Wayne Conley, from the Fresno Criminal Defense Lawyer’s Office, Responds (Lengthy) [Updated]
Some prefatory business: while the scraping blog has been taken down, BenninghoffLaw.com is still up. Benninghofflaw.com is registered through GoDaddy.com to:
The Law Office of the Fresno criminal defense lawyer, Esq.
1925 Howard Road
Suite C
Madera, California 93637
That is the address that Avvo.com and NACDL have for the Fresno criminal defense lawyer as well.
The administrative and technical contacts for BenninghoffLaw.com are:
Conley, Wayne macddaddyyy@yahoo.com
The Law Office of the Fresno criminal defense lawyer, Esq.
1925 Howard Road
Suite C
Madera, California 93637
United States
(559) 816-0541 Fax — (559) 675-0220
This—559.816.0541—is the telephone number that Avvo.com has for the Fresno criminal defense lawyer. 559.675.0220 is the fax number she gave NACDL. (Her listing in the directory is immediately to the right of mine; how cozy!)
There’s a guy named “dubbsee” (archived) who has posted two articles favorable to the Fresno criminal defense lawyer on a site called HubPages. In addition to “Criminal Lawyer the Fresno criminal defense lawyer WINS 7th straight case” (archived) (which article says nothing about the Fresno criminal defense lawyer winning a case) and “The Best Attorney in Fresno, Visalia, and Hanford” (archived) (which just regurgitates the first page of the Fresno criminal defense lawyer’s website), dubbsee has a piece on “Bribery Vs. Lobbyist” (archive) and “Twitter Secrets and How To Build Your Business and Generate Traffic” (archived). Here’s a verbatim snippet of the last:
It is a very obvious part of the system of Twitter, chose wisely. Imagine if you did much local Twittering (Twitter allows you to aim at geographical sectors) and your real name were: Joe (large lawyer) – not, not Joe the lawyer. That which would stick in often under-employed the Chirp-lobe in the brain of much of people while they saw your name in the newspaper of chronology of Twitter.
Escape and conjecture of the beginning of one day, heater of somebody ‘of warm water of S who they seek? An additional secrecy of initiate, is to fix a common username through the multiple social networks (even if you can ‘t establish them immediately all). Use this tool of username to help you to carry out this.
It’s almost as though a computer translated this article (Dan Hollings’s “100+ Twitter-Smart Ideas”) into Chinese, and then back into English. Here it is in the original English, as posted by Hollings:
This is a very visible part of the Twitter system, chose wisely.
[Examples omitted]
Imagine if you did a lot of local Twittering (Twitter does allow you to target geographical areas) and your real name was: Joe (Great Plumber) – no, not “Joe THE Plumber.” That would stick in the often underused “Tweet-lobe” within the brain of many people as they saw your name in the Twitter timeline daily. One day, someone’s hot water heater starts leaking and guess who they are looking for?
One additional insider secret, is to secure a common username across multiple social networks (even if you can’t set them all up right away). Use this Username tool to help you achieve this.
The ripped-off Twitter Secrets article closes with:
For more Twitter Secrets go to: Fresno Criminal Lawyer and get more. I will also be posting how to get 200 followers a day for 30 days.
The link is not to the scraping blog, but to the Fresno criminal defense lawyer’s blogspot blog (archived) where, among other things, more of Hollings’s Twitter tips, rewritten into pidgin English.
So we’ve got benninghofflaw.com, which is owned by the Fresno criminal defense lawyer and administered by Wayne Conley, who uses her office contact information. And we’ve got a guy named dubbsee who claims Twitter expertise and hypes the Fresno criminal defense lawyer. And Dubbsee = doubleyou see = Wayne Conley. Clever, huh?
That’s the setup.
After I posted “the Fresno criminal defense lawyer, You Dumbass” I got this email from the Fresno criminal defense lawyer’s web guy, Wayne Conley; he sent it from his “wayneconley@benninghofflaw.com” email address:
hi mark,
This is Wayne. I want to say like 10 things at once but that is sorta hard to do so I’ll do my best to get my point across. You speak on ethics and morals about out sourcing and IPR which BTW You don’t have my permission to use any pictures of mine. Are you aware IPR concerning photos? You have made quite a few broad brush stroke generalizations which I find very entertaining and you are a very good writer. But, you misrepresent the facts and you have definitely been burned by someone and I am sorry you have had to deal with it. But you put the Fresno criminal defense lawyer into that category and she is totally innocent of any wrong doing. I could retaliate and the only losers would be you and the Fresno criminal defense lawyer. I’ll ask you this one time to please take down any content concerning this issue. I made the error and it was not done on purpose. I was aggregating criminal lawyers in the news through google and yahoo pipes. I took off for a few weeks and was unaware. I never intended to steal or misuse your content. Nor am I trying to gain links. If I wanted to I would submit some articles or have a couple of blog farms do that. As for twitter I will freely tell you I am watching google’s algorithms so I can apply them to other software I am developing. I WON’T threaten you with what I could do or any of that BS because I was wrong first. I am putting that blog into maint…mode until I have time to fix it. You really made some slimy remarks mark and if I had a personal relationship with her I would be offended. But, I am doing all this because Melina helped get a family member acquitted. I am not paid and I own all rights to benninghofflaw.com which is worthless in my opinion as of now. When I get everything done I will sign them over to her. If I wanted to rank #1 in Fresno I could. I have seen the stats and I know Rick freaked out when I pushed past him a last month and began blogging more…hehe But, don’t feel threatened by me or any of my affiliates. Just be a little more respectful and ask questions counselor. No worries ok mark and if their is anything I can do in the future or if I can help I will. Sorry we got off to a bad start and Happy blogging. Goodnight sir
That first email contains at least three lies:
- that Wayne Conley owns benninghofflaw.com;
- that benninghofflaw.com is worthless in Wayne Conley’s opinion (because if it were worthless it would be down along with the associated scraping blog); and
- that Wayne Conley “took off for a few weeks and was unaware.”
How do I know he was aware? Because on August 17, 2009 The Jester-In-Exile complained about the Fresno criminal defense lawyer scraping his blog, and on August 26, 2009 someone from BenninghoffLaw (could it be anyone but Wayne?) apologized to Jester. Also, if you believe this comment, there had been at least one other complaint about stolen content. That would make my blog the third chance Conley and the Fresno criminal defense lawyer had to fly right.
So I replied:
Hi, Wayne. It sure sounds like you’re trying to threaten me, which is likely to seriously backfire.
Slow down and tell the whole story without the threats and demands, and I’ll give it some thought.
Mark.
Wayne’s response:
What? are you kidding me? Threatening you by telling you I won’t threaten you and offering my help hardly is a threat. I have great respect for people in your line of work. And I only see one thing that can be a demand in the previous e-mail…. I said, “I’ll ask you this one time to please take down any content concerning this issue.” Is that a perceived credible threat? Let me clarify that the only action I would do would be within the bounds of the law and in the form of legal actions. Saying that, I have no intentions at this time to do any such thing. Saying that you want me to me to start from the beginning and wanting the whole story strikes me as odd, since it were you whom initiated contact. hmmmmmm I am not going to tell you the whole story unless you don’t know what is going on. And if you don’t know what is going on then I am speaking to the wrong person. Is that the case or not? give it some thought Mark.
Wayne
Nothing there for me; I ignored it.
Then, today (Sunday), this:
I’ll take that as a no? I am sure you know what you are doing by opening yourself up to a liability case after the fact of me informing you. I have watched you verbally attack people on all your blogs. I am amazed at your set-up with all the blogs and how csc holdings this and nsi holdings that and shata holdings blah blah blah and you did a good job of covering some of your best keyword sites. But the blogs are very obvious and I have enough now to get the sites deindexed but I want to make sure I have all the facts first before I shooting off at the mouth Mark. Oh you can lie but you know how if you defended a hacker and he told you he download pictures of the president having sex with his daughter how you would not ever be able to use that knowledge? But you see the hacker can. He would just have to figure out how leak it and when. I have been told by an anonymous email which I deleted but felt I should let you know that there is email’s and financial information and some private chats that are very informative. I don’t know what about of course. But did you also know their are digital footprints in everything google? even if you send an email to bogger.com and have it post you can use Ajax to get in the API if you have a developers key and you can follow those tracks. I wish I could learn to do that stuff. Here is what I am trying to figure out. Is mark the lawyer and mark the blogger the same and if they are not does mark the lawyer know mark the blogger. I am curious how many sites and blogs this will turn up. You see I never made a single threat. How about you give that some thought Mark. You see I didn’t ask you again like I said. I will not bother you any more my lord. I am but a humble serf if it pleases you. Figured I could say anything and not worry about your ego getting any bigger. Remember it’s not lawyers that peoples disdain it i the attitudes and how you treat people. Now you super lawyers grow bored with us common folk you have to debase other lawyers. What will it do to you knowing all your work to get where you are is taken from you? You should have accepted competition in your nitch and you should never pick a fight with someone you can’t see. Pen name’s are great huh? man or woman it don’t matter……because as you said Content is KING!!
What does that sound like to you? To me it sounds like a guy who is implying every threat he can conceive of to try to force me to take down a truthful post.
I have been told by an anonymous email which I deleted but felt I should let you know that there is email’s and financial information and some private chats that are very informative.
What a hoot!
It sounds like a guy who is scared that the boss is going to get back on Tuesday and realize that the black magic he was doing for her he has sunk her online reputation.
So now he’s created a fraudulent Twitter account using the photograph of one of my loved ones. This ups the ante, as far as I’m concerned.
It’s time for the Fresno criminal defense lawyer to let us know where she stands. I’ve emailing her a copy of this at [her email address], which I figure is not controlled by Wayne Conley.
Fresno criminal defense lawyer, Wayne Conley has done irreparable harm to your reputation. If you paid or even allowed him to do it, you’ve got nobody to blame but yourself. Outsource your marketing, outsource your reputation.
If, on the other hand, he does not, has never, and will never work for you, then I’d be happy to publish a correction as soon as you explain how it is that you allowed someone outside your control to build your website and trade on your name, and why you never did anything about it.
[Update: I have had a long telephone conversation with Mr. Conley, and there is room in my mind for the possibility that he and the Fresno criminal defense lawyer have been the victims of a black-hat hacker the likes of whom I have never encountered before. This would leave more questions unanswered, but there it is. I'm stepping away from the computer.][Update again: I have concluded that Conley was lying about the hack.]
About The Author
This guy does not grasp the online hurt he has signed up for.
Astonishing… truly astonishing…
Mike Semple Piggot aka Charon QC (Blawger)
Wow, just saw the Twitter thing. That’s the mark of a sociopath. Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war. Let your blogging pals know if we can do anything.
I wouldn’t mind some help from a Cali lawyer drawing up the bar complaint.
The more I look at and into this, the more I’m concerned that a technologically unknowing person (Benninghoff) is being harmed by a loose-nut of a tech guy she hired for help with building a web presence.
I do understand that an attorney is responsible for what people working for them might say on their behalf. But right now I don’t think we know for a fact that this guy has been authorized to speak for Benninghoff.
I did some checking here and she has a decent rep. She’s supposedly not a sleazy person. It would not surprise me at all if this guy is a totally loose cannon with no authorization to speak on her behalf whatsoever.
I’ve made some phone calls. I myself am going to withhold judgment on the need for things like bar complaints and the like until Benninghoff has been informed and is able to try to deal with the situation. She’s been in trial lately on a death penalty case from what I was told. And it’s not the only death case she has going. So I could certainly see how she might not even be aware of what’s happening right now.
When this is all over, I suspect that I will probably blog about this from the perspective of, among other things, an attorney with some heavy-duty tech background who has an understanding of what some of my own immature tech guys used to do without authorization. I suspect Benninghoff has no tech blood in her and unwittingly trusted her online presence to a possibly unstable person who appeared to her to be tech-savvy (if, unfortunately, not full of a lot of common sense).
If so, she will have learned a lesson. But she won’t be the first attorney, corporation, or ordinary individual needing help in an area outside her ken to have allowed “experts” to handle something about which she herself probably doesn’t have a clue.
Happy to help. I exchange referrals with a former State Bar judge who does state bar practice; she gives great advice.
Also, I have had some recent success with anti-SLAPP motions, if it comes to that. Though I’m not sure that Wayne’s mullet can be sold to pay attorney fees.
While the twitter account is beyond a juvenile effort, it indeed alterted this to one where of mere stupidity to one where there is no potential for sympathy for this lunatic. He deserves what he will most assuredly receive.
Really, the more you look, the worse it gets. Even her advertising contains lies as she claims both “100% Criminal Defense” and that she “also handles many other types of cases, such as family law and personal injury law.” Or is that Wayne, too? Can we go after him for unauthorized practice? Deceptive advertising?
Let the beatings begin!
Mark, long ago you told me you wouldn’t engage in intellectual combat with an unarmed man. It appears you are doing that here with poor, unsuspecting Wayne.
Wow I am amazed at what I have seen. Let me understand this correctly I stole mark’s content or rather some are saying it was melina. which is it people? Can any of you guys tell me what I did that was a theft under any of your own state laws? You couldn’t do it you know why? 1st of all none of you know what has happened and neither did mark at that point. And frankly neither did I until I got a trackback to the site after marks first post. which I followed because I was a little excited about it (you remember your first few pings and trackbacks U am sure…this was only my second) and I came to read a very awful and hurtful post about melina. So I did what I could to rectify the situation and when I got to the site that was not the only post that was completely copied and attributed wrongly and I felt very overwhelmed so I put it in the mode it is in fully expecting to have it fixed by now.
Some of you still are not getting it are you………It is an autoblog that is supposed to pull from sources google and yahoo pipes based on specs I give it. then I parse it and strip it to fit my needs. And no I am not Stripping Authors and putting in my own. It’s just that the tags in the title seem to shift and move making it gard to nail down. But my intent was to grab just the excerp or if it is a full post then I have it add the more tag to forward them to the site. The sites I targeted wee ofcourse criminal lawyers so that you could she the site was promoting your article and opening up doors for melina.
Now what is being omitted here? That up until this point everything is of Mark Bennett’s opinion other than the fact of his article being my site. As a reader and having trust in mark I can understand you taking it as Fact that Melina Stole this and how very unethical she is and we should take action. So Let me state an other FACT that happens to still be omitted after bring it to mark’s attention. I immediately closed the site….AND….LISTEN UP……I wrote a very sincere apology from Melina to mark on this very site. I admitted full responsibility and I told him it was me and my error alone but I can’t remember verbatim..
I went straight to work on it and began listening to you all slander melina for something I did. And understand I am not perfect, I make errors everyday on this stupid computer. I think the world of Melina and I was watching and listening to you all base your remarks about someone you don’t know, a sight you never saw, or cared how it is being ran, all off the words of one person whom also did not know the facts. You want to know why? Because Mark Bennett never once contacted me and I’ll explain that.
Had 5 of you went to court all with the same black briefcase and you sa one of your partners walking out with yours, what do you do? Do you turn around mad and begin writing a an affidavit out or do you say “hey Jon is that my briefcase you are stealing?” Rhetorical people…My point is mark could have contacted melina and it would have been explained and rectified on the spot..
now on to:
That first email contains at least three lies:
1. that Wayne Conley owns benninghofflaw.com;
2. that benninghofflaw.com is worthless in Wayne Conley’s opinion (because if it were worthless it would be down along with the associated scraping blog); and
3. that Wayne Conley “took off for a few weeks and was unaware.”
Show of hands…how many think this is also factual? I wonder how many of you are wrong and whom now is quiet. Remember I said Mark Never Contacted me? we’ll how can that be he shows you all an e-mail with his reply. Worked this little fact out last.. But let me tell you all something…You fill out that domain registration anyway you like and it does not work like a car registration. I could change it if I were on my own server and godaddy may have a charge because you have to submit that or used to have to in writing. I bought that with my credit card,,I have spent much of my own money and time in this and you can criticize all you like all you like. Will it be Melina’s site? ofcourse it will when I am done I am giving it to her as my way of saying thank you and that she is much loved.
Yes in my OPINION it is worthless at this stage and does that mean I am going to close it down as well? Is that a Texas law because the way we do things in california is that if the offending child commit a crime we do not then arrest the parents. the two sites are on completely different domains. That is just a ridiculousness statement because mark you are to much heart and not much brain at that point. Emotions are definitely showing on your sleeve.
LISTEN UP PEEPS MARK IS RIGHT!!!! that 3rd one is an outright bold faced lie. Show of Hands again….how many of you think that makes me a liar???? Damn I wish I wee in your head right now. If you raised your had you are 100%…….WRONG. Remember I said I never got contacted by mark? Remember I said I was upset and had to get away from this computer?
2 days later I am contacted and told I need to look at what is going on so I cam home glazed over the blogs say the email that mark wrote at that time and immediately called him wanting to know why he is doing what he is doing and actually felt you all were doing this trying to retaliate for what? Because all I did was make an error with my settings and I get jumped. So at that point mark and myself have our first open line of communication of which could have been done initially.
I didn’t lie to mark one time and it was disconcerting when I asked him to get the IP off the email so I could prove it wasn’t me but it was my IP and for the most part Take if not mine but marks words that we got to the bottome of the issue. The how’s and whys and who’s may never be known but it doesn’t mean I will not follow up. and I really don’t feel comfortable telling anything about my system vulnerabilities at this time. So, accept it and deal with it.
Saying all of that let me say this. I do not answer to any of you and you may think you are better than others and you may try to deny it or justify your actions so you are not wrong. But, I care less about your feelings after watching your disgraceful behavior. An know that not only have your don a disservice to Mrs; Benninghoff , you have done a diservice to your profession. And I am getting new alerts that new blogs are being posted Calling her some very nasty words, So I have begun taking pictures of the articles and the comments . Honestly I don’t want to have her see all that. But Mark already sent her that email right?
That is not a problem I have already intercepted that.. That is maybe a good thing Mark because now you could call her and deak with it and let it end where it began. Sweet talk her with your viper tongue so she doesn’t open up a lawsuit. AND Finally a show of hands…….How annoying is it to be talk to like a child who has to raise his hand to talk……or even worse by an underling????
(ps I am not spell checking so you can point and laugh )
Well, okay; I’ll point and laugh.
Wayne, you’ve been told, repeatedly, by at least one very smart person that the best thing you can do for yourself and your apparent employer is to STFU.
But you didn’t.
As to how much criticism the Fresno criminal defense lawyer deserves, I guess we’ll have to see how that plays out. I’m not disposed to take your word that you were/are her web monkey, and the implication that you just went batshit crazy in her defense when your machinations in her name were exposed; I think it’s possible, but unlikely, that you’re an unknown-to-her deranged fan of hers who thought you were doing her some sort of favor by putting up an aggregation blog to scrape the words of others and publish them on the web to draw attention to her law business, somebody who she not only never asked to do such a bizarre favor, but wouldn’t have. You may be Annie Wilkes to her Paul Sheldon — in which case I’d suggest that she armor her ankles, if you catch my drift.
But that’s not the way to bet; we’ll see. As to you intercepting an email to the Fresno criminal defense lawyer, that’s consistent with you doing her no favors — despite your protestations of love, above.
Onward . . .
You seem to be burdened by a belief that in order to criticize somebody, Bennett was under some sort of obligation to contact you. He isn’t. You seem to be burdened by a belief that the Fresno criminal defense lawyer is dogshit stupid enough to call down the Streisand Effect upon herself. That’s unlikely. You seem to be burdened by the belief that if only you can keep banging away on your keyboard like some sort of deranged monkey, this will all turn out okay for you in the end.
It won’t.
[...] Frankly, I am appalled by this – it is a form of highway robbery and when done by a lawyer blogger it is pretty piss poor. I’m afraid I couldn’t resist commenting in response to one of the commenters on Mark’s blog post – who said she was from The Law Commission, appeared not to be able to write English and seems to think that The Law Commission is a regulator. I suspect, of course, that it was someone taking the piss… you can read what I wrote by way of comment on Mark’s blog post, should you have time on your hands. Do, however, try and take a look at what Mark is saying about this… and the later post about Benninghoff’s response (or someone called Wayne from her office). [...]
It’s really amazing to me how poorly people write. This guy is barely making himself understood, which makes him all the more comical. Aside from that, since when is having an opinion opening you up to a liability suit?
Yes Joe Marchelewski you make my point. Should I kiss your feet and shut my mouth now? Attacking my intellect is funny? Should I have money and need an attorney you would still insult me? You may be right Joe, but it still makes you look like a Jerk, I admitted my errors and my faults. I feel bad for any harm I have cause but having an opinion is not the issue. When you get on the stand and say I was the shooter and I shot mark then you realize that is not an opinion right? Saying someone did something and saying you are going to do something in response is NOT an opinion. Maybe in sanfernando valley but not in the rest of the U.S. Thanks joe for your dime book legal opinion and have a good day.
[...] not the first legal blogger the web-monkey has threatened. Probably not the second. Be careful when leaving the jungle, [...]
I have been following this story since I saw it on popehat.com. Here is my two cents:
I would love to see any sample anti-SLAPP motions, but I doubt Wayne Conley is going to sue anyone. An anti-SLAPP motion requires a plaintiff to sue you first. Also, any complaint for injunctive relief against Wayne Conley would probably violate a prior restraint on speech, so a pro-active legal strategy may not be viable.
Above all, I feel sorry for the actual lawyer involved in all this. She appears to be a solo practitioner. As a fellow solo practitioner, part of me feels like we should leave her alone. It is difficult attracting new clients as a solo practitioner, so trying new advertising methods doesn’t sound unreasonable.
Unbelievable. This is a textbook example of how not to market oneself. And if you are reading this, Wayne, you ought to check the laws in your own state of California. There was a recent opinion out of the Ninth Circuit awarding damages to a Northern California law firm against a San Diego law firm *and its web developer* for just these kind of shenanigans. Just sayin.
I had a few minutes’ idle time, and I found that our scraper had translated Hollings’s article from English to French (not Chinese, as I had guessed) and back, using Babelfish or a similar translation engine.
[...] by Bennett, Benninghoff’s marketer, Wayne Conley, responded unconvincinglyand set-up a fake Twitter account using Bannett’s wife’s name. At Legal Blog [...]