Complaint Review: Careers 20/20 Careers 2000 Charles Dimon - Irvine California

In the responses filed by the company to the original complaint (which was not by me), they made numerous libelous references to me. Since the editor has not removed them, I thought that it would be worth adding to the record that Charles Dimon (owner of the company reported) was arrested and served 6 months in jail due to his business practices at this company. I was involved in working with the DA and the Irvine PD which is why I became the target for his online slander campaign against me. After he was released and put on probation, he fled the state and was later captured. Last I heard he was once again in jail.

Please disregard the last rebuttal. It was written by Mr. Ian Leicht who is currently being sued for over $800,000.00 for punitive damages. If you have any information pertaining to his websites or any e-mails from him to you we can now pay you for this information as there are many more law suits coming at him for amounts in excess of $1.2M. Just so it stays clear that Mr. Ian Leicht is unemployed now and has a bogus web site. He should go back to work and stop propagating lies!!

Apparently this company is doing business in Newport Beach under another name - Executive Presence Search the BBB website in for Newport Beach or Irvine California, and you will find a report there that shows the other names this company has been operating under as well as how they have handled complaints against them. I was contacted by this company numerous times under the other names, and I received an email from them under this other name yesterday. Be careful, who knows what name they'll pop up with next.

BULLETIN: Los Angeles Superior Court, June 18, 2003: The alleged cyber terrorists* Ian Leicht and Sayyed Bashir were handed a resounding defeat from Judge Emilie Elias this morning as she ruled against Leichts SLAPP motion to quash the lawsuit against them by Wellington Burke. Judge Elias, in rebuking Leichts attorney S. Christopher Winter, pointed out that the name of the website itselfjobscamsis defamatory. She went further and said that when they say on their websites that the industry is rife with fraudulent companies while referencing Wellington Burke, this also is defamatory. When the cyber terrorists posted jobs on their website claiming they were stolen by Wellington Burke is not only defamatory, but is libelous on its face, if it is not true. The effect of the SLAPP motion by Leicht was to force Wellington Burke to prove their prima facie case, with less than 30 days and without discovery and depositions of Leicht and Bashir, or have the case dismissed. However, it was a challenge Wellington Burke overcame as Judge Elias denied the SLAPP motion and scheduled the case for trial on January 12, 2004. *Cyber terrorist is the proper term for these individuals who seek to do financial harm to others without the motivation of gaining financial gain for themselves, and by doing it through the Internet in a way that leaves the object of the terrorism little recourse to respond to the attacks. BACKGROUND This page has been built to advise potential visitors to the website entitled CAVEAT EMPTOR, that Ian Leicht, alleged co-conspirator and cyber terrorist, and the author of that website and other websites, has been sued for libel and defamation by Wellington Burke, Ltd. (WBL). Neither Leicht nor his co-conspirator Sayyed Bashir have ever been clients of WBL, yet they have caused significant financial harm to our business by their libelous and unfounded accusations published on the website noted above on the Internet. Leicht and Bashir are both computer and Internet specialists who have used their unique knowledge to consistently publicize their false accusations on the Internet in a way to gain maximum exposure and maximum damage to our company, while mostly hiding their identity, their involvement and motivations. They say that they have spoken to people who said they were taken advantage of by JobFinders, the forerunner company WBL bought out in 2002, but they do not identify who these persons are, how many of them there were, or what was supposedly done to take advantage of them. Nobody at WBL has ever had any dealings with either Leicht or Bashir, yet to gain personal notoriety and publicity unto themselves, they have freely defamed and libeled our company. Leicht has held himself out to be an expert in the field of executive career marketing and has gotten himself quoted making disparaging comments about virtually every company in the industry. Leicht has set up his own personal website entitled www.zog.com. The Wellington Burke website may be viewed at www.WellingtonBurke.com. It might be worthwhile to visit these websites first to get a quick perspective on the Parties involved in this legal dispute. Leicht, on his website entitled jobscams, has been adding a running update to the actions that have brought him and Wellington Burke to this current point. Below is our most current update: JUNE 18, 2003 UPDATE: Ian Leicht Loses in Court Again . . . Today is a good day for decency and justice. Mr. Ian Leicht of Los Angeles, and his co-conspirator Sayyed Bashir, lost in court again this morning. Judge Emilie Elias of the Los Angeles Superior Court, Central District, completely saw through the sham petition to the Court that they be protected by the application of the SLAPP Act to protect his freedom of speech. Judge Elias clearly sees the difference between what is free and protected speech, and what is libel and defamatory unsupported accusations. The highlight of the entire hearing was when Mr. Winters, attorney for Leicht, began fumbling with words to describe what the real meaning of the word stolen was. Wellington Burkes attorney Mr. Schadrack had evidently proven sufficiently to Judge Elias that the job postings they falsely proclaimed Wellington Burke had stolen were in fact not stolen. As Mr. Winters was attempting to explain to the Judge that the word stolen may not really mean stolen, but simply borrowed, or something of the like, Judge Elias interrupted him to proclaim that she knew what the meaning of IS IS!! in reference to the famous answer provided by former President Bill Clinton to the question about whether the acts between him and Monica Lewinsky is sex or not. JUNE 1, 2003 UPDATE: Leicht Seeks SLAPP Act Protection Leicht petitions the Court to stop our lawsuit against him by filing a Petition with the Court for the Implementation of the SLAPP Act. This law was passed by the California Legislature to protect employees who were whistleblowers against their employers for wrong doing by disallowing the employer to sue the employee as punishment for speaking out. This law has been the subject of heated discussion lately in the courts and legislature because it is being used for all sorts of purposes for which it was not intended. One of those unintended uses is the protection of the supermarket tabloids to say anything they want to say about someone to ruin their reputation and careers, and then claim SLAPP Act protection. Another prime user is the Better Business Bureau who hides behind the law to publish statements harmful to businesses to punish them for not belonging and paying their increasingly high BBB dues. And then there are individuals like Leicht who want to interpret the law to mean he can say about anything he chooses without substantiation of truthfulness, and hide behind the law and claim he has a freedom of speech that protects him. The old adage about yelling Fire in a crowded theatre is not free speech; and calling a reputable business a scam that is known to be fraudulent and thieves of job postings without any proof or backup is also not protected speech. MAY 8, 2003 UPDATE: Amended Complaint Filed Now $400K On May 8, 2003, Mark Schadrack, attorney for JobFinders International, Inc. who filed the initial lawsuit, filed an amendment to the complaint, adding Wellington Burke to the suit, and increasing the financial damages portion to $400,000 from $200,000. MAY 7, 2003 UPDATE: Default Judgment Overturned Leicht did not respond to the initial lawsuit by JFI, and the Court handed down a Default Judgment in favor of JFI on February 28, 2003. On May 7, 2003, the Court heard a petition from Leichts current lawyer saying his former lawyer, and not Leicht himself, had been at fault in not filing a response to our lawsuit. A California statute protects litigants from incompetent lawyers by requiring the judge set aside any such default judgments. In this case, Leichts first lawyer fell on his sword in order to protect his client, Leicht. It is very common lawyer trick in such instances, Judge Elias evidently saw through the ruse, and awarded JFI their attorney costs related to the default, which is extremely unusual unless the Court suspects chicanery, which it obviously did. MAY 2, 2003 UPDATE: Leicht Websites Shut Down by Hosts Because of the substantiation of his libelous and defamatory statements made on Leichts websites, WBL has been successful in having his website hosts shut down the sites at least six times within the last few months. WBL had a judgment against him for libel from the Superior Court of California, and in most instances, the websites themselves have Terms of Service rules against libel and defamatory comments being published through them. He has, however, continued to move the sites to other hosts overnight in order to disseminate his statements. On 03/17/03, his website jobscams was being hosted in The Netherlands in hopes that that country would not enforce the laws of the United States and close him down again. However, that did not work. They did close him down. In the last few months he has been closed down by eSmart, 0catch, DSLExtreme, Lycos/France, donhost. UK in England, and Geocities/Yahoo for breaking their published Terms of Service against making libelous and defamatory statements. There must be a reason? APRIL 22, 2003 UPDATE: Leicht Explains Default Judgment On the Leicht website, he states the award of the default judgment was made because of the incompetency of his attorney in not responding to the lawsuit by the deadline to respond. This is only partly truth. JFI was required to prove up their case to Judge Elias, which means showing the case has merit. California Superior Court Judges are not in the habit of handing down judgments of $200,000 against anyone without proper substantiationeven in default. FEBRUARY 28, 2003 UPDATE: Default Judgment Awarded JobFinders receives a default judgment in the case against Mr. Leicht for the sum of $200,000on 02/28/03. JANUARY 14, 2003 UPDATE: Leicht Denies Authorship of Execcareer Mr. Leicht denies authorship of the website entitled execcareer.com. We have been able to authenticate through a private investigator that the name Alan Smith given as the owner of the execcareer website is bogus; the address of the owner of the website is bogus; the telephone number for the owner of the website is bogus; the website is registered through a small, inconsequential company in Paris, France, (which incidentally makes a subpoena for payment records of the owner of the site extremely difficulthow convenient!); if you get suckered into making a monetary donation to Alan Smith on that site, the money ends up in the bank account of Sayyed Bashir; Leicht is the admitted author of the programming script for execcareer; Leicht admits receiving continuous downloads of statistical information on who visits execcareer into his web server; Leicht has a hyperlink on his website jobscams to execcareer; Leicht at one point indicated he was not the owner of execcareer, but he thought the owner was Bashir; he later admits loaning Bashir the programming script for execcareer; he later admits sending the statistical information he gathers from execcareer to Bashir. You get the picture. Leicht also denies he is the author of negative statements made about our company on the Internet Supermarket Tabloid website RipOffReportwhich only identifies the authors by first name and last name initial to hide the identity of the person making the negative statements there. He could have used Alan Smith. JANUARY 09, 2003 UPDATE: Defamation Lawsuit Filed Against Leicht Leicht acknowledges the defamation lawsuit against him, but states that he believes it is without merit. Thank you, from the owners and staff of Wellington Burke, Ltd. P.S.: There is an excellent story in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday, June 15, 2003, in Section B, Page 1, about cyberterrorism, reprinted here as it has an interesting parallel to the websites set up by Mr. Leicht and his co-conspirator Sayyed Bashir. Employers "Beware"! Could you only imagine if these 2 worked for YOUR company????? Let's say you did not give them a raise to their liking or a job duty too tough for them. They would attack your company as well!!! Beware!! DO NOT HIRE THEM!!!

Careers 20/20 has now changed its name to Geneva Cross LLC but is run by the same people and uses the same tactics as Careers 20/20 to defraud and scam job seekers out of thousands of dollars. The web site with more information about this company is now located at www.execcareer.com.

General Policy on Posting LINKS & E-mail Addresses Many times links to unknown web sites will cause the Freezing up of your pc and or causing you to get a computer virus, virtually rendering your computer useless. Most of the time, this is the work of the company or individual reported. Many Government links are no better than BBB and are just a waste of time, giving you false hope. Many government sites (like the BBB) just suck in all information from you the consumer but never make the information available, so consumers will be educated as to what exactly they should be looking out for. On the other hand, many government agencies have and do come to the Rip-off Report for information. We have been assisting many government agencies for some time now, including the FBI and Attorney General offices from around the country.. Now that all these Rip-off Reports are out in the open for everyone to see, in a way, this embarrasses these agencies to now do something when they see so many reports on a company or individual, because they are now out in the open for all to see. Unfortunately, many (not all) Attorney General Office's and government agencies will not move against a rip-off unless there is going to be some sort of publicity on the rip-off. By reporting your experience on the Rip-off Report is the next best thing to getting your story on TV or in a newspaper. Most national TV networks and many local TV stations from all around the country come to the Rip-off Report for information they will not get from the BBB, Attorney Generals office or any other government agency. Rip-off Report has instigated many local and national stories, resulting in help for victims, in one way or another. Most government agencies will never even bother with rip-offs unless it involves $50,000 or more. Now that the government is cutting back even more, this number will even get higher and we can expect even less to get done, by even less people to work on all these rip-offs. LAWYERS : We have also struggled with the following for a long time.. The reason why we delete phone numbers, ..all too often unscrupulous lawyers or individuals posing as lawyers are collecting victims information to only further victimize them. Many times, well-meaning consumers think they are going to collect names and get them to a lawyer who will do something. In every case we have allowed other consumers to do this, nothing has ever came of it. Consumers were under the impression that something will be done to get them help. In every case this did nothing but lead the consumer on, further victimizing them, and some consumers were mad at us. We feel it is our responsibility to check the legitimacy of the lawyer before advertising their service on the Rip-off Report. We will also not allow lawyers to use this web site for free when they will end up taking a large amount of fees, leaving the victim with very little. There are many competent lawyers out there that know how to get the unscrupulous companies or individual who ripped you off, to get their fees be paid by those who victimized you. Those are the lawyers who can post their numbers after checking with us here at the Rip-off Report. JUNK MAIL: And many times, in an attempt to get your contact information, consumers will leave an email address; this is just a scam to sell a product or some other service. ..if they have something to sell, they should place an advertisement with Rip-off Report.com so we can further help consumers. All advertisements are checked out to the best of our ability before allowing them to be placed on the Rip-off Report. WE have turned down many advertisers to date. Advertisers on the Rip-off Report know, they are not immune from a Rip-off Report being filed on them. We welcome your feedback on this subject. Click on the REBUTTAL BOX below and submit a Consumer Comment. ED Magedson [email protected] badbusinessbureau.com www.ripoffreport.com We are not lawyers. We are not a collection agency. We are Consumer Advocates. ...the victims' advocate WE are Civil and Human Rights Activists We are a Nationwide Consumer Reporting News Agency ...by consumers, for consumers DONATIONS may be sent to and Victims and Volunteers may respond to: PO Box 1340, Media, Pennsylvania 19063 Florida Message Phone and office FAX: 305-832-2949 Washington office FAX: 425-799-9729 Remember. Don't let them get away with it! Make sure they make the Rip-off Report.

It seems the owner of this web site is not telling the truth. I had provided an e-mail address and he said it is not working, so I provided him with others. He needs to get his act together. Read below why a phone number or link was removed from this Report

The first rebuttal was not done by anyone in our company. We believe it was the work of a competitor to further upset Mr. Leicht. We apologize to him. As you know at that time anyone and everyone could post a rebuttal. We do not agree with the first rebuttal or the first report as for that matter. For more information on our company and the services provided, please visit http://www.careers2020.net and we would be glad to have you call us for any further information.

Thank You
Careers 20/20

My name is Ian Leicht.

In this and at least two of the other rip off reports posted at this site, Careers 20/20 responded by personally attacking me and making a number of outright lies. I am not the author of any of the Careers 20/20 or Careers 2000 reports written at this site. I can only assume that they have mentioned my name because I published my own experiences with them at my web site:

For more information, reference this report and request it via: [email protected]

As you can imagine, I find their comments rather upsetting. I will leave it for you to decide whether an ethical organization would make these sorts of comments about both myself and the Better Business Bureau.

Mr. Ian Leicht wrote all of these lies! He is an unemployable person and still is unemployed! He has gone around slandering our company and others like it to no avail. He is a looser form the get go! None of his stories make any sense and he was refunded any out of pocket expenses as well. Our company has placed more executive in southern California than any other placement firm and we offer a 6 month guarntee too. Please e-mail your resume to [email protected] for immediate consideration to the hundreds of oper positions we are able to fill.

Thank You,