Summary: During the financial crisis, Canadian banks were ranked the soundest in the world So how does a zombie corporation like Starmedia Communications Inc. continue to do business a year after the government dissolved it? One key ingredient is a cooperative bank. After all, like the saying goes, "follow the money." If you can't cash cheques, you're not in business.

Starmedia Communications Inc. had its corporate charter revoked by the government on March 2nd of 2010. And yet, as you can see from the image of one cheque in the article below, the owner of the defunct company continues to write cheques on the company account.

So this begs the question - how can a corporation that no longer exists make deposits and write cheques? I asked the Bank of Montreal this very question.

Tag: bmo bnc cibc, desjardins, td, rbc, scotiacapital, industry-canada zombie starmedia scam fraud bank

Summary: Time to assert my copyrights.

What is theft? Ultimately, it's claiming ownership of something that belongs to someone else. In this case, Starmedia Communications Inc. claimed ownership to both code that it neither had rights to, and to modifications that it never paid for.

Additionally, Moroccanoil, by not conforming to either the GPL or itself paying for the modfications, while claiming that it somehow received a valid license to use the code from a business whose legal existence was ended by the government before any of this started, is also guilty of code theft. It's sure gotten both more complicated and simpler than what was initially described here

My beef with Moroccanoil is simple - they must restore my copyright information on all files, and they must pay for the modifications that were obtained for them through Starmedia's fraud. If this last part puzzles you, please keep in mind that if you buy something from a 'fence', you don't really own it - the original owner does, and if they can track you down, you either give it back or pay them for it.

Tag: copyright fraud gpl moroccanoil moronicoil starmedia-communications unjust-enrichment

Summary: The list of "supporters" of 770star.com continues to thin out, as a 3rd organization whose logo appears on the site says quite plainly that they do not deal with 770star.com or starmedia.ca. This follows two others, eggspectation and the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, who have previously disavowed any sort of connection.

Tag: 770star.com scam starmedia.ca

Summary: The people behind Starmedia Communications Inc. need to learn the first "rule of holes". When you're in over your head, it's time to stop digging. And they are in it WAY over their heads, as I describe below.

For my part, in retrospect it was a mistake to work for Starmedia Communications. I started working there Monday, October 4th 2010, as a programmer. Part of my responsibilities included mentoring several interns from the CEGEP John Abbott College who were doing the on-the-job portion of their government-subsidized courses.

I quit after just over 4 months, during which I got to see first-hand just how badly both Starmedia and the John Abbott job placement program are run. The stories I've posted in the last couple of days only begin to tell the story. There's plenty more where they came from, and you can also submit your own disaster story

Tag: bmo bank-of-montreal fraud john-abbott overview starmedia.ca starmedia-communications zombie-business

It's bad enough to read about Starmedia Communications Inc fake business partner scams ... but people who have been signing contracts with Starmedia Communications Inc. are in for a rude surprise ...

Starmedia Communications Inc. was ordered out of existence by the government over a year ago for non-compliance, after not filing declarations for about half a decade.

Starmedia Communications Inc. ceased its' legal existence over a year ago, shut down by government decree, but is somehow still operating as some sort of a "zombie" because nobody bothers to check. How could this happen, and what steps can you take to verify a business's corporate status or existence?

Summary: Instead of just "reporting the scams", it's time to be more active in soliciting feedback from businesses and foundations that 770star.com and starmedia.ca say are working with them. So, to start, I'm asking for the low-down from the Children's Wish Foundation about their link to 770star.com.

As you can see, 770star.com currently lists the Children's Wish Foundation as one of the charities working with 770star.com and/or starmedia.ca.

Tag: 770star.com childrens-wish-foundation confidence-game con-job feedback fraud response scam starmedia.ca

Summary: Selling prescription drugs online is illegal in Canada, and Starmedia.ca is a Canadian business, located at 297 Barnett, Dollard-des-Ormeaux, Quebec, Canada, so they are definitely bound by Canadian law. However, in what can only be described as a sleazy way to "juice" the ranking of Starmedia.ca with search engines, Starmedia has included links to selling the amphetamine drug Phentermine.

And the image you see at left was taken from one of the web sites linked to in the Starmedia.ca business directory, though I leave it to your imagination to wonder what sort of business need whips, masks, hoods, corsets and leather fetish-wear .

 

Update: Friday, June 24th 2011 @ 09.45 AM EDT Starmedia can run, but it can't hide. Since this story was originally posted 3 days ago, Starmedia has removed two of the links in question in an attempt to hide their past behaviour, but the original pages are preserved elsewhere. The story now links to both the old and "cleaned-up" pages.

 

Starmedia's links to Illegal drug sales, online gambling, and "hot lingerie" as questionable "business resources"

Tag: drugs, gambling, lingerie, starmedia-communications

Eleven days ago, I wrote about Starmedia.ca and their phony list of businesses that they claimed were partners.

The list included such big names as Quebecor, Astral Media, Phipps Dickson Integria, Corbis, Viacom, and (after Phipps Dickson Integria wrote back saying they had never heard of the guy), Google AdWords,.

Since then, several others, including Google, have come forwards to say they are investigating Starmedia's unauthorized use of their names and logos.

And now the page is gone

That's right - Starmedia has removed any and all claims of having any sort of business relationship with these companies.

Tag: astral-media, corbis,fake-partners fraud google quebecor pdi, viacom

Summary: How Starmedia improperly removed GPL copyright notices from web application software that I developed that was later used in software like the Moroccanoil loyalty program. I had written and published the framework with a GPL license before I ever heard of Starmedia. Starmedia claimed to customers that Starmedia were the sole owner and copyright holder of the software. Includes how Starmedia "paid" for further customization with a bounced check.

Starmedia's president also tried to claim ownership of a data visualization program that used libraries that I wrote (again before I ever worked for Starmedia), and that I developed on my own time without getting paid for. Also ordered an intern to remove all the GPL notices from the same web framework when used to build GradeSaviors

Tag: copyleft copyright-violations flash gpl-violations gradesaviors john-abbott lies moroccanoil nsf-cheques software-theft starmedia.ca theft unpaid-overtime