Waking up to a new email

Alarm goes off, I get out of bed, make a coffee, sit in front of my laptop, check my emails, and am instantly intruiged by the following headline: DMCA Copyright Intfingement Notice.

As I take a sip of my coffee, I click on the email and start reading:

// probably put an image here instead

Dear owner of https://www.databending.ca/services/seo/,

We're reaching out on behalf of the Intellectual Property division of
a notable entity, in relation to an image connected to our client Best
Online Casinos Canada.

Image Reference: https://i.imgur.com/W7CKP7Q.png
Image Placement: https://www.databending.ca/services/seo/

We've observed the display of the image on your site. We need you to
add a credit to our client immediately. A visible and clickable link to
https://unscr.com/best-online-casino-canada/ is required, placed either
below the image or in the page's footer. The anchor text should be "Best
Online Casinos Canada". This should be addressed in the next five business
days.

We're sure you realize the urgency of this request. Kindly understand
that simply removing the image does not conclude the matter. Should we not
see appropriate action within the given timeframe, we nned to activate
the case No. 74332 and take action as outlined in DMCA Section 512(c).

For your convenience, past usage records can be reviewed using the
Wayback Machine at https://web.archive.org, a recognized digital archive.

Think of this as formal communication. We value your swift action and
your cooperation.

Regards

Liam Clark
Trademark Attorney

Commonwealth Legal Services
3909 N 16th St, 4th Floor
Phoenix, AZ 85016

[email protected]
www.cwlglobalexperts.life

--
Avast antivirusni softver je proverio ovu e-poštu na viruse.
www.avast.com

Dear owner of https://www.databending.ca"

Come on Liam, you sent the email to [email protected], you could’ve probably figured out my first name.

We're reaching out on behalf of the Intellectual Property division of a notable entity, in relation to an image connected our client Best Online Casinos Canada. 


Image Reference: https://i.imgur.com/W7CKP7Q.png
Image Placement: https://www.databending.ca/services/seo/

Clicking on the image reference, they seem to be referring to our Toronto Skyline picture on our SEO services page. They seem to have grabbed the same image, posted it on imgur 15 days ago, and used some crazy legal loophole that once they upload an image on imgur, they retain ownership of the image across all space and time. Even though we grabbed our images from pexels (which is clearly visible by just doing an inspect element) and was uploaded on our page several months prior. We clearly don’t have the fake legal knowhow to claim ownership of an image.

We've observed the display of the image on your site. We need you to
add a credit to our client immediately. A visible and clickable link to
https://unscr.com/best-online-casino-canada/ is required, placed either
below the image or in the page's footer. The anchor text should be "Best
Online Casinos Canada". This should be addressed in the next five business
days.

We're sure you realize the urgency of this request. Kindly understand
that simply removing the image does not conclude the matter. Should we not
see appropriate action within the given timeframe, we nned to activate
the case No. 74332 and take action as outlined in DMCA Section 512(c).

For your convenience, past usage records can be reviewed using the
Wayback Machine at https://web.archive.org, a recognized digital archive.

Reading this I realized that I was really screwed. I am dealing with the big dogs now. They must be pulling section 67 out of their legal textbooks: “If a website uses an image which we recently uploaded to imgur, we now retain full control of their site and can request changes and control at will… Suck it”. Let’s hope they really don’t “nned to active the case No. 74332”.

(generic boilerplate)
---
Avast antivirusni softver je proverio ovu e-poštu na viruse.
www.avast.com

At least I knew the email was checked for viruses by the Bosnian version of Avast Antivirus. Nice fellas.

Digging into the lawfirm

I realized that if I was going to court with Liam, I really needed to prepare myself. So I decided to look into their lawfirm and see who I was going up against.

Going to their .life website (cool tld.), we actually see quite a proper law firm site. Nothing suspicious off the bat until I see my good friend Liam Clark. This striking visual makes me feel like I’ve seen him before. (show picture from tinyeye)

Digging deeper, I decided to checkout their law offices in Pheonix. I was thinking I might pay a visit and see if I am able to negotiate a deal in person. Looking on Google Maps, we can see that address points to either a single story insurance or vintage silver center? Panning the camera upwards, I tried finding the imaginary 4th floor, but I suppose these guys are really good because all I was able to see was the sky.

UN Resolutions by day, casino reviews by night

After checking out the law firm, I decided that this might not be worth the battle as I have never dealt with ghosts before. So I decided to see what it would look like if I complied. Clicking the link they wanted to cite me too, I was very unsurpised to see a casino advertising site. What I was suprised to see was “UN Security Counil Resolutions”.

Going to the homepage, I was even more shocked to see a legitamate website, that looked proper, and actually had valuable content. This was a lot of work to put into a casino review website. They had statistics, a timeline, trackers and everything. As I was genuenly intruiged by the level of work to promote some random online casino. I decided to throw them into ahrefs.

I was shocked to see a DR of 70 and multiple years of data and activity. Looking at the backlinks, my eyes went wide open seeing some of the backlinks: ….

I was really confused, why is the US government linking to a casino review website?

Our hypothesis

This is obvisouly not your typical 5 minute scam, there was delibarate work, effort and planning that went into this. Regarding the uncsr website, we are almost positive that it was most likely bought out for it’s high DR. What I don’t understand, is that they are not leveraging this high DR at all. The “best casinos page” is not listed in the sitemap at all, or not anywhere on the uncsr website, so google can basically not discover it. They are keeping all existing content to probably maintain the backlinks, but no new resolutions have been updated since 2025. So this site was probably bought within the last few months.

If we had to guess, this will probably be a phased rollout and they might start redirecting some of the links to the review page. But that also makes no sense as anyone looking for UN resolutions will be extremelly confused once they start reading on why <redacted casino (don’t want to promote them)> received a 9.7 rating.