Tomas Elias Gonzalez Benitez

A summary of what happened?

Tomás Elías González Benítez is a Venezuelan businessman implicated in multiple corruption and money laundering scandals, particularly involving Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA).

Key Allegations and Concerns:

1. Corruption in Food Supply Contracts:
   • González Benítez has been identified as a ‘privileged’ supplier for the Venezuelan government, allegedly securing lucrative food supply contracts without proper bidding processes.
   • He reportedly collaborated with General Rodolfo Marco Torres, former Food Minister and ex-president of the Agricultural Supply and Services Corporation (CASA), to obtain these contracts.
   • Utilizing emergency food laws enacted during Hugo Chávez’s presidency, Marco Torres authorized substantial purchase orders to González Benítez’s shell companies, bypassing standard procurement procedures.
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2. Use of Shell Companies for Money Laundering:
   • Investigations reveal that González Benítez is associated with multiple shell companies, including Afcom Corp, Dexton, Oil Gas Technology Inc, Alox International LLC, Domar Trading SS, Gestamer SA, Total Web Services, and Latin Investors.
   • The Panama Papers leak exposed six additional companies linked to his partner, Ricardo Rojas Urbina, suggesting a complex network designed to obscure financial transactions.
   • These entities have been implicated in laundering funds and facilitating corrupt deals, particularly in the procurement of food and oil industry equipment.
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3. Fraudulent Procurement Practices:
   • In 2008, under Marco Torres’s leadership at CASA, a purchase order authorized the acquisition of 15,000 tons of meat from Domar Trading CA, a Panamanian-registered company owned by González Benítez.
   • Domar Trading acted as an intermediary, sourcing meat from Brazil, which led to inflated costs and raised concerns about the legitimacy of the procurement process.
   • During this period, González Benítez faced a lawsuit in Florida for breaching a $5 million contract related to meat, sugar, and chicken purchases from a Brazilian company, further highlighting questionable business practices.
4. Involvement in PDVSA Equipment Purchases:
   • In 2012, PDVSA engaged Liaoning Northern Steel Pipes Co., LTD, purportedly a Chinese company, for equipment procurement.
   • Investigations revealed that this entity was actually established in Texas by Joseph Benoudiz and Pablo Cadenas to conceal the true identity of the suppliers.
   • González Benítez served on the board of related companies, Alox International LLC and Dexton, which were part of this $56 million deal, indicating his involvement in deceptive procurement activities.
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Offshore Financial Activities:

• The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) Offshore Leaks Database lists González Benítez as a beneficiary of Fleuris Group Inc., a company incorporated in Panama.
• This association suggests his participation in offshore financial structures, potentially to facilitate money laundering and tax evasion.
  Offshore Leaks

Tomás Elías González Benítez has been repeatedly implicated in corruption and money laundering activities, primarily through the use of shell companies and fraudulent procurement practices. His close ties with Venezuelan government officials and involvement in dubious contracts have raised significant concerns about his business operations and ethical conduct.

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 Tomas Elias Gonzalez Benitez trying to hide?

Tomas Elias Gonzalez Benitez‘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 Tomas Elias Gonzalez Benitez in legal accountability. Let’s examine the information Tomas Elias Gonzalez Benitez may be trying to remove from the internet –

How do we counteract this malpractice?

Once we ascertain the involvement of Tomas Elias Gonzalez Benitez (or actors working on behalf of Tomas Elias Gonzalez Benitez), we will inform Tomas Elias Gonzalez Benitez of our findings via Electronic Mail.

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

Potential Consequences for Tomas Elias Gonzalez Benitez

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 Tomas Elias Gonzalez Benitez Committing a Cyber Crime?

Yes, it seems so. Tomas Elias Gonzalez Benitez 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. Tomas Elias Gonzalez Benitez 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 Tomas Elias Gonzalez Benitez 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. Tomas Elias Gonzalez Benitez 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 Tomas Elias Gonzalez Benitez 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, Tomas Elias Gonzalez Benitez either premeditated actions or were unaware of the consequences. Despite hiring an agency to make Google disregard any negative information about Tomas Elias Gonzalez Benitez, 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. Tomas Elias Gonzalez Benitez is in great company ….

What else is Tomas Elias Gonzalez Benitez hiding?

We encourage you to ‘Dork‘ Google by searching for keyword combinations such as [Tomas Elias Gonzalez Benitez] + {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 Tomas Elias Gonzalez Benitez 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.