On March 8, 2024, KrebsOnSecurity printed a deep dive on the buyer information dealer Radaris, exhibiting how the unique house owners are two males in Massachusetts who operated a number of Russian language relationship providers and affiliate packages, along with a dizzying array of people-search web sites. The themes of that piece are threatening to sue KrebsOnSecurity for defamation until the story is retracted. In the meantime, their legal professional has admitted that the particular person Radaris named because the CEO from its inception is a fabricated identification.
Radaris is only one cog in a sprawling community of people-search properties on-line that promote extremely detailed background studies on U.S. shoppers and companies. These studies usually embody the topic’s present and former addresses, partial Social Safety numbers, any identified licenses, e-mail addresses and telephone numbers, in addition to the identical data for any of their fast relations.
Radaris has a less-than-stellar reputation with regards to responding to shoppers looking for to have their studies faraway from its varied people-search providers. That poor status, mixed with indications that the true founders of Radaris have gone to extraordinary lengths to hide their stewardship of the corporate, was what prompted KrebsOnSecurity to research the origins of Radaris within the first place.
On April 18, KrebsOnSecurity acquired a certified letter (PDF) from Valentin “Val” Gurvits, an legal professional with the Boston Legislation Group, stating that KrebsOnSecurity would face a withering defamation lawsuit until the Radaris story was instantly retracted and an apology issued to the 2 brothers named within the story as co-founders.
That March story labored backwards from the e-mail deal with used to register radaris.com, and charted an impressive array of data broker companies created over the previous 15 years by Massachusetts residents Dmitry and Igor Lubarsky (additionally typically spelled Lybarsky or Lubarski). Dmitry goes by “Dan,” and Igor makes use of the identify “Gary.”
These companies included quite a few web sites marketed to Russian-speaking people who find themselves new to the USA, akin to russianamerica.com, newyork.ru, russiancleveland.com, russianla.com, russianmiami.com, and so on. Different domains related to the Lubarskys included Russian-language relationship and grownup web sites, in addition to affiliate packages for his or her worldwide calling card companies.
A thoughts map of assorted entities apparently tied to Radaris and the corporate’s co-founders. Click on to enlarge.
The story on Radaris famous that the Lubarsky brothers registered most of their companies utilizing a made-up identify — “Gary Norden,” typically referred to as Gary Nord or Gary Nard.
Mr. Gurvits’ letter said emphatically that my reporting was lazy, mean-spirited, and clearly supposed to smear the status of his purchasers. By means of instance, Mr. Gurvits stated the Lubarskys have been really Ukrainian, and that the story painted his purchasers in a destructive mild by insinuating that they have been in some way related to Radaris and with vaguely nefarious parts in Russia.
However extra to the purpose, Mr. Gurvits stated, neither of his purchasers have been Gary Norden, and neither had ever held any management positions at Radaris, nor have been they monetary beneficiaries of the corporate in any approach.
“Neither of my purchasers is a founding father of Radaris, and neither of my purchasers is the CEOs of Radaris,” Gurvits wrote. “Moreover, presently and going again not less than the previous 10 years, neither of my purchasers are (or have been) officers or workers of Radaris. Certainly, neither of them even owns (or ever owned) any fairness in Radaris. In intentional disregard of those information, the Article implies that my purchasers are personally accountable for Radaris’ actions. Due to this fact, you deliberately induced all destructive allegations within the Article made with respect to Radaris to be imputed in opposition to my purchasers personally.”
Dan Lubarsky’s Fb web page, simply previous to the March 8 story about Radaris, stated he was from Moscow.
We took Mr. Gurvits’ phrase on the ethnicity of his purchasers, and adjusted the story to take away a single point out that they have been Russian. We did so though Dan Lubarsky’s personal Fb web page stated (till not too long ago) that he was from Moscow, Russia.
KrebsOnSecurity requested Mr. Gurvits to clarify exactly which different particulars within the story have been incorrect, and replied that we’d be completely satisfied to replace the story with a correction if they may exhibit any errors of reality or omission.
We additionally requested specifics about a number of facets of the story, such because the identification of the present Radaris CEO — listed on the Radaris website as “Victor Ok.” Mr. Gurvits replied that Radaris is and all the time has been based mostly in Ukraine, and that the corporate’s true founder “Eugene L” is predicated there.
Whereas Radaris has claimed to have workplaces in Massachusetts, Cyprus and Latvia, its web site has by no means talked about Ukraine. Mr. Gurvits has not responded to requests for extra details about the identities of “Eugene L” or “Victor Ok.”
Gurvits stated he had no intention of doing anybody’s reporting for them, and that the Lubarskys have been going to sue KrebsOnSecurity for defamation until the story was retracted in full. KrebsOnSecurity replied that journalists typically face challenges to issues that they report, however it’s greater than uncommon for one who makes a problem to take umbrage at being requested for supporting data.
On June 13, Mr. Gurvits sent another letter (PDF) that continued to say KrebsOnSecurity was defaming his purchasers, solely this time Gurvits stated his purchasers can be glad if KrebsOnSecurity simply eliminated their names from the story.
“In the end, my purchasers don’t care what you say about any of the web sites or company entities in your Article, so long as you fully take away my purchasers’ names from the Article and cooperate with my purchasers to have copies of the Article the place my purchasers’ names seem faraway from the Web,” Mr. Gurvits wrote.
MEET THE FAKE RADARIS CEO
The June 13 letter defined that the identify Gary Norden was a pseudonym invented by the Radaris advertising division, however that neither of the Lubarsky brothers have been Norden.
This was a startling admission, provided that Radaris has quoted the fictional Gary Norden in press releases printed and paid for by Radaris, and in information media tales the place the corporate is explicitly looking for cash from traders. In different phrases, Radaris has been misrepresenting itself to traders from the start. Right here’s a press launch from Radaris that was printed on PR Newswire in April 2011:
A press launch printed by Radaris in 2011 names the CEO of Radaris as Gary Norden, which was a pretend identify made up by Radaris’ advertising division.
In April 2014, the Boston Enterprise Journal published a story (PDF) about Radaris that extolled the corporate’s speedy progress and appreciable buyer base. The story famous that, “to this point, the corporate has raised lower than $1 million from Cyprus-based funding firm Difive.”
“We reside in a world the place data turns into far more broad and far more accessible each single day,” the Boston Enterprise Journal quoted Radaris’ pretend CEO Gary Norden, who by then had in some way been demoted from CEO to vp of enterprise growth.
A Boston Enterprise Journal story from April 2014 quotes the fictional Radaris CEO Gary Norden.
“We determined there must be a service that permits for ease of monitoring of details about folks,” the pretend CEO stated. The story went on to say Radaris was looking for to lift between $5 million and $7 million from traders within the ensuing months.
THE BIG LUBARSKY
In his most up-to-date demand letter, Mr. Gurvits helpfully included resumes for each of the Lubarsky brothers.
Gary/Dmitry Lubarsky’s resume states he’s the proprietor of Difive.com, a startup incubator for IT firms. Recall that Difive is similar firm talked about by the pretend Radaris CEO within the 2014 Boston Enterprise Journal story, which stated Difive was the corporate’s preliminary and sole investor.
Difive’s web site in 2016 said it had workplaces in Boston, New York, San Francisco, Riga (Latvia) and Moscow (nothing in Ukraine). In the meantime, DomainTools.com studies difive.com was initially registered in 2007 to the fictional Gary Norden from Massachusetts.
Archived copies of the Difive web site from 2017 embody a “Portfolio” page indexing the entire firms during which Difive has invested. That record, available here, contains just about each “Gary Norden” area identify talked about in my unique report, plus a couple of that escaped discover earlier.
Dan Lubarsky’s resume says he was CEO of a folks search firm referred to as HumanBook. The Wayback machine at archive.org reveals the Humanbook area (humanbook.com) got here on-line round April 2008, when the corporate was nonetheless in “beta” mode.
By August 2008, nevertheless, humanbook.com had changed the name marketed on its homepage to Radaris Beta. Ultimately, Humanbook merely redirected to radaris.com.
Archive.org’s file of humanbook.com from 2008, simply after its homepage modified to Radaris Beta.
Astute readers could discover that the area radaris.com isn’t amongst the companies listed as Difive investments. Nonetheless, passive area identify system (DNS) information from DomainTools present that between October 2023 and March 2024 radaris.com was hosted alongside the entire different Gary Norden domains on the Web deal with vary 38.111.228.x.
That deal with vary concurrently hosted each area talked about on this story and within the unique March 2024 report as related to e-mail addresses utilized by Gary Norden, together with radaris.com, radaris.ru, radaris.de, difive.com, privet.ru, weblog.ru, comfi.com, phoneowner.com, russianamerica.com, eprofit.com, rehold.com, homeflock.com, humanbook.com and dozens extra. A spreadsheet of these historic DNS entries for radaris.com is offered here (.csv).
Picture: DomainTools.com
The breach monitoring service Constella Intelligence finds simply two e-mail addresses ending in difive.com have been uncovered in information breaches through the years: [email protected], and [email protected]. Presumably, “gn” stands for Gary Norden.
A search on the e-mail deal with [email protected] by way of the breach monitoring service osint.industries reveals this deal with was used to create an account at Airbnb underneath the identify Gary, with the final 4 digits of the account’s telephone quantity ending in “0001.”
Constella Intelligence finds [email protected] was related to the Massachusetts quantity 617-794-0001, which was used to register accounts for “Igor Lybarsky” from Wellesley or Sherborn, Ma. at a number of on-line companies, together with audiusa.com and the designer eyewear retailer luxottica.com.
The telephone quantity 617-794-0001 additionally seems for a “Gary Nard” consumer at russianamerica.com. Igor Lubarsky’s resume says he was the supervisor of russianamerica.com.
DomainTools finds 617-794-0001 is related to registration information for 3 domains, together with paytone.com, a website that Dan Lubarsky’s resume says he managed. DomainTools additionally discovered that quantity on the registration information for trustoria.com, one other main client information dealer that has an atrocious status, in line with the Higher Enterprise Bureau.
Dan Lubarsky’s resume says he was accountable for a number of worldwide telecommunications providers, together with the web site comfi.com. DomainTools says the telephone quantity related to that area — 617-952-4234 — was additionally used on the registration information for humanbook.internet/biz/data/mobi/us, in addition to for radaris.me, radaris.in, and radaris.tel.
Two different key domains are related to that telephone quantity. The primary is barsky.com, which is the web site for Barsky Estate Realty Trust (PDF), an actual property holding firm managed by the Lubarskys. Naturally, DomainTools finds barsky.com additionally was registered to a Gary Norden from Massachusetts. However the group listed within the barsky.com registration information is Comfi Inc., a VOIP communications agency that Dan Lubarsky’s resume says he managed.
The opposite area of observe is unipointtechnologies.com. Dan Lubarsky’s resume says he was the CEO of Wellesley Hills, Mass-based Unipoint Know-how Inc. In 2012, Unipoint was fined $179,000 by the U.S. Federal Communications Fee, which stated the corporate had failed to use for a license to offer worldwide telecommunications providers.
PATENTLY REMARKABLE
The 2011 Radaris press release quoting their pretend CEO Gary Norden stated the corporate had 4 patents pending from a staff of pc science PhDs. In accordance with the resume shared by Mr. Gurvits, Dan Lubarsky has a PhD in pc science.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Workplace (PTO) says Dan Lubarsky/Lubarski has at least nine technology patents to his name. The pretend CEO press launch from Radaris mentioning its 4 patents was printed in April 2011. By that point, the PTO says Dan Lubarsky had utilized for precisely 4 patents, together with, “System and Method for a Web-Based People Directory.” The primary of these patents, printed in 2009, is tied to Humanbook.com, the corporate Dan Lubarsky based that later modified its identify to Radaris.
If the Lubarskys have been by no means concerned in Radaris, how do they or their legal professional know the within data that Gary Norden is a fiction of Radaris’ advertising division? KrebsOnSecurity has realized that Mr. Gurvits is similar legal professional responding on behalf of Radaris in a lawsuit against the data broker filed earlier this yr by Atlas Knowledge Privateness.
Mr. Gurvits additionally stepped ahead as Radaris’ legal professional in a class action lawsuit the company lost in 2017 as a result of it by no means contested the declare in court docket. When the plaintiffs advised the choose they couldn’t accumulate on the $7.5 million default judgment, the choose ordered the area registry Verisign to switch the radaris.com area identify to the plaintiffs.
Mr. Gurvits appealed the decision, arguing that the lawsuit hadn’t named the precise house owners of the Radaris area identify — a Cyprus firm referred to as Bitseller Skilled Restricted — and thus taking the area away can be a violation of their due course of rights.
The choose dominated in Radaris’ favor — halting the area switch — and advised the plaintiffs they may refile their criticism. Quickly after, the operator of Radaris modified from Bitseller to Andtop Firm, an entity formed (PDF) within the Marshall Islands in Oct. 2020. Andtop additionally operates the aforementioned people-search service Trustoria.
Mr. Gurvits’ most-publicized defamation case was a consumer named Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian know-how govt whose identify appeared within the Steele Dossier. That doc included a group of salacious, unverified data gathered by the previous British intelligence officer Christopher Steele throughout the 2016 U.S. presidential marketing campaign on the path of former president Donald Trump’s political rivals.
Gubarev, the pinnacle of the IT providers firm XBT Holding and the Florida website hosting agency Webzilla, sued BuzzFeed for publishing the Steele file. One of the items within the file alleged that XBT/Webzilla and affiliated firms performed a key function within the hack of Democratic Occasion computer systems within the spring of 2016. The memo alleged Gubarev had been coerced into offering providers to Russia’s foremost home safety company, often called the FSB.
In December 2018, a federal choose in Miami ruled in favor of BuzzFeed, saying the publication was protected by the truthful report privilege, which provides information organizations latitude in reporting on official authorities proceedings.
Radaris was initially operated by Bitseller Skilled Restricted. Who owns Bitseller Skilled Restricted? A report (PDF) obtained from the Cyprus enterprise registry reveals this firm lists its director as Pavel Kaydash from Moscow. Mr. Kaydash couldn’t be reached for remark.
