New Controversy Surrounding Intelius Inc.
Controversy; this is the word that closely related to Intelius. Built from brilliant idea, this Bellevue, WA-based public records company provides information and offers services including background check and identity theft protection to both personal and business consumers. Since Intelius initiated in 2002, this company has been involved with several controversy.
Even in the early years of this company, Naveen Jain, Intelius co-founder, sued by InfoSpace, his former employer, for allegedly violating non-compete agreements, mishandling business-specific secrets and interfering with InfoSpace’s customer relationships. Some others lawsuits to Intelius are including class action lawsuit in California for automatically enrolling consumers to its affiliate program without consent. Intelius is also forced to taken down its Cellular Phone Directory for violating Washington State’s Consumer Protection Act. Post transaction marketing, opt out policy, and consumer complaints are among the controversial sides of this company.
The latest controversy related with Intelius is the false testimony of Intelius Vice President and co-founder, John Kenneth Arnold. Arnold’s testimony was taken as a part of investigation of Frank Colacurcio Sr, the Seattle strip club boss. While he was testifying in this case, he was indicated lying to grand jury that he never engaged in sex acts with the club’s strip dancers. After he surrenders his passports and guaranteed that he doesn’t have any contact with potential witnesses, Arnold was released from custody.
However, the controversy doesn’t stop there. Lately, once again the Federal agents arrested John Kenneth Arnold and took the Intelius co-founder back to Federal custody allegedly for contacting a witness who works on the strip club and planning to meet her in Las Vegas. Federal agents found this after learning that Arnold asked intermediary to deliver a letter to strip club employee who also a potential witness. US Attorney mentioned that besides urging the employee to meet with him and tailored travel plans for both of them, Arnold also mention in his letter that they shouldn’t communicate in normal channels. The controversy goes up when Arnold’s attorney insisted that his client has been a good friend of that strip club employee and there was no such intimidation or threat on the letter, although the letter may have been improper.
Off course this controversy is a bad news for Intelius. Arnold’s case is like an irony for the company newly launched iPhone’s dating application called Datacheck. Although there is no correlation between this case and consumer’s response to Datacheck, it gives another controversy to Intelius, which has been trying to go public.
