On March 8, 2024, KrebsOnSecurity printed a deep dive on the patron information dealer Radaris, exhibiting how the unique house owners are two males in Massachusetts who operated a number of Russian language relationship companies and affiliate applications, along with a dizzying array of people-search web sites. The topics of that piece are threatening to sue KrebsOnSecurity for defamation until the story is retracted. In the meantime, their lawyer has admitted that the individual 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 stories on U.S. customers and companies. These stories usually embrace the topic’s present and former addresses, partial Social Safety numbers, any recognized licenses, electronic mail addresses and cellphone numbers, in addition to the identical info for any of their rapid relations.
Radaris has a less-than-stellar fame in terms of responding to customers in search of to have their stories faraway from its numerous people-search companies. That poor fame, 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 analyze the origins of Radaris within the first place.
On April 18, KrebsOnSecurity obtained a licensed letter (PDF) from Valentin “Val” Gurvits, an lawyer with the Boston Regulation 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 tackle used to register radaris.com, and charted a powerful array of information dealer corporations 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 title “Gary.”
These companies included quite a few web sites marketed to Russian-speaking people who find themselves new to america, equivalent 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 applications for his or her worldwide calling card companies.
A thoughts map of varied 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 title — “Gary Norden,” typically known as Gary Nord or Gary Nard.
Mr. Gurvits’ letter acknowledged emphatically that my reporting was lazy, mean-spirited, and clearly meant to smear the fame of his shoppers. By means of instance, Mr. Gurvits mentioned the Lubarskys have been really Ukrainian, and that the story painted his shoppers in a adverse gentle by insinuating that they have been someway related to Radaris and with vaguely nefarious parts in Russia.
However extra to the purpose, Mr. Gurvits mentioned, neither of his shoppers 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 means.
“Neither of my shoppers is a founding father of Radaris, and neither of my shoppers is the CEOs of Radaris,” Gurvits wrote. “Moreover, presently and going again at the very least the previous 10 years, neither of my shoppers are (or have been) officers or staff of Radaris. Certainly, neither of them even owns (or ever owned) any fairness in Radaris. In intentional disregard of those info, the Article implies that my shoppers are personally chargeable for Radaris’ actions. Due to this fact, you deliberately induced all adverse allegations within the Article made with respect to Radaris to be imputed in opposition to my shoppers personally.”
Dan Lubarsky’s Fb web page, simply previous to the March 8 story about Radaris, mentioned he was from Moscow.
We took Mr. Gurvits’ phrase on the ethnicity of his shoppers, and adjusted the story to take away a single point out that they have been Russian. We did so despite the fact that Dan Lubarsky’s personal Fb web page mentioned (till lately) 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 joyful to replace the story with a correction if they may display any errors of reality or omission.
We additionally requested specifics about a number of features of the story, such because the identification of the present Radaris CEO — listed on the Radaris web site as “Victor Ok.” Mr. Gurvits replied that Radaris is and all the time has been primarily based in Ukraine, and that the corporate’s true founder “Eugene L” relies 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 mentioned 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 usually 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 info.
On June 13, Mr. Gurvits despatched one other letter (PDF) that continued to say KrebsOnSecurity was defaming his shoppers, solely this time Gurvits mentioned his shoppers can be happy if KrebsOnSecurity simply eliminated their names from the story.
“Finally, my shoppers don’t care what you say about any of the web sites or company entities in your Article, so long as you utterly take away my shoppers’ names from the Article and cooperate with my shoppers to have copies of the Article the place my shoppers’ names seem faraway from the Web,” Mr. Gurvits wrote.
MEET THE FAKE RADARIS CEO
The June 13 letter defined that the title 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 in search of cash from buyers. In different phrases, Radaris has been misrepresenting itself to buyers 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 faux title made up by Radaris’ advertising division.
In April 2014, the Boston Enterprise Journal printed a narrative (PDF) about Radaris that extolled the corporate’s fast progress and appreciable buyer base. The story famous that, “thus far, the corporate has raised lower than $1 million from Cyprus-based funding firm Difive.”
“We dwell in a world the place info turns into far more broad and far more out there each single day,” the Boston Enterprise Journal quoted Radaris’ faux CEO Gary Norden, who by then had someway been demoted from CEO to vice chairman of enterprise improvement.
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 faux CEO mentioned. The story went on to say Radaris was in search of to lift between $5 million and $7 million from buyers 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.
Dmitry Lubarsky’s resume states he’s the proprietor of Difive.com, a startup incubator for IT corporations. Recall that Difive is identical firm talked about by the faux Radaris CEO within the 2014 Boston Enterprise Journal story, which mentioned Difive was the corporate’s preliminary and sole investor.
Difive’s web site in 2016 mentioned it had workplaces in Boston, New York, San Francisco, Riga (Latvia) and Moscow (nothing in Ukraine). In the meantime, DomainTools.com stories difive.com was initially registered in 2007 to the fictional Gary Norden from Massachusetts.
Archived copies of the Difive web site from 2017 embrace a “Portfolio” web page indexing the entire corporations wherein Difive has invested. That record, out there right here, consists of nearly each “Gary Norden” area title talked about in my authentic report, plus a couple of that escaped discover earlier.
Dan Lubarsky’s resume says he was CEO of a folks search firm known as HumanBook. The Wayback machine at archive.org exhibits 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 modified the title 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 might discover that the area radaris.com just isn’t amongst the businesses listed as Difive investments. Nonetheless, passive area title 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 tackle vary 38.111.228.x.
That tackle vary concurrently hosted each area talked about on this story and within the authentic March 2024 report as related to electronic 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 obtainable right here (.csv).
Picture: DomainTools.com
The breach monitoring service Constella Intelligence finds simply two electronic mail addresses ending in difive.com have been uncovered in information breaches over time: [email protected], and [email protected]. Presumably, “gn” stands for Gary Norden.
A search on the e-mail tackle [email protected] through the breach monitoring service osint.industries reveals this tackle was used to create an account at Airbnb underneath the title Gary, with the final 4 digits of the account’s cellphone 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 cellphone 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 site 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 fame, in response to the Higher Enterprise Bureau.
Dan Lubarsky’s resume says he was chargeable for a number of worldwide telecommunications companies, together with the web site comfi.com. DomainTools says the cellphone quantity related to that area — 617-952-4234 — was additionally used on the registration information for humanbook.web/biz/information/mobi/us, in addition to for radaris.me, radaris.in, and radaris.tel.
Two different key domains are related to that cellphone quantity. The primary is barsky.com, which is the web site for Barsky Property Realty Belief (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 word 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 mentioned the corporate had failed to use for a license to offer worldwide telecommunications companies.
A pandemic help mortgage granted in 2020 to Igor Lybarsky of Sherborn, Ma. exhibits he obtained the cash to an entity known as Norden Consulting.
Discover the title on the recipient of this authorities mortgage for Igor Lybarsky from Sherborn, Ma: Norden Consulting.
PATENTLY REMARKABLE
The 2011 Radaris press launch quoting their faux CEO Gary Norden mentioned the corporate had 4 patents pending from a staff of pc science PhDs. In keeping 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 the very least 9 expertise patents to his title. The faux 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 Technique for a Internet-Based mostly Individuals Listing.” The primary of these patents, printed in 2009, is tied to Humanbook.com, the corporate Dan Lubarsky based that later modified its title to Radaris.
If the Lubarskys have been by no means concerned in Radaris, how do they or their lawyer know the within info that Gary Norden is a fiction of Radaris’ advertising division? KrebsOnSecurity has realized that Mr. Gurvits is identical lawyer responding on behalf of Radaris in a lawsuit in opposition to the information dealer filed earlier this 12 months by Atlas Information Privateness.
Mr. Gurvits additionally stepped ahead as Radaris’ lawyer in a category motion lawsuit the corporate misplaced in 2017 as a result of it by no means contested the declare in courtroom. When the plaintiffs instructed the choose they couldn’t gather on the $7.5 million default judgment, the choose ordered the area registry Verisign to switch the radaris.com area title to the plaintiffs.
Mr. Gurvits appealed the decision, arguing that the lawsuit hadn’t named the precise house owners of the Radaris area title — a Cyprus firm known 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 instructed the plaintiffs they may refile their criticism. Quickly after, the operator of Radaris modified from Bitseller to Andtop Firm, an entity fashioned (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 expertise government whose title appeared within the Steele File. That doc included a set of salacious, unverified info gathered by the previous British intelligence officer Christopher Steele through the 2016 U.S. presidential marketing campaign on the route of former president Donald Trump’s political rivals.
Gubarev, the top of the IT companies firm XBT Holding and the Florida webhosting agency Webzilla, sued BuzzFeed for publishing the Steele file. One of many objects within the file alleged that XBT/Webzilla and affiliated corporations performed a key function within the hack of Democratic Celebration computer systems within the spring of 2016. The memo alleged Gubarev had been coerced into offering companies to Russia’s most important home safety company, often known as the FSB.
In December 2018, a federal choose in Miami dominated in favor of BuzzFeed, saying the publication was protected by the truthful report privilege, which supplies 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 exhibits this firm lists its director as Pavel Kaydash from Moscow. Mr. Kaydash couldn’t be reached for remark.
