by Structured Settlement Watchdog™
For 14 months Sovereign Funding Group and David Springer have been embroiled as Defendants in an ongoing lawsuit with Woodbridge Structured Funding that is pending in Maryland District Court.
On February 10, 2013, a company representative named “Greg Maynard” went to a very public Google webmaster forum to seek an expert for Sovereign’s case.Google search result Greg Maynard Sovereign Funding 2-10-2013 Google Product Forum discussing Woodbridge case
The posting, by “Greg Maynard” titled “We Will Pay For A Legal Seo Opinion Letter”on February 10, 2013 at 1255pm included affidavits by Josue Benitez (an employee of Woodbridge) as well as a screen shot of a Google search result.
It included some very candid information, such as the purported state of the Sovereign Funding kitty, Woodbridge’s “deep pockets”, and describing the Woodbridge case as frivolous. “Greg Maynard” also bemoaned the difficulties in the Court’s comprehension of the technical aspects of SEO. Download Sovereign Funding We Will Pay For a Legal SEO Opinion Letter – Google Groups
As of February 15, 2013, the Google webmaster forum notes that the post was deleted (but not before I captured it) however, the comments to that post remain at the time of posting. One of the most interesting observations is by “Rise and Shine” one of the other webmasters is the cynical “wow 22k back links just in the last 60 days” and from Barry Schwartz who stated “any reason why you didn’t post the actual legal complaint?”
An uber interesting comment from one of the webmasters in the forum, “Stevie D,” a skeptical voice who claims, backed by the link research tool Majestic SEO, that Sovereign’s current SEO includes some truly manipulative backlinks.
due diligence and check out their client before hand and they
will find nearly 400,000 backlinks according to Majestic
The Google Plus profile for “Greg Maynard” who puported to be from Owings Mills Maryland and attended Florida A&T University, had mysteriously disappeared as of February 15, 2013
Woodbridge alleged in its November 28, 2011 complaint “that Sovereign Funding has not been content with simply using its own name and webuypayments.net to promote its services. Instead, upon information and belief, Sovereign Funding embarked on a campaign and scheme to both misappropriate the marks of and malign its competitors through a re-direct scheme that drove traffic to webuypayments.net (i.e. Sovereign Funding)”.
The civil complaint filed in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland outlines allegations against David Springer, 47, of Mt. Airy, Maryland, and the Sovereign Funding Group.
- Trademark Infringement
- False Advertisement
- Unfair Competition and False Designation of Origin
- Common Law Trade Libel
- Product Disparagement
- Common Law Defamation
For a copy of the Complaint against Sovereign Funding Group and David Springer, see Woodbridge Structured Funding, LLC v Sovereign Funding et al. Civil action No. MJG-11-3421 at http://www.pacer.gov. Signing up for Pacer is free, but you will have to pay a small fee to access the case documents.
On December 28, 2012, I reported that the domain webuypayments.net was up for sale.
*David Springer is currently listed as Senior VP of Capital Limited Partners and Lifetime Capital Partners Ottawa, Canada area on his Canadian Linkedin Profile.
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