Arnstein de-indexed bad reviews from Google's search results

Oct 24, 2018 15:36 GMT  ·  By

Michael Arnstein, a Manhattan businessman, was sentenced to nine months behind bars for forging a federal judge’s signature on counterfeit court orders used to ask Google to remove negative reviews regarding his business from their search results.

The nine months sentence Arnstein received today follows his admission of guilt from September 15, 2017, when he admitted of exploiting the "authority of the federal judiciary in a blatantly criminal scheme," according to Acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim.

Arnstein was able to get unfavorable posts from Google's search engine results de-indexed by forging the signature of the United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York on ten court orders.

"Michael Arnstein’s blatant criminal scheme to exploit the authority of the federal judiciary for his company’s benefit was outrageous," said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman.

The nine months prison sentence also comes with an extra $20K fine and 200 hours of community service

"As Arnstein has learned, his attempts to remove negative reviews about his business from Google search results by forging a U.S. District Court judge’s signature may have worked in the short term, but it also earned him nine months in a federal prison."

After Arnstein pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to forge a judicial signature, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York, said in a press-released that a final sentence could put him in jail for a maximum of five years.

Luckily for Arnstein, the U.S. District Court Judge Andrew L. Carter Jr. was lenient and sentenced him to only nine months behind bars, with an added "three years of supervised release".

Furthermore, the former businessman will also serve the first five months of the supervised release in home detention, as well as perform 200 hours of community service and pay a $20,000 fine.