CyberCriminal.com

Kurt Jurgens Bauer

We are investigating Kurt Jurgens Bauer for allegedly attempting to conceal critical reviews and adverse news from Google by improperly submitting copyright takedown notices. This includes potential violations such as impersonation, fraud, and perjury.

Kurt Jurgens Bauer

PARTIES INVOLVED: Kurt Jurgens Bauer

ALLEGATIONS: Perjury, Fraud, Impersonation

INCIDENT DATE: 29 July 2022

INVESTIGATED BY: Ethan Katz

TOOLS USED: Lumen, FakeDMCA, SecurityTrails

CASE NO: 6651/A/2024

CRIME TYPE: Intellectual Property Scam

PUBLISHED ON: 26 Nov 2024

REPORTED BY: FakeDMCA.com

JURISDICTION: USA

A summary of what happened?

Kurt Jurgens Bauer, a former resident of Kane County, Utah, orchestrated an elaborate advance-fee fraud scheme targeting elderly individuals from 2011 to 2020. He falsely claimed that the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada had frozen substantial funds owed to him and solicited “bond” payments from victims to release these non-existent funds, promising significant returns once the funds were purportedly released.

To lend credibility to his deceit, Bauer impersonated federal judges and court officials, creating fictitious identities, phone numbers, and email accounts to communicate with his victims. He fabricated personas, including a New York attorney, a federal court employee, and a billionaire, to further manipulate his targets.

Over the course of the scheme, Bauer defrauded victims of more than $850,000, with at least $200,000 taken from two elderly individuals aged 80 and 82. He used the fraudulently obtained funds for personal expenses such as hotel bills, credit card payments, and dining.

In December 2020, Bauer pleaded guilty to three counts of wire fraud and two counts of false impersonation of a federal employee. Subsequently, in February 2021, he was sentenced to 78 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $856,422 in restitution to his victims.

This case underscores the severe consequences of exploiting vulnerable individuals through fraudulent schemes and highlights the commitment of law enforcement to protect the elderly from such predatory practices.

 

Kurt Jurgens Bauer Fake DMCA

 

 

 

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 Kurt Jurgens Bauer trying to hide?

Kurt Jurgens Bauer‘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 Kurt Jurgens Bauer in legal accountability. Let’s examine the information Kurt Jurgens Bauer may be trying to remove from the internet –

Investigative Report: The Case of Kurt Jurgens Bauer

Introduction

Kurt Jurgens Bauer, a former resident of Kane County, Utah, is at the center of one of the most insidious financial fraud schemes targeting elderly victims. His actions, spanning nearly a decade, have resulted in multiple federal charges, severe financial losses for victims, and a prison sentence. This report delves into every aspect of his case, from the mechanisms of his fraudulent scheme to the broader implications for victims and society. The findings are drawn from court records, government reports, and detailed analyses of complaints and lawsuits.


The Scheme: A Web of Deceit

From 2011 to 2020, Kurt Jurgens Bauer orchestrated a sophisticated advance-fee fraud scheme designed to exploit trust and prey on vulnerability. Central to Bauer’s scheme was the fabrication of an elaborate story that funds owed to him had been “frozen” by the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada. He claimed these funds were inaccessible due to alleged legal and bureaucratic obstacles, which required victims to provide upfront “bond” payments to facilitate the release of the funds.

Key elements of Bauer’s scheme included:

  1. Manipulative Storytelling: Bauer convinced his victims, primarily elderly individuals, that he needed their financial support temporarily. He promised extraordinary returns, creating a false sense of opportunity for his victims.
  2. Fake Personas and Official Impersonations: To bolster his credibility, Bauer impersonated federal judges, court employees, and legal professionals. He used fake email accounts, phone numbers, and even fabricated documents to simulate correspondence from these fictitious officials.
  3. Targeted Demographics: The victims were elderly individuals, many of whom were isolated or less tech-savvy, making them more susceptible to manipulation.

Impact on Victims

Bauer’s scheme resulted in devastating losses for his victims:

  • Over $850,000 was stolen from unsuspecting individuals.
  • Two elderly victims, aged 80 and 82, alone lost over $200,000.
  • Victims were left emotionally shattered and financially drained, many of them losing their life savings.

In one instance, Bauer convinced a victim to deplete their retirement funds entirely, promising a repayment that never materialized. The emotional toll on these victims is immeasurable, as many experienced guilt, shame, and significant stress after realizing they had been defrauded.


Legal and Criminal Proceedings

In December 2020, Bauer pleaded guilty to:

  • Three counts of wire fraud
  • Two counts of false impersonation of a federal employee

The charges stemmed from Bauer’s repeated use of fraudulent communications to extract money under false pretenses. Prosecutors presented evidence that demonstrated the calculated nature of his deception, including emails, phone records, and testimony from victims.

In February 2021, Bauer was sentenced to:

  • 78 months in federal prison
  • Restitution of $856,422 to his victims

The sentence reflects the gravity of his actions and the harm caused to his victims. However, for many, the financial restitution is a small solace compared to the losses they endured.


Negative Reviews and Public Backlash

Bauer’s actions have drawn widespread condemnation from victims, advocacy groups, and the public. Among the most common criticisms:

  • Elder Abuse Advocates: Groups advocating for the elderly have highlighted Bauer’s case as a prime example of financial elder abuse. They argue that his deliberate targeting of senior citizens reveals systemic vulnerabilities in protecting older adults from fraud.
  • Legal Experts: Some legal analysts have criticized the leniency of Bauer’s sentence, arguing that the financial restitution will not adequately compensate victims.
  • Public Sentiment: Online forums and social media platforms contain scathing reviews of Bauer’s character, with many commenters expressing outrage over the scale of his deceit and his exploitation of vulnerable populations.

Patterns of Behavior

An analysis of Bauer’s activities reveals recurring patterns that align with typical behaviors of confidence tricksters:

  1. Exploitation of Authority: By impersonating judges and court officials, Bauer leveraged the trust that people place in legal institutions.
  2. Repeated Offenses: Despite initial successes in his scheme, Bauer continued to defraud additional victims over nearly a decade, demonstrating a lack of remorse or accountability.
  3. Personal Gains: Bauer used the stolen funds for personal expenses, including luxurious accommodations, credit card payments, and dining, showing blatant disregard for the well-being of his victims.

Broader Implications

Bauer’s case highlights several critical issues:

  1. Vulnerabilities in Fraud Prevention: Despite red flags, Bauer operated for years without detection, exposing gaps in monitoring financial crimes targeting the elderly.
  2. Impact of Elderly Fraud: The emotional and financial damage caused by fraud against the elderly underscores the need for robust protective measures and awareness campaigns.
  3. Legal System Challenges: While Bauer’s conviction represents a victory for law enforcement, the difficulty of recovering stolen funds points to broader challenges in achieving justice for fraud victims.

Conclusion

Kurt Jurgens Bauer’s actions represent a profound betrayal of trust, particularly against a demographic that is often underrepresented and vulnerable. While his conviction brings some level of justice, the ripple effects of his crimes continue to affect his victims and their families. His case serves as a sobering reminder of the importance of vigilance, accountability, and systemic protections against financial fraud. As society grapples with the challenges posed by such schemes, Bauer’s story is a cautionary tale of the consequences of unchecked greed and exploitation.

 

 

 

How do we counteract this malpractice?

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

Our preliminary assessment suggests that Kurt Jurgens Bauer may have engaged a third-party reputation management agency or expert, which, either independently or under direct authorization from Kurt Jurgens Bauer, initiated efforts to remove adverse online content, including potentially fraudulent DMCA takedown requests. We will extend an opportunity to Kurt Jurgens Bauer 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 Kurt Jurgens Bauer 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 Kurt Jurgens Bauer is finding out the hard way.

Potential Consequences for Kurt Jurgens Bauer

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 Kurt Jurgens Bauer Committing a Cyber Crime?

Faced with these limitations, some companies like Kurt Jurgens Bauer 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. Kurt Jurgens Bauer is certainly keeping interesting company here….

CompanyNames Fake DMCA

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 Kurt Jurgens Bauer 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, Kurt Jurgens Bauer either premeditated actions or were unaware of the consequences. Despite hiring an agency to make Google disregard any negative information about Kurt Jurgens Bauer, 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. Kurt Jurgens Bauer is in great company ….

What else is Kurt Jurgens Bauer hiding?

We encourage you to ‘Dork‘ Google by searching for keyword combinations such as [Kurt Jurgens Bauer] + {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 Kurt Jurgens Bauer 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.

Authorities we may contact and share this report with for further actions

GOOGLE LEGAL HEAD

Halimah DeLaine Prado

NEWS DESK

Washington Post & NY Times

The above decision-makers and authorities will be provided a comprehensive dossier of our findings, including anonymously submitted evidence and tips. We invite journalists to contact us to receive a copy of our complete investigation here

Credits and Acknowledgement

16/10/2024

Many thanks to FakeDMCA.com and Lumen for providing access to their database.

Photos and Illustrations provided by DALL-E 3 – “a representation of Kurt Jurgens Bauer censoring the internet and committing cyber crimes.”

  • We’ve reached out to Kurt Jurgens Bauer for a comment or rebuttal regarding this investigation. It will strongly suggest they were behind the takedown attempt if they remain silent.

    • Our investigative report on Kurt Jurgens Bauer‘s efforts to suppress online speech is significant, as it raises serious concerns about its integrity. The findings suggest that Kurt Jurgens Bauer has engaged in questionable practices, including potential perjury, impersonation, and fraud, in a misguided attempt to manage or salvage its reputation.

    • We intend to file a counternotice to reinstate the removed article(s). While this particular instance is relatively straightforward, it is important to note that, in other cases, the overwhelming volume of automated DMCA takedown notices can significantly hinder the ability of affected parties to respond—especially for those not large media organizations.

    • You need an account with fakeDMCA.com and Lumen to access the research data. However, accounts are not widely available since these non-profit organisations manage large databases that could be susceptible to misuse. Nevertheless, they do offer access to non-profits and researchers.

    • It’s unclear why U.S. authorities have yet to act against these rogue reputation agencies, whose business model seems rooted in fraudulent practices.

  • We’ve reached out to Kurt Jurgens Bauer for a comment or rebuttal regarding this investigation. It will strongly suggest they were behind the takedown attempt if they remain silent.

About the Author

16/10/2024

The author is affiliated with Harvard University and serves as a researcher at both Lumen and FakeDMCA.com. In his personal capacity, he and his team have been actively investigating and reporting on organized crime related to fraudulent copyright takedown schemes. Additionally, his team provides advisory services to major law firms and is frequently consulted on matters pertaining to intellectual property law. He can be reached at [email protected] directly.

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