Jana Seaman

A summary of what happened?

Jana Seaman is connected to a high-profile Ponzi scheme orchestrated by her husband, Brent Seaman, that defrauded elderly church members out of $35 million. She has been named in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) complaint as a relief defendant, meaning she was not directly accused of fraud but received funds obtained through illegal means.

Here are three major concerns and accusations against Jana Seaman:

1. Involvement in the Ponzi Scheme: Jana Seaman received over $757,000 from the Ponzi scheme through her association with Valo Holdings Group, which she managed. The SEC has ordered her to repay this amount as part of the settlement. Her role in receiving and benefiting from the misappropriated funds has raised serious concerns.
2. Participation in Financial Misconduct: Although not charged directly with fraud, Jana Seaman is linked to her husband’s business dealings. She managed Valo Holdings Group, which received millions in investor funds that were diverted from the fraudulent scheme.
3. Attempted censorship of negative information: There have been efforts to suppress negative media coverage related to the Ponzi scheme, potentially to manage the public perception of the Seaman family’s involvement in the scandal. The widespread attention to the case has made it difficult to obscure.

These allegations have led to legal actions to recover the misappropriated funds and protect investors from further harm.

Analyzing the Fake Copyright Notice(s)

Our team collects and analyses fraudulent copyright takedown requests, legal complaints, and other efforts to remove critical information from the internet. Through our investigative reporting, we examine the prevalence and operation of an organized censorship industry, predominantly funded by criminal entities, oligarchs, and disreputable businesses or individuals. Our findings allow internet users to gain insight into these censorship schemes’ sources, methods, and underlying objectives.

What was Jana Seaman trying to hide?

Jana Seaman‘s attempts to hide unfavourable content through the misuse of copyright notices while allegedly engaging in perjury present serious legal concerns. These actions suggest a calculated attempt to manipulate legal systems to suppress free speech, a fundamental violation of copyright law principles and an abuse of legal processes. The use of such tactics not only undermines the integrity of copyright protection but also potentially constitutes perjury, further entangling Jana Seaman in legal accountability. Let’s examine the information Jana Seaman may be trying to remove from the internet –

Here are ten adverse news items, allegations, lawsuits, sanctions, complaints, and negative reviews related to Jana Seaman:

1. Named in the SEC’s $35 Million Ponzi Scheme Case: Jana Seaman was named a relief defendant in the SEC’s complaint against her husband, Brent Seaman. Although not directly accused of fraud, she received $757,154 from the scheme and agreed to repay the amount as part of the settlement.
2. Management of Valo Holdings Group: Jana Seaman managed Valo Holdings Group, which received millions in proceeds from the Ponzi scheme. This role raised concerns about her involvement in benefiting from the fraudulent activities.
3. Misappropriation of Funds: Through her association with Valo Holdings Group, Jana was connected to millions of dollars misappropriated from elderly church members who were victims of her husband’s Ponzi scheme.
4. Settled for Over $757,000: As part of the SEC’s settlement, Jana Seaman agreed to repay over $757,000 in disgorgement and interest. This settlement was linked to receiving investor funds from her husband’s fraudulent business dealings.
5. Connection to Financial Misconduct: Jana’s connection to Brent Seaman’s companies, which were charged with violating various antifraud and broker-dealer registration laws, raises questions about her awareness and involvement in these illegal financial activities.
6. SEC’s Description of Affinity Fraud: The SEC described Brent Seaman’s actions as affinity fraud, where trust within a community (in this case, a Naples church) was exploited. Although not directly charged, Jana’s benefit from the scheme highlights concerns over her role in profiting from exploiting vulnerable individuals.
7. Association with Ponzi Scheme Payments: The SEC’s complaint details how Brent Seaman made Ponzi-like payments to investors, using new investors’ money to repay earlier investors. Jana Seaman’s involvement in managing assets connected to the scheme led to significant scrutiny.
8. Luxury Lifestyle Funded by Ponzi Scheme: Funds from the scheme, which Jana indirectly benefited from, were used by her husband to finance a lavish lifestyle, including private plane trips and luxury automobiles, adding to concerns about the couple’s unethical use of investor money.
9. Public Scrutiny and Reputational Damage: Jana Seaman has faced significant negative media attention due to her connection to the fraudulent scheme, resulting in public criticism and scrutiny of her business dealings and financial ethics.
10. Failed Investment Promises: The fraudulent investment scheme promised investors guaranteed high returns, which were never delivered. Although Jana was not the main perpetrator, her financial benefit from the misdeeds has drawn legal and ethical criticism.

These points highlight Jana Seaman’s involvement, directly or indirectly, in the Ponzi scheme run by her husband, raising significant concerns about her role in benefiting from fraudulent activities.

How do we counteract this malpractice?

Once we ascertain the involvement of Jana Seaman (or actors working on behalf of Jana Seaman), we will inform Jana Seaman of our findings via Electronic Mail.

Our preliminary assessment suggests that Jana Seaman may have engaged a third-party reputation management agency or expert, which, either independently or under direct authorization from Jana Seaman, initiated efforts to remove adverse online content, including potentially fraudulent DMCA takedown requests. We will extend an opportunity to Jana Seaman to provide details regarding their communications with the agency or expert, as well as the identification of the individual(s) responsible for executing these false DMCA notices.

Failure to respond in a timely manner will necessitate a reassessment of our initial assumptions. In such an event, we will be compelled to take appropriate legal action to rectify the unlawful conduct and take the following steps –

Since Jana Seaman made such efforts to hide something online, it seems fit to ensure that this article and sensitive information targeted online by these events get a lot more exposure and traffic than what it would have received originally

We hope this becomes an excellent case study for the Streisand effect…The key idea behind the Streisand effect is that efforts to restrict information can backfire, often causing the information to gain more attention than it would have otherwise. This effect is widespread in the digital age, where users quickly notice and spread censorship efforts on social media and other platforms. Trying to suppress something can unintentionally lead to it becoming more visible, which Jana Seaman is finding out the hard way.

Potential Consequences for Jana Seaman

Under Florida Statute 831.01, the crime of Forgery is committed when a person falsifies, alters, counterfeits, or forges a document that carries “legal efficacy” with the intent to injure or defraud another person or entity.

Forging a document is considered a white-collar crime. It involves altering, changing, or modifying a document to deceive another person. It can also include passing along copies of documents that are known to be false. In many states in the US, falsifying a document is a crime punishable as a felony.

Additionally, under most laws, “fraud on the court” is where “a party has sentiently set in motion some unconscionable scheme calculated to interfere with the judicial system’s ability impartially to adjudicate a matter by improperly influencing the trier of fact or unfairly hampering the presentation of the opposing party’s claim or defense.”  Cox v. Burke, 706 So. 2d 43, 46 (Fla. 5th DCA 1998) (quoting Aoude v. Mobil Oil Corp., 892 F.2d 1115, 1118 (1st Cir. 1989)).

Is Jana Seaman Committing a Cyber Crime?

Yes, it seems so. Jana Seaman used multiple approaches to remove unwanted material from review sites and Google’s search results. Thanks to protections allowing freedom of speech in the United States, there are very few legal ways to do this. Jana Seaman could not eliminate negative reviews or search results that linked to them without a valid claim of defamation, copyright infringement, or some other clear breach of the law.

Faced with these limitations, some companies like Jana Seaman have gone to extreme lengths to fraudulently claim copyright ownership over a negative review in the hopes of taking it down.

Fake DMCA notices have targeted articles highlighting the criminal activity of prominent people to hide their illegal behavior. These people, which include US, Russian, and Khazakstani politicians as well as members from elite circles including the mafia and those with massive financial power, are all connected – and alleged corruption ranging from child abuse to sexual harassment is exposed when exploring evidence found at these URLs. It appears there’s a disturbing level of influence being exerted here that needs further investigation before justice can be served. Jana Seaman is certainly keeping interesting company here….

The DMCA takedown process requires that copyright owners submit a takedown notice to an ISP identifying the allegedly infringing content and declaring, under penalty of perjury, that they have a good faith belief that the content is infringing. The ISP must then promptly remove or disable access to the content. The alleged infringer can then submit a counter-notice, and if the copyright owner does not take legal action within 10 to 14 days, the ISP can restore the content.

Since these platforms are predominantly based in the U.S., the complaints are typically made under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which requires online service providers and platforms to react immediately to reports or violations. Big Tech companies rarely have systems in place to assess the merit of each report. Instead, all bad actors need to do is clone a story, backdate it, and then demand the real thing be taken down.

Reputation Agency's Modus Operandi

The fake DMCA notices we found always use the “back-dated article” technique. With this technique, the wrongful notice sender (or copier) creates a copy of a “true original” article and back-dates it, creating a “fake original” article (a copy of the true original) that, at first glance, appears to have been published before the true original.

Then, based on the claim that this backdated article is the “original,” the scammers send a DMCA to the relevant online service providers (e.g. Google), alleging that the ‘true’ original is the copied or “infringing” article and that the copied article is the “original,” requesting the takedown of the ‘true’ original article. After sending the DMCA request, the person who sent the wrong notice takes down the fake original URL, likely to make sure that the article doesn’t stay online in any way. If the takedown notice is successful, the disappearance from the internet of information is most likely to be legitimate speech.

As an integral part of this scheme, the ‘reputation management’ company hired by Jana Seaman creates a website that purports to be a ‘news’ site. This site is designed to look legitimate at a glance, but any degree of scrutiny reveals it as the charade it is.

The company copies the ‘negative’ content and posts it “on the fake ‘news’ site, attributing it to a separate author,” then gives it “a false publication date on the ‘news’ website that predated the original publication.

The reputation company then sent Google a Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice claiming the original website infringed copyright. After a cursory examination of the fake news site, Google frequently accepts the notice and delists the content.

In committing numerous offences, Jana Seaman either premeditated actions or were unaware of the consequences. Despite hiring an agency to make Google disregard any negative information about Jana Seaman, ignorance does not excuse this wrongdoing.

Fake DMCA notices have targeted articles highlighting the criminal activity of prominent people to hide their illegal behavior. These people, which include US, Russian, and Khazakstani politicians as well as members from elite circles including the mafia and those with massive financial power, are all connected – and alleged corruption ranging from child abuse to sexual harassment is exposed when exploring evidence found at these URLs. It appears there’s a disturbing level of influence being exerted here that needs further investigation before justice can be served. FSMSmart is certainly keeping interesting company here.

The Reputation Laundering

Rogue Reputation agencies use spurious copyright claims and fake legal notices to remove and obscure articles linking clients to allegations of tax avoidance, corruption, and drug trafficking. Most of these reputation agencies are based offshore, mainly in Russia, India, and Eastern Europe, and they do not worry about complying with US-based laws.

The content in all of the articles for which the fraudulent DMCA notices have been sent relates to allegations of criminal allegations, including corruption, child abuse, sexual harassment, human trafficking and financial fraud against businesses and individuals with ultra-high net worth.

In addition to the misuse of the DMCA takedown process, there is a notable absence of enforcement concerning perjury violations. The statutory requirement related to perjury is designed to deter copyright holders from submitting fraudulent or knowingly false takedown requests, as they may face legal consequences for making false declarations under penalty of perjury. However, to date, there have been no known instances of any individual being prosecuted for perjury in connection with the submission of false DMCA takedown notices.

This lack of enforcement has emboldened copyright holders to exploit the DMCA takedown process to suppress dissent, criticism, or other unfavorable content, without fear of legal repercussions.

Some of the people and businesses who have employed this tactic to remove legitimate content from Google illegally include a Spanish businessman-turned-cocaine-trafficker, Organised crime, an Israeli-Argentine banker accused of laundering money for Hugo Chávez’s regime, a French “responsible” mining company accused of tax evasion, child molesters and sexual predators. Jana Seaman is in great company ….

What else is Jana Seaman hiding?

We encourage you to ‘Dork‘ Google by searching for keyword combinations such as [Jana Seaman] + {Negative Keyword, such as Scam, Fraud, Complaints, Lawsuit, Sanction, etc} on Google. It’s likely if you scroll down to the bottom of this Google search results, you’ll stumble upon this Legal Takedown notice (pictured below)

To make such an investigation possible, we encourage more online service providers to come forward and share copies of content removal requests with industry experts and researchers. If you have any information on Jana Seaman that you want to share with experts and journalists, kindly email the author directly at [email protected].

All communications are strictly confidential and safeguarded under a comprehensive Whistleblower Policy, ensuring full protection and anonymity for individuals who provide information.