Complaint Review: Karla Maria Issa - Chicago Illinois

I am responding to this ridiculous allegation because unfortunately there is not much else that can be done. I am Karla and I have been a professional nanny for over 7 years. I have worked for multiple families for a year or more each. I am an upstanding citizen who volunteers and is in college. I was notified of this post by a friend and have called lawyers and done research of my own to find out how to have this removed. This websites owner, Ed Magedson, is a terrorist listed by the US State Department and is a wanted fugitive. He has cleverly found loopholes in the Communications Decency Act that allow him to run this website allowing fake and false allegations about people and businesses to run rampant with no policing. Over 70 lawsuits have been filed to date, all from businesses and individuals alleging defamatory and libelous content against them. A court has yet to file an injunction forcing this website to remove such content. I say this website is a scam because with a little research on their FAQ page you can see for yourself that the site offers "legal" services to individuals mentioned on the site for a fee of 89.95 per month for mediation with another party, or a minimum of $2,000 for their VIP Arbitration service that allows you to circumvent actual courts and arbitrate with a party on this site who posted defamatory accounts about you. This is a very unique and highly immoral business and website and unfortunately I do not have thousands of dollars to hire lawyers and pursue Google and this website to stop allowing these untrue and ridiculous statements about me to come up. I let my reputation speak for itself. Those who know me know that these allegations about child abuse are completely untrue. I have built a solid reputation for myself and the care I provide to parents and children for years. Unfortunately, the Internet is an open space where anyone you have ever wronged or upset in life can come and attempt to destroy your reputation. I know of an owner of a nanny agency in Chicago who purchased domain names for websites using the name of my business. While I do not believe she would go to the lengths of accusing me of child abuse, as a local competitor it would make sense for her to potentially make up things like this against me. I also have a disgruntled boyfriend who easily could have done this as well. Other than that, I ask that you do a small amount of research and understand that this website is illegitimate and a very cheap way to make money off innocent people. A simple Google search would produce all the information any logical person needs to conclude that this is completely untrue. I have never harmed a child in my life, nor do I know ANYONE in Texas, let alone any person named Marianne. I have close ongoing relationships with every person I have nannied and/or babysat for so I personally, as well as these people, know these statements to be completely untrue. I hope that enough people pursue action against this site so no one else is financially or personally harmed by the immoral acts of people willing to go to the lengths to harm someone in this manner. 

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Setting the Record Straight! - Ripoff Report is not a Fraudulent Website as claimed by the author of the above rebuttal ..Mr. Magedson didn’t “cleverly [find] loopholes in the Communications Decency Act.” 

EDITOR’S STAFF RESPONSE:  Ripoff Report strongly believes in the First Amendment, even when it is about us.  We understand that people who have complaints written about them are upset and want to place blame somewhere, especially if they feel the content of the Reports are false.  We also understand that individuals want to blame our website, or the Founder Ed Magedson, rather than where it belongs – on the person who wrote the Reports in the first place.  Using the same method that we provide FREE OF CHARGE to all of our users, we would like to “set the record straight” as to the comments posted about our website through this Rebuttal.  Every user of our website has the opportunity to tell their side of the story, for free, just as we will do here.  We certainly encourage users to “set the record straight” and tell their side of the story by using the free methods available to them before they consider other Ripoff Report programs (such as our VIP Arbitration Program or the Corporate Advocacy Program) or alterative avenues (such as filing a lawsuit against the Author of the report) that cost money.

The Author of this Rebuttal is incorrect in saying that Ripoff Report is a “fraudulent.”  We are unsure what definition of fraud the Rebuttal Author is familiar with, however, generally speaking, for something to be “fraudulent” there must have been some intentional misrepresentation or concealment of an important fact upon which the victim is meant to rely, and in fact does rely, to the harm of the victim.  There is nothing “fraudulent” about offering legitimate services to businesses or consumers.  All of the information about the website, the rules relating thereto, and the services that are offered through our website, are openly provided on the website.

It is also false to accuse Mr. Magedson of being “a terrorist listed by the US State Department and is a wanted fugitive.”  We are not sure where people come up with this stuff, however, Ripoff Report, including Mr. Magedson, works with all sorts of government agencies (Federal and State) to help with different matters they are pursuing.  Everyone is entitled to their own opinion…but not their own facts.  You can read more myth busting information at www.edmagedson.com. 

Furthermore, Mr. Magedson didn’t “cleverly [find] loopholes in the Communications Decency Act.”  The same standards of law are applied to other interactive websites – sites like Facebook, MySpace, Craigslist, etc. – that allow users to post information.  The reasons for this law are simple. Websites cannot possibly monitor the accuracy of the huge volume of information which their users may choose to post. If an angry plaintiff were permitted to hold a website liable for information that the site did not create, this would stifle free speech as fewer and fewer sites would be willing to permit users to post anything at all. See generallyBatzel v. Smith, 333 F.3d 1018, 1027-28 (9th Cir. 2003) (recognizing, "Making interactive computer services and their users liable for the speech of third parties would severely restrict the information available on the Internet. Section 230 [of the CDA] therefore sought to prevent lawsuits from shutting down websites and other services on the Internet.") 

We are not sure what the Rebuttal Author is talking about with the comment “…because with a little research on their FAQ page you can see for yourself that the site offers "legal" services to individuals mentioned on the site for a fee of 89.95 per month for mediation with another party, or a minimum of $2,000 for their VIP Arbitration service that allows you to circumvent actual courts and arbitrate with a party on this site who posted defamatory accounts about you.”  The FAQs page on the website does not provide for such an inference.  It should be made clear that Ripoff Report, itself, does not currently offer any sort of “legal services”.  Ripoff Report is NOT a law firm and does not provide legal assistance.  What we do offer is a variety of different paid programs to customers who are interested in the particular unique services that the programs offer.  The Ripoff Report Verified™ Program is a program for businesses that don’t have complaints on our website and that Program has, for beta testing and market research purposes in the past, been offered through our website for $89.95 per month for, among other things, name monitoring, customer service, and advertising. $2,000 is the cost of Ripoff Report's VIP Arbitration Program - a program that removes only challenged statements of facts in a Report that are found to be to be false after presentation of evidence to an independent arbitrator.  Even in that instance, the Report is not removed. Only challenged statements of fact that are found to be false by the arbitrator will be (((REDACTED))).  To understand the full context of our Arbitration Program, we invite you to review all of the applicable information, including the Program Rules, by visiting our arbitration webpage at http://www.ripoffreport.com/Arbitration.aspx. It is true…the VIP Arbitration Program is far more cost effective than full blown litigation against an author of a Report…and we fail to see how offering such an optional service through a neutral and independent professional arbitrator (one of which is a retired appellate court judge) is a bad thing.

It is clear that the Rebuttal Author is upset…  We thank you for taking the time to read this Rebuttal and allowing us to “set the record straight.”

Ripoff Report Staff