Vitaly Borker

Vitaly Borker
Borker's US Marshals Service mugshot
Born	(1986-04-25) April 25, 1986 (age 30) Odessa, Ukrainian SSR
Residence	Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, New York
Nationality	Ukrainian-American
Other names	Stanley Bolds Tony Russo
Height	6 ft 5 in (1.96 m)
Criminal charge	2 counts of 875(c) Interstate Threats 2 counts 1841 and 1843 Wire/Mail Fraud
Criminal penalty	4 years of prison Nearly $1,000,000 in restitution and fines
Criminal status	Released from prison on March 11, 2015
Motive	Increase his site's Google PageRank by causing disgruntled customers to link to his site
Conviction(s)	2 counts of sending interstate threats 1 count of mail fraud 1 count of wire fraud

Vitaly Borker (born April 25, 1986) is a Ukrainian-born resident of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. Borker owns DecorMyEyes, an online retailer specializing in designer eyeglasses, under the pseudonyms "Tony Russo" and "Stanley Bolds". Borker's sales strategy was that there is 'no such thing as bad publicity'. He intimidated customers and welcomed online complaints about DecorMyEyes because they caused the site to appear higher in Google search results, improving sales.

Borker was arrested in December 2010 and charged with mail fraud, wire fraud and making interstate threats. He pleaded guilty to fraud charges and making threats. Sentencing was postponed on May 10, 2012, to allow the judge to hear testimony from dozens of victims who reported being threatened with violence, including murder and jokes. On July 11, 2012, after hearing from five victims, the judge called their testimony about the threats "highly credible" and ordered Borker jailed without bail.

Customers of DecorMyEyes posted numerous reports of receiving threats, abuse, poor service and overcharges on websites such as ResellerRatings, where DecorMyEyes has, as of October 29, 2010, a lifetime rating of 1.39/10 from 79 reviews. According to Borker, each bad review boosts his site's PageRank, meaning that the site comes top of Google's ratings for many of the products he sells. While a direct Google search for "DecorMyEyes" elicits the site and its many negative reviews, searching for individual products and brands does not. The reason, cited by an anonymous Google publicist, is that the large number of links to DecorMyEyes from consumer complaint sites such as Ripoff Report cause DecorMyEyes to rank high in Google search results. Google responded to a New York Times story by writing an algorithm that "detects the merchant from the Times article along with hundreds of other merchants that, in our opinion, provide an extremely poor user experience" and significantly reduces their search visibility on product searches.