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- Vitaly Borker (born 1975 or 1976 in the former Soviet Union), known by pseudonyms "Tony Russo", "Stanley Bolds" and "Becky S", is an American convicted felon who has twice served federal prison sentences for charges arising from how he ran his online eyeglass retail and repair sites, DecorMyEyes and OpticsFast. Customers who complained about poor service and misfilled orders for high-end designer eyewear were insulted, harassed, threatened (sometimes physically) and sometimes made the victim of small scams. After going into online retail following a short career as a computer programmer for several Wall Street firms, Borker encountered difficult customers who, he said later, were rude, lied to him and cost him money unnecessarily. He decided to be rude and unscrupulous with them in return, and learned to his surprise that on the Internet there was no such thing as bad publicity since the many posts with links to his site on complaint sites such as Ripoff Report appeared to drive traffic to his sites due to how Google's PageRank algorithm worked at that time, putting his site higher in results for searches on brand names than even those brands' websites, and making him money. When New York Times reporter David Segal investigated the site in 2010, Borker freely explained this business model to him when Segal came to visit his house in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Sheepshead Bay, where Borker questioned the notion that the customer is always right and said he "like[d] the craziness." A month later Borker was arrested by federal postal inspectors and charged with mail fraud, wire fraud and making interstate threats. He eventually pleaded guilty to fraud charges and making threats and was sentenced to prison for four years. Google and other websites whose flaws he had exploited in running DecorMyEyes also changed their practices and tightened security procedures. Before entering prison, Borker and a friend had begun setting up another website, OpticsFast, offering not only eyeglasses for sale but repair services. After his 2015 release, he went back to his former business practices, which he mostly hid from his probation officer. Two years later, Segal reported on Borker's return in the Times, and Borker was again arrested and charged with wire and mail fraud associated with alleged harassment and abuse as operator of OpticsFast. In February 2018, he was sentenced to two years in prison for violation of his 2015 parole. Following a plea deal for the 2017 charges, he was later sentenced in 2019 to two years in prison followed by three years of supervised release, a $50,000 fine, and a $300 special assessment. Following Borker's release in late 2020, Segal reported in the Times in 2021 that Borker appeared to have returned to selling eyeglasses online, under other personal and business names, and harassing dissatisfied customers through a new site called Eyeglassesdepot. If true, this would be a violation of a condition of his 2021 parole that he avoid any involvement in online retailing. In early 2022 he was arrested again on fraud charges related to the new site. (en)
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- Vitaly Borker (born 1975 or 1976 in the former Soviet Union), known by pseudonyms "Tony Russo", "Stanley Bolds" and "Becky S", is an American convicted felon who has twice served federal prison sentences for charges arising from how he ran his online eyeglass retail and repair sites, DecorMyEyes and OpticsFast. Customers who complained about poor service and misfilled orders for high-end designer eyewear were insulted, harassed, threatened (sometimes physically) and sometimes made the victim of small scams. After going into online retail following a short career as a computer programmer for several Wall Street firms, Borker encountered difficult customers who, he said later, were rude, lied to him and cost him money unnecessarily. He decided to be rude and unscrupulous with them in return, (en)
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