BLUE MARBLE PRODUCTS, LLC ROLLS ON Part 2 Of An Exclusive Investigation

Shortly after Part 1 (Blue Marble Products Rolls Downhill...And Ends Up In Federal Court) was published yesterday, the previously-scheduled January 22 Pryze.com cryptocurrency token sale was put on hold and pushed back another week. (The domain name, pryze.com, was registered in Panama, and the PRYZ token sale documents reveal the upcoming sale was registered offshore in Gibraltar as “Pryz Limited”.)

Gibraltar is a British Overseas Territory and notorious tax haven on Spain's south coast.

According to official State of California business records, Pryze CEO/founder Peter Franklin (left) is the CEO/President of Blue Marble Products, LLC.

But, unlike Pryze, Blue Marble has no social media footprint (for example, Insta, Twitter, Facebook) and neither do any of the 90 sites I've directly linked to Blue Marble.

Kind of odd, don't you think?



DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE 

If you’d read the gushing press about Pryze.com’s CEO Peter Franklin, you’d be forgiven for thinking Franklin was Silicon Valley’s answer to Flavor Flav—the greatest hype man in the (tech) business. 

But after yesterday’s abrupt cancellation of Pryze.com’s “PRYZ Token Sale”, rescheduled from January 22 to January 29 at 6:00pm EST, it’s time to take a closer look at Franklin and heed the words of Flav’s song for hip hop’s Public Enemy: don’t believe the hype.

As revealed in Part 1 of this exclusive series, San Francisco-based Blue Marble Products, LLC currently operates at least 90 ecommerce sites that 'scrape' data (product pictures, listing information, etc.) primarily from Amazon, Amazon Handmade, Etsy and AliExpress, lifting that data from those sellers without any permission. 

Those items are then illegally listed on the company's various websites, frequently with grossly inflated prices and often with the original watermarked photos. 

For example, check out this action figure listed for sale on Blue Marble's hobbychimp.com for $410.00:

Now look (closely) at the exact item listed for less than half the price on Amazon:

Back in March 2017, one wag noticed that Hobby Chimp's site lacked the rudimentary e-commerce functionality required to determine inventory or quantity of an item, stating in a Facebook post regarding a potential purchase of 90 overpriced toy trucks: 

“Almost ready to check out. Anyone got a credit card I can borrow?”

And check out another Blue Marble site, "homesafetycare.com". 

Its benign, almost bland, logo portrays a beneficent and neighborly aura.

And that brand image is reinforced on the site's 'About Us' page:

“Home Safety Care is dedicated to providing our customers with the best price in household supplies and health products. 

As an industry leader we are able to get the best wholesale prices and pass those savings onto our customers. 

We believe visiting your health corner store should be as easy as shopping online, which is why we work diligently to select the best brands and products for your child. We have everything you need from prescription contact lenses to household supplies.” 

Does everything you need for your child really include (ahem!) oral sex mints?

On a site that purports to sell the “best brands and products”?

And yet, here they are: a selection of the 17 listings that appear after a product search on Home Safety Care. 

And the craziest thing is that Blue Marble leaves the original listing (faked to make it appear the product is sold out) from Pipedream Products, the producer of Comfortably Numb (I don't name them, I just report them) right next to its own Home Safety Care listing, and with a price that's 350 percent higher than Pipedream's!
  
Talk about price engorging--I mean, price gouging.

And here's another Blue Marble-run site that offers oral sex mints: Fresh Bites Basket. Sometimes this stuff just writes itself.

(NOTE: Amazon, through its Media Relations office, declined to comment for this story, and Michelle Dunn, a San Jose attorney currently representing Blue Marble Products, LLC, Casey Donahue and Ian Donahue in a patent infringement suit filed by International Fruit Genetics, LLC on May 19, 2017, did not respond to my request for comment and clarification.)

More coming Friday.

THREE STRIKES AND YOU'RE OUT...OF CUSTODY, THAT IS! Michigan's "Crooked Chiropractor" Robert Buckhannon Racks Up An Unprecedented Third Sentencing Delay!

Put away that Rob Buckhannon piñata and the chips and salsa you bought for the party; you won't be needing them for at least two months.

Robert Buckhannon, (whose brother, Ronald, was just waiting to exhale), will be chilling it out of stir for at least another two months.

Hell, he may even be munching sparkling, pastel Easter Peeps before the Gray Bar Hotel doors clang shut on his sorry ass! 

Buckhannon's sentencing, scheduled for tomorrow, January 23rd at 10:00 a.m. in United States District Court in Las Vegas, Nevada, has been delayed…again! 

According to a “Stipulation And Order to Continue Sentencing” filed this afternoon in United States District Court in Nevada, the Acting Assistant United States Attorney and Assistant United States Attorney, along with Buckhannon's defense team, requested tomorrow’s session “be vacated and continued for a date and time no sooner than 60 days”. 

According to the Order, the “United States needs additional time to consider the defendant’s cooperation for purposes of USSG 5K1.1. The additional time requested herein is not sought for purposes of delay and the denial of this request for a continuance could result in a miscarriage of justice.” 

Buckhannon is not in custody and remains out on bond.

(Guess it's back to the Cultiv1260 grind!)

BLUE MARBLE ROLLS DOWNHILL...AND ENDS UP IN FEDERAL COURT San Francisco-Based Blue Marble Products, LLC Accused Of Selling Counterfeit Chinese Metal Detectors On “patiobloom.com”; Blue Marble's Expanding Network Of 90+ Ecommerce Sites Draws Numerous Consumer Complaints While Battling Patent Infringement, Unjust Enrichment Allegations In Federal Court

IS SAN FRANCISCO'S BLUE MARBLE PRODUCTS, LLC THE UGLY UNDERSIDE OF SILICON VALLEY?

Above: Blue Marble Products, LLC ecommerce logos

In a motion to dismiss, filed on July 12, 2017, attorneys for ORCHARDDEPOT.COM asserted the following: 

“Defendants operate an internet service provider (ISP) website ORCHARDDEPOT.COM, which is a third-party retailer that enables consumers’ convenient search and purchase of gardening products from legitimate source websites (hereinafter “source websites”). Defendants do not manufacture, produce, own or store any products that are listed on ORCHARDDEPOT.COM. 

Instead, Defendants, only after receiving a client’s purchase order related to a product, would purchase the product from the original seller on the source websites and ship the product to the customer.” 

However, the site not a one-off, rather it is part of a massive network of nearly 100 sites launched by its parent company, San Francisco, California-based Blue Marble Products, LLC.

FROM CRYPTOCURRENCY TO A CHINESE COUNTERFEIT CONSPIRACY: A Tech Company's Dirty Little Secrets

Imagine Martin Scorsese had started his film career as a pornographer and kept on making skin flicks even after he released “Taxi Driver”. 

Now change the location from New York City’s Little Italy to San Francisco’s Mission District and you’ll discover a timely (and as yet untold) story: a massive e-commerce scheme supporting a Bay Area tech honcho with a devil on one shoulder—and an angel investor on the other. 

My exclusive investigation reveals San Francisco-based Blue Marble Products, LLC currently operates at least 90 ecommerce sites that scrape data (product pictures, listing information, etc.) from Amazon, Amazon Handmade, Etsy and AliExpress. 

The items are then illegally listed on the company's various sites, frequently with grossly inflated prices. 

However, all of Blue Marble’s sites (operating on the Shopify platform), like “bedbathdeluxe.com”, mislead shoppers by fraudulently proclaiming to provide them “with the best price” available: 

“We are so happy you stopped by our store, let us tell you a bit about ourselves. Bed Bath Deluxe is dedicated to providing our customers with the best price in bed and bath items. As an industry leader we are able to get the best wholesale prices and pass those savings onto our customers.” 

And one more thing—Blue Marble doesn’t actually have any of the products it lists for sale. 

And how do I know that? 

An attorney for the company blew its own whistle in that federal case I quoted at the beginning of this report:

“Defendants do not manufacture, produce, own or store any products that are listed on ORCHARDDEPOT.COM. Instead, Defendants, only after receiving a client’s purchase order related to a product, would purchase the product from the original seller on the source websites and ship the product to the customer.” 

Until today, the size of this scheme was like an iceberg, most of it below the surface.

Not any more.

Blue Marble Products, LLC, is a California business entity originally formed as Infuse Solutions, LLC on February 23, 2015 by Peter Franklin. 

On February 21, 2017 Franklin changed the company's name to Blue Marble Products, LLC.

An earlier iteration of Blue Marble Products, LLC (Blue Marble Products) was formed on September 14, 2015 as an Alameda County d/b/a by Casey Donahue, who currently works for Peter Franklin at his full-stack development/design agency, Infuse, in San Francisco. 

Peter Franklin is also the CEO/founder of Pryze, Inc., backed by Silicon Valley angel investor Gil Penchina. 

Pryze released a white paper in early November 2017, and its PRYZ cryptocurrency token sale (“initial coin offering”) opens today (January 22, 2018) at 6:00pm EST. 

Cryptocurrency offerings are, in theory, not available to residents in the US. Only accredited investors can participate in private placements of securities. While some would define all cryptocurrency ICOs as tokens and not securities, SEC regulators have a very different opinion regarding this matter. 

Recent ICOs can be labeled as traditional sales of equity, and have drawn SEC scrutiny. 

One billion PRYZ tokens will be created, with 40 percent of tokens allocated for the sale. Within that 40 percent, 10 percent have already been allocated “for founders use”, with 10 percent allocated for the “Company’s advisors use”.

But back to Peter Franklin's Blue Marble Products: three sites (orcharddepot.com, truehomebliss.com and patiobloom.com) have been sued within the last six months for allegations ranging from patent infringement, unjust enrichment, conspiracy to import and sell counterfeit metal detectors. 

CamCal Enterprises, LLC v. Blue Marble Products, LLC; California Central District 

First Texas Products, L.L.C. v. Shanghai Tianxun Electronic; Western District Texas 

International Fruit Genetics, LLC et al v. Orcharddepot.com; California Northern District 

The CamCal case (re: truehomebliss.com) settled on December 29, 2017. 

In addition, Blue Marble Product sites have drawn BBB complaints, alleging undelivered or damaged products; suspicious post-purchase credit card activity; lack of customer service contact. 

In addition, at least 38 “virtual mailbox” locations, including storefront mailing offices in the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California, serve as ostensible locations for the various sites—making it nearly impossible for the average consumer to follow their money.

TRUEHOMEBLISS.COM...Not So Blissful! 

On July 19, 2017, Arizona-based CamCal Enterprises, LLC (doing business as “Bottle Keeper”) filed a patent infringement complaint in U. S. District Court in the Central California District against Blue Marble’s “truehomebliss.com”, alleging patent infringement and seeking unspecified damages. 

In its complaint, Bottle Keeper asserted “truehomebliss.com” had “engaged, and continues to engage, in the business of manufacturing, using, importing, offering for sale, and/or selling bottle enclosures embodying one or more of the patented inventions disclosed and claimed in the '527 patent ("the '527 Patent Infringing Products"). Upon information and belief, the '527 Patent Infringing Products include, without limitation, Defendant's “Outag Bottle Insulator.” 

Bottle Keeper asserted the “continuing infringement has inflicted and, unless restrained by this Court, will continue to inflict great and irreparable harm upon BottleKeeper. 

BottleKeeper has no adequate remedy at law, and is entitled to preliminary and permanent injunctions enjoining Defendant from engaging in further acts of infringement.” 

Blue Marble ultimately chose not to defend its actions, and the dispute was settled out of court on December 28, 2017. 

In the Consent Judgment, Blue Marble admitted infringing on Bottle Keeper’s patent, and agreed not to contest the “validity of the patent action”. 

The offending site, “truehomebliss.com”, was subsequently taken offline—although only temporarily, it appears. 

As you can see in the screen grab below (taken this morning), like Mariah Carey, “truehomebliss.com” may be on the comeback trail. 

Tomorrow, the second installment in this exclusive investigation (including a comprehensive list of those 90+ sites), only from Glistening, Quivering Underbelly! 

(NOTE: Amazon, through its Media Relations office, declined to comment for this story, and an attorney representing Blue Marble Products, LLC did not respond to my request for comment and clarification.)