N.J. firm made misleading websites in names of multiple Canadians and an alleged CRA scammer

If his Google Scholar profile is to be believed, Louis Arriola is a prolific scientist, having contributed to more than 700 scholarly articles about a wide range of unrelated disciplines from economics to advanced nanotechnology.

According to the profile, he contributed to a PhD dissertation on the automotive industry before he turned nine years old.

While the papers appear to be real, Arriola's contribution to the research is questionable. His name does not appear on the original publication in the 20 most recent entries on his profile and a university professor credited on more than 100 of the papers confirmed Arriola was not involved.

An investigation by CBC's The Fifth Estate has found that Arriola is among more than 100 people, including multiple Canadians, with a similar pattern of spam and false web content surrounding them. Website registration records, online advertising data and connections between fake social media profiles indicate that pattern points to a New Jersey reputation management firm called cleanyourname.com

David Rosenberg of Lakewood, N.J., who operates cleanyourname.com, advertises on his LinkedIn page that he can "delete online negative info fast," and that "by creating new and relevant content," his company is able to push negative online information "further down the search results in Google, Yahoo and Bing."

A LinkedIn post from Rosenberg states that only seven per cent of people go beyond the first page of search results.

"This meant that for reputation management, if we pushed down a negative to the third page," he wrote, "almost no one would see it."

In Arriola's case, looking beyond the first page of results and searching public records databases shows a long history of legal troubles.

An affidavit from an employee of the Canada Revenue Agency, submitted to Federal Court in 2020, says that Arriola was the operator of a "paper company" with "no real business activity" involved in a tax "scheme" that saw the agency pay out $63 million in what it called "illegitimate" refunds.

Arriola also was convicted in 2009 in California for a telecom-related fraud and has been named in civil lawsuits in multiple U.S. states that were pursuing him and companies he controlled for money that was loaned and allegedly never paid back.

His Google Scholar profile is one part of an interconnected cloud of misleading and spam websites. Blog posts about him link to an artist profile advertising stock images as his "work," as well as accounts at video sharing platforms and a website containing his name — louisarriola.net — which has connections to Rosenberg of cleanyourname.com.

The Fifth Estate has attempted to contact Arriola in multiple ways over the past two years but has received no response. For this story, contact was attempted via a LinkedIn profile that was recently active.

A good deal of the information about Arriola available online is true, making it difficult to separate fact from fiction. For instance, on his IMDB profile, he is listed as executive producer for the 2019 film Rambo: Last Blood, a fact supported by the appearance of his name in the end credits of the film.

"The whole point here is to confuse people, confuse people about the truth in relation to this particular person," said Ahmed Al-Rawi, director of The Disinformation Project at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C.

"As consumers of information, as readers, as users of the internet, the expectation is to factually understand the world around us," Al-Rawi said.

"If what we are ending up reading about is fake, we will have the wrong impression about what is around us, about the world, about the people we think we know."

Louisarriola.net was made available online by a server with a specific IP address, like a street address for the internet.

The Fifth Estate sent a message to a phone number associated with David Rosenberg of cleanyourname.com, asking if he was in control of the approximately 140 websites hosted at the same address as louisarriola.net.

Within a week, all but 19 of those 140 sites, including Arriola's, were scattered to a variety of new IP addresses. Many had been at that original IP address for multiple years.

Website registration records show that 14 of the 140 sites previously listed Rosenberg as registrant or administrator. Those records were made anonymous in 2018, around the same time that Rosenberg's name was removed from his own website — cleanyourname.com.

Many of the websites at the IP address followed a similar pattern, with the first and last name of the person the website was about in the URL.

A phone call to the number associated with Rosenberg was answered by a man who declined to identify himself.

"I think you have the wrong number," he said during the 25-second call and hung up.

A lawyer claiming to represent Rosenberg contacted The Fifth Estate, noting that he was in possession of questions sent via text message to that same phone number.

Since that phone call, neither the lawyer nor Rosenberg have responded to subsequent questions or correspondence.

On the internet, "you can make up things and create a facade, create a whole world in order to mislead people or create a certain type of reality," Al-Rawi said.

In 2023, Dr. David Gerber, a gynecologist in midtown Toronto, was stated to have "engaged in disgraceful, dishonourable or unprofessional conduct with respect to 10 patients" by Ontario's physician regulator.

As the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario was investigating patient complaints about Gerber and pursuing action against him, artist profiles in his name began appearing online. They claimed to show photographs, created by him, some even offering to sell the pictures at a specific price.

However, the works were not his, and appear to be part of a network of internet content created by Rosenberg. A number of the photos on Gerber's art profile also appear on a blog at drdavidgerbermd.com — a website that was hosted at the IP address linked to Rosenberg.

"After investigation, Dr. Gerber has learned that [a search engine optimization firm] in the U.S. who he retained from mid-2022 until August 2023, had without his knowledge, authorization or consent, created the sites," a lawyer for Gerber said in response to questions.

"Mr. Rosenberg was recommended to Dr. Gerber by a friend," the lawyer added in a subsequent email, stating that the physician "knew nothing of Mr. Rosenberg or any of his businesses prior to this referral."

While drdavidgerbermd.com was taken down following initial questions about it to Gerber, the site appears to have been reactivated when it was moved away from the Rosenberg-connected IP address.

"Mr. Rosenberg is no longer responding to Dr. Gerber's communications to him," Gerber's lawyer said.

"In respect of the websites and web pages and posts," he said, "they all constitute a form of impersonation, of which Dr. Gerber is the subject."

"Dr. Gerber is not," he added, responsible for "any website mill or the publication of disinformation" or "the use of spam or false and misleading content."

Other Canadians who had websites at that address include a Calgary orthodontist who admitted to taking payment for treatments and then not completing them and two finance professionals who ran into issues with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

A communications firm contacted The Fifth Estate regarding questions to those financiers, Marc Bistricer and Paul Zogala of Murchinson Ltd.

In regard to Rosenberg and cleanyourname.com, they said that "we have checked our vendor invoices during the time period you suggested and neither Murchinson nor the individuals in question ever hired this firm."

They declined to respond to further questions.

Bistricer, Zogala and Gerber each have profiles on the art sharing website Behance.com. Those profiles include "work" that is not their own and links to a variety of spam social media profiles. Behance users can post their own work, and follow the work of other artists they are interested in. Bistricer, Zogala and Gerber's work is followed by a nearly identical list of more than 50 accounts.

Their shared followers include five accounts that are variations on the name Mark Tompkins, as well as accounts for Jay Grieg, J. Grieg and Jason Allen Grieg.

Twelve of their shared followers are individuals who themselves had websites at the IP address The Fifth Estate asked Rosenberg about.

"If people realize that what they are seeing is mostly fake," Al-Rawi, the associate professor from Simon Fraser University said, "this will definitely decrease their trust in whatever they read, even when it comes from credible sources."