelson thought it was all nonsense, or he just didn’t care. So he filed a payment dispute with PayPal for the purchase that was at that stage sitting in a USPS sorting station, waiting to be scanned for import. With him, many others were filing disputes and chargebacks.

We routinely inform US customers that filed a chargeback or payment dispute that they are in violation of our T&C and that hence public blacklisting will result until they have returned either the money or the merchandise or closed the dispute. We think this is not an excessive course of action. Since there is a real risk of bankruptcy when many hundreds of expensive shipments are forcibly refunded, losing the money for a tracked shipment that is provenly on its way to the customer and not reported missing is not something we find acceptable. Certainly not when it is very clear to the customer that we are not to blame and that the shipment will eventually arrive. This is clear in our T&C and customers must agree to it before they can order. And those terms are not “small print” – they are in bold and easily accessible. A link to them is next to the “I agree to your T&C” checkbox. Mark Nelson refused to cancel his payment dispute, so we did not remove his public blacklisting. And from that moment, it became clear with what type of person we were dealing with: A psychopath. We have a website dedicated to personality disorders where experts write about personality disorders such as psychopathy, it is ownshrink.com.

When a merchant reaches the point of 1% chargebacks, whatever the reason, USPS breakdown or not, the merchant is instantly bankrupted and can never do business again. The reason is the global blacklist for payment processors, the TMF list, which stands for Terminated Merchant File. We do not agree to the annihilation of our company and the unemployment of 11 people because of some inpatient sociopaths. Hence our blacklisting policy as a deterrent to fraudulent Americans. (The chargeback phenomenon is uniquely American.)

Mr. Nelson went on a multi-pronged attack: He filed an official complaint with PayPal, falsely claiming we were in violation of PayPal’s terms, and he demanded PayPal to terminate our payment processing. Meanwhile, he commented on his public blacklisting on badbuyerlist.org with false criminal allegations, interspersed with all the keywords that would hurt us the most: Our company name, our CEO’s name and the name of our website and products. Thus ensuring maximum damage to us when his allegations were found by potential customers searching for our reputation. Mr. Nelson wrote that I (a petite woman in her sixties) threatened to come to the United States and physically harm him. All I said was that if he would commit an offense against our company, I would personally visit the US to see him in court.

Mark Nelson did not stop at that. It was total war as far as he was concerned. His goal clearly was to shut down our business (employing eleven people, some with disabilities, see our hiring policy) as fast as he could, so the authorities had to become involved. He filed a complaint with the California Attorney General against us, as well as a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. He accused us with PayPal of being “threatening” and “blackmailing” and repeatedly urged them to stop processing payments for us (which would have lead to a few hundred thousand dollars of immediate damage). He repeated his false allegation that we threatened to physically harm him. Then he filed complaints against us with the Better Business Bureau, the Redondo Beach Police Department, Chase Bank, and again urged Paypal to terminate their relationship with us. All because we acted on our T&C (that Mr. Nelson actively consented to) that states that payment disputes for in-transit tracked packages result in public blacklisting.

When it became clear to Mr. Nelson that we were not going to remove his blacklisting, he changed tactics. Having already shot his “main guns” of trying to shut us down with authorities and business relationships with banks and payment processor, he now aimed for further unwarranted destruction of our reputation in comments below his blacklisting. He claimed that there were no USPS delays. That instead it was the fault of our own postal service, because we ship from a “former communist country” (We use the Czech Republic for our two main dispatch centers and Spain for a third). We showed him the link to a very lengthy thread where sellers for the entire European continent, from the UK to Russia to Austria to France bitterly lamented USPS stalling shipments for two months or longer, with shipment status “Origin post is preparing shipment”. He kept saying that we were “ex-communist” liars and that USPS tracking was correct and that our collective postals systems must have all broken down because of “ex-communism”. We were unaware that the UK, France and Austria used to be communist.

When it became untenable for him to persist with his angle that USPS was not the culprit, he changed tactics and said that it was 100% our responsibility that we chose an “unreliable carrier”. He said: “There are plenty of alternatives”. Well, that is not the case. A light EMS shipment costs $50,- and they use USPS for part of their service. And all they guarantee is speedy delivery to US customs, nothing else. So their service would be subjected to exactly the same delays, unless USPS selectively chooses what countries and services to “boycot”, which is unlikely. Then there are courier services such as DHL. A small, light package costs $100 to send to the US. The device he ordered would have required 130 dollars in shipping. Not many US customers will pay $130 shipping for a $199 device. All that is required and reasonable is the customer to have patience when USPS delays their shipment.

Mark Nelson, understanding that he was now wholly defeated, argument-wise, changed tactics again. He started, in every subsequent of his many new comments below his public blacklisting on badbuyerlist.org, using the word “fraud” next to my name (Sarah Vaughter), the name of my company (Vaughter Wellness) and the name of this website (owndoc.com). The apparent purpose was to persuade us to take down his public blacklisting. Mr. Nelson never threatened to libel us on forums and blogs, possibly because he realizes that we would supoena for his IP address and sue him in his state for libel and would demand very significant damages as well as penalties. As soon as that line is crossed, we always litigate. But he may still resort to that, since he clearly has the personality of a psychopath: Impulsive, vindictive, fearless. Mr. Nelson’s latest threat was that he would contact “EU authorities”. Psychopaths are highly over-represented in top business positions so we can understand that Mark Nelson currently serves as President of Commerce Venture Group LLC, Managing Editor of Annenberg Communications Institute and Director of Business and Technology for Radarbrand.com. He was active in many other commercial ventures before – also that is characteristic of psychopaths: They easily get bored and move on, usually leaving a trail of destruction. Radarbrand.com is offline at the moment of writing, seemingly for good.

Mark Nelson eventually ended up with our property, in spite of the fact we told him to refuse the shipment. He signed for delivery on April 9, 2015 for our shipment with tracking nr. RR356056879CZ he had already been refunded for and did not respond to our emails:

We reported Mark Nelson to the US Postal Inspection Service for mail fraud here: http://ehome.uspis.gov/fcsexternal/default.aspx

(((REDACTED)))

We will send a letter to the US embassy with a police complaint against Mr. Nelson, and we will request them to forward this to the Police in his district in the US. We will ask for a confirmation that it has been filed in California, and we will also publish that document here.

We will request VISA/Mastercard/PayPal to stop processing payment from Mr. Nelson because he is provably guilty of mail fraud. We will send our claim on him to a Californian collections agency.

Mark Nelson claims to have specified and implemented approximately $50M in IT systems in the areas of billing, CIS, CRM, Trading, and engineering. He claims to have served as product manager or project manager for several software developments.

Mark Nelson claims to be a trained project manager and claims to have authored project management chapters in university texts and developed in-house project management courses. He claims to be a PMI member and claims to hold several certifications.

Mark Nelson claims to be the author or editor of the following textbooks:

An Econometric Study of Residential Electricity Demand
Consultative Sales and Marketing for High-Tech
Fundamentals of Business Process Analysis
Technical Communications for Project Management
Technical Writing for Proposals

Mark Nelson claims he is a business consultant, technology consultant and project manager.

Mark Nelson claims to have served as:

Director of Retail Operations for Edison Source in Los Angeles
Project Manager of Operations for Edison Source in Los Angeles
Product Manager of Interactive Software for Edison Source in Los Angeles
Business Development Manager for SCE in Los Angeles
ECommerce Manager for SCE in Los Angeles
Marketing Manager for SCE in Los Angeles
Business Analyst and Consultant for SCE (Southern California Edison) in Los Angeles
Vice President & General Manager of Datassist Corp. in Des Moines
Adjunct Professor of Business and Marketing for Simpson College in Des Moines
Manager of Client Services and Complex Billing for Iowa Power in Des Moines (now Mid American Energy, a Berkshire Hathaway Company)
Corporate Development Analyst for Iowa Resources in Des Moines
Instructor of Economics at Iowa State University in Ames
Senior Sales Representative and Client Manager for Midwest Solar, Inc. of Des Moines.

Mark Nelson claims to hold BS and MS degrees in business with a technology and computing emphasis. He claims to be a frequent lecturer and author.

After waiting in vain for several weeks for Mr. Nelson to return our property or to return our money, we reported him to the Internet Crime Complaint center at complaint.ic3.gov:

(((REDACTED)))

Update: Paypal asked the criminal to return our property. He declined. Mr. Nelson may now have been permanently blocked from using PayPal’s services:

(((REDACTED))

Update: The criminal refused to give us our money back, so PayPal did something extraordinary (since we were able to prove the crime beyond reasonable doubt):

(((REDACTED)))

Mark Nelson, in an attempt to get this article removed, keeps claiming he “never received the shipment”, “PayPal denied your claim” and “I will shut you down”:

The reason Nelson is so upset is twofold: Our exposure of him here and the fact that he can’t buy needle cartridges for his Derminator machine because we blacklisted him in our store.

Update: Mark Nelson threatened to start several attack-websites against us and he would contact the Attorney General of California to order PayPal to terminate underwriting for us. He said he would use false claims to accomplish that fact, which would amount to the criminal offense of aggravated libel, libel with intent to do fincnaial harm. Mark Nelson also libeled us to Google Inc., submitting a report to them, claiming that our server is sending out SPAM with a request for gmail.com to blacklist our domain, which would cause considerable damage to our company.

USPS emailed us, saying the shipment was delivered to Mark Nelson. The email with full headers (showing the path of the email through the US government’s servers) is here.

This customer fell victim of the infamous 2015 USPS breakdown (January to April for all shipments from Central Europe). Approx. 500 of our shipments got delayed up to three months and with us, thousands of other merchants were affected.

The customer linked to the details of this USPS scandal and how it affected European sellers.

When we explained that her tracked shipment was on the way and that the issue was caused by USPS and gave her proof of that, this customer told us she did not care and that she wanted her money back. If this anonymous customer is the customer we think it is, she would eventually steal our merchandise - she received a refund as well as the merchandise, eventually, and never returned our property.

Customers who steal from us, especially when they threaten to destroy our company in case we fight back, are always publicly blacklisted. Permanently. This policy is detailed in our T&C and the customer is made aware of these terms and has to actively agree to them. In addition, during checkout we warn against fraud. And we email the customer in the order confirmation a warning that payment disputes or chargebacks for no good reason will be treated as fraud as per our T&C.

According to Wikipedia, approx. 1.2% of people are psychopaths. That would make about six people out of those 500 with delayed packages. And indeed, this customer is one of six people who simply stole the shipment in retaliation for a delay that was wholly out of our hands.

If you are a (potential) customer of ours and you're thinking about stealing from us for whatever reason you may imagine makes that justified, if you think you can "shut us down" or "destroy your company" by libeling us online or asking PayPal to stop dealiing with us: Be aware that we will expose you as the criminal you are on our well-traficced site and other sites, and we will never remove that blacklisting, not even when you pay us back what you owe us.