August 21-27, 2003

city beat

Gale Warning

The Saga Continues

by Daryl Gale

For more than two years now Iíve been a lone voice crying out in the wilderness, and let me tell you, it ainít easy. The more I wrote about GoInternet.net -- the Old City telemarketing firm under fire from the federal government in the form of the Federal Trade Commission, the Attorneys General of several states and its Old City neighbors -- the more people came out to congratulate, encourage or chastise me for doing it.

In March 2001, I wrote the cover story "Net In My Back Yard" after spending several days employed at GoInternet undercover as a telemarketer. The company employees cold call small to medium-sized companies all over the country, hawking websites and Internet services for a $29.95 monthly fee.

To say that the story was upsetting to GoInternet.net owner and CEO Neal Saferstein is a gross understatement. His lawyer sat in on my interview with Saferstein following the undercover work and had a good deal of trouble himself attempting to rein in the red-faced, screaming Saferstein as he accused me of being out to get him. After a good deal of legal wrangling -- and a good deal of cutting of my story as a result of that wrangling -- when the paper was published the following Thursday, hundreds of copies of City Paper had mysteriously been swiped from our familiar orange boxes in Center City.

I wrote a follow-up story about the empty orange boxes the next week and then the calls and e-mails started.

From that day to this, I have gotten a fairly steady stream of correspondence from former GoInternet employees, former clients, and former business partners of Saferstein, all encouraging me to stay on the story, because there would be a lot more to come. They were right.

In 2001, right about the time I went undercover there, GoInternet.net, also known as Mercury Marketing and Mercury Technologies, had signed an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission to stop what the agency called "deceptive and misleading business practices," specifically that the telemarketers employed by the company were less than forthright with the potential customers on the phone, neglecting such incidentals as that pesky $29.95 monthly fee.

At the same time, business owners and residents in close proximity to GoInternet's buildings on Arch, Third and Strawberry streets were complaining loudly to city officials and anyone else who'd listen about GoInternet's employees. Those employees, they declared, are loud and profane. They smoked dope, sexually harassed female passersby and shoplifted from local merchants with impunity. That the vast majority of GoInternet's employees are young and African American added another element to the story. Saferstein told me that the complaining neighbors were racists who just don't want large numbers of black people milling about and that he'd even been called a "nigger lover" by a more vocal complainant.

Then, just over a month ago, I wrote about GoInternet again. This time the story, I thought, was more positive. Saferstein and the neighbors had come to a mutual understanding and he'd hire more security and provide more training for his employees on the social niceties. A few days after that article ran in City Paper, I was physically threatened by a couple of musclebound GoInternet goons who promised to "take care of" me if I ever wrote another word about Neal Saferstein. So, of course I wrote about that too.

Now comes word that last week the FTC petitioned the U.S. District Court to hold GoInternet in contempt for violating the 2001 order, to freeze the company's assets and to issue a permanent injunction that would essentially prevent GoInternet from doing business.

According to an FTC news release dated August 12, "the FTC alleges that the defendants have engaged in precisely the same deceptive and misleading practices that led to the FTC's original action -- billing consumers without the consumer's authorization." The FTC goes on to list the myriad violations they found, including the fact that less than 1 percent of the GoInternet customers they contacted had agreed to hire GoInternet and that a full 72 percent were unaware where the $29.95 monthly fee they'd been paying on their phone bill as "MIS Int Serv" was going.

The U.S. District Court hearing, originally scheduled for next Tuesday, was continued until next month at the request of GoInternet's lawyers. The fate and future of GoInternet, and of course, Saferstein himself, hang precariously upon the ruling of Judge Clifford Scott Green. If Green rules in favor of the FTC, hundreds of jobs could be lost and the company could be shut down with its assets used to make restitution, according to FTC spokesperson Dave Plottner. I tried to contact Saferstein or his attorney for comment, but I haven't gotten a call back yet. Honestly, I don't expect one.

While I realize that I'm probably not on his holiday gift list, I suspect Mr. Saferstein has more important problems to worry about right now.

Daryl Galeís weekly radio show, Dialogues, with co-hosts Rotan Lee and Bill Miller, is burning up the airwaves Fridays 7-10 a.m. on WURD (900 AM) in Philadelphia.