EDITORIAL/ANALYSIS: Events Are Controlling DNA, Not The Other Way Around; Prosecutor’s Office Mum On Narc That Car Inquiry In Texas

First, some news: A website titled DeanBlechman.com now resolves to a parked page at the offshore registrar directNIC. As first reported on the PP Blog, the site previously redirected to the website of Data Network Affiliates (DNA).

directNIC is “based in Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands,” relocating from its former base in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, according to the firm’s website. directNIC is DNA’s registrar, and also the registrar for the DeanBlechman.com domain and a DNA-associated domain known as TagEveryCar.com.

In a bizarre autoresponder message earlier this week, DNA said it had chosen “privacy” protection for $5 “to prevent management from having to “put up with 100 stupid calls a day,” a source told the PP Blog.

In an interview Wednesday with the Blog, Blechman, DNA’s former chief executive officer, said he was “surprised” to learn of the DeanBlechman.com site, painting a picture that the company was not in control of its own message and had a “back door guy” who was authoring “bizarre” communications.

Blechman did not identify the “back door guy.” Precisely when the DeanBlechman.com domain stopped redirecting to DNA’s website is unclear. It was still redirecting to the site early yesterday, but now is resolving to the directNIC page.

Meanwhile, the PP Blog contacted the office of R. Scott McKee, the district attorney of Henderson County, Texas, yesterday. McKee is training for deployment to Iraq, and was not available immediately to answer questions on his inquiry into Narc That Car, according to a woman who answered the phone.

The woman said it was possible that an assistant prosecutor would contact the Blog, but the call was not returned yesterday.

McKee’s office opened a civil inquiry into Narc That Car (NTC) more than a month ago, turning to the office of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott for assistance and saying it had received “numerous calls and complaints inquiring into the legitimacy and legality” of NTC.

How that inquiry is proceeding is unclear. Two days ago, the Dallas branch of the BBB reduced its rating on NTC from “No Rating” to “F,” the worst possible rating on the BBB’s 14-step scale that begins with “A+.”

NTC now joins companies such as AdSurfDaily and Speed of Wealth as firms that have scored an “F.”

It is possible that NTC could improve its score at the BBB over time, but the score of “F” it holds now was arrived at after the company had been given more than a month to explain its compensation program to dampen pyramid concerns. The BBB also said it asked NTC to “substantiate some claims made in its advertising” Jan. 18. That inquiry remains open.

NTC does not publish the name of customers of its database product. Some affiliates have claimed the firm was associated with major automobile manufacturers, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the AMBER Alert program.

The company removed a video reference to the AMBER Alert program after the U.S. Department of Justice, which administers AMBER Alert, denied it had any affiliation with NTC.

ASD never improved its BBB score because it became consumed by a government investigation. ASD is implicated by the U.S. Secret Service in a Ponzi scheme.

Speed of Wealth, which also became consumed in government litigation, also did not improve its BBB score. It is implicated by the SEC in a Ponzi scheme involving Mantria Corp., whose BBB rating is being “updated,” according to the BBB. Mantria currently is listed as “No Rating.”

On another matter, MLM aficionado Troy Dooly now is openly challenging DNA officers Arthur Kurek and Donald Kessler to explain what is happening at the company.

Rumors are rampant that Phil Piccolo, a notorious figure in MLM, somehow had become involved in DNA. Absent a firm denial from company management, the rumors continue to fly.

For his part, Blechman, DNA’s former CEO, did not rule out that Piccolo was involved in the firm.

In the absence of a unified message from DNA and plain statements on issues such as whether Piccolo is involved and what steps have been taken to assure that DNA is compliant with state and federal law, events are controlling DNA, not the other way around.

The suggestion that “privacy” protection was chosen so management would not have to put up with “stupid” calls is patently absurd — as is the amount of hype being put out under DNA’s name.

No one at the company has emerged to speak on issues of legality and privacy. DNA says it is in the business of recording license-plate numbers. Like Narc That Car promoters, DNA promoters have made sweeping statements, asserting that affiliates could record plate numbers at places such as Walmart, Target, church parking lots and parking lots at doctors’ offices.

Company conference calls have been cheerleading sessions — with DNA’s own pitchmen leading the cheers.

Whether DNA and NTC affiliates are required to seek  permission from owners of private property or the permission of local jurisdictions to record plate numbers remains unclear. Also unclear is how affiliates are required to behave if confronted by property owners or police who question what they are doing.

Sweeping assertions have been made by affiliates that plate data is “public information” available for the taking in the parking lots of large retail stores. One NTC promoter said on YouTube that his wife recorded plate numbers at a university. The PP Blog believes the university was the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

The office of Sen. Harry Reid, D.-Nev., did not return a call from the Blog seeking comment on the practice recommended by the NTC promoter. Nor did Reid’s office return an email sent by the Blog. Reid is Senate Majority Leader. One of the buildings on UNLV’s campus bears his name. The same NTC promoter recommended “libraries” as excellent sources of plate numbers.

Among the privacy concerns is whether the companies, which appear to be targeting as clients of the database product firms that repossess automobiles, could use the data to create profiles on the movement of people.

In a DNA conference call, one company pitchman said DNA hoped to attract enough affiliates to make it possible for the company to record a plate number at Walmart at noon — and the same plate number at a “doctor’s office” at 1 p.m. and the same plate number elsewhere at 4 p.m. The same pitchman suggested churches were good sources of license-plate numbers.

Adding to the fog of uncertainty is a pattern of strange communications from the firm, which is using Google’s free gmail service to conduct customer service. Emails received by DNA members do not include a street address, which brings issues of transparency into play and potentially brings issues of federal compliance into play.

The PP Blog, which is a Blog among millions of Blogs, has received repeated affiliate spam from DNA and Narc That Car promoters. For weeks, there was no way even to contact DNA to report spam. The Blog will not contact the company via the gmail address — which was made public only days ago –out of concern its email address will be harvested and added to a database controlled by an unknown party.

Narc That Car, meanwhile, has a “Span Policy” — as opposed to “Spam Policy” — link at the bottom of its website. Some of its promoters have produced check-waving videos, including a video that claimed repping for NTC was like working for the “Census Bureau,” a government agency.

One of the videos showed that NTC payments are issued by check drawn on the account of “National Automotive Record Centre Inc.” That entity, which uses the word “National” in its name and the British spelling of “Centre” — as opposed to the U.S. spelling of “Center” — is registered in Nevada. NTC also is associated with a Texas company known as Narc Technologies, which, according to a YouTube video now made private, once issued checks for affiliates.

These things hardly inspire confidence in the NTC enterprise.

Just this morning, the PP Blog received information from a DNA member that the company emailed members, claiming “D.N.A. archived e-mail communications were erased by design.

“We will send you the last 3 e-mail communications within the next 24 hours,” the email said. “If you do not wish to receive D.N.A. Daily Communications please visit your back office.”

Even if the email was perceived by management as a means of demonstrating that DNA was trying to gain control over its message, such a communication only leads to more questions. The email did not include a street address. It also implied that members needed to opt out of communications by doing so within their back offices, rather than opting out by clicking on a link at the bottom of emails they receive.

The hype from DNA and its promoters — dropping names of icons such as Donald Trump and Oprah Winfrey — and making claims that a “MEGA MILLION DOLLAR DEAL with a publicly known industry giant” and a “Top Secret Product” are on the horizon are rubbing some MLM aficionados the wrong way.

MLM has a miserable reputation. Messages from DNA are doing the industry no favors.

If DNA is attempting to seize back its communications apparatus, it needs to explain precisely why it lost control of it early on. And a corporate face must emerge for the company — one who is willing to answer the hard questions on the propriety, safety, legality and privacy concerns the firm is sparking.

For now, at least, it is a tangled web fueled by hype that ducks the issues and causes the company to look silly — day after day.