Tapstone aka Tapstone.com, Tapstone Holdings, LLC,, and Tapstone Media, with Jonathan David listed as CEO/Founder, is used as an example here because Telic Interactive was listed as a spammer. Jonathan David and Jeff Morgan were officers at Telic Interactive.
We are in possession of email correspondence naming Telic Interactive also known as Tapstone Holdings, LLC, and a partner in San Diego, as spammers.
Jeff Morgan and Jonathan David tried to create a sheen of respectability. They misrepresented the services of Tapstone and Telic for the purpose of contracting with legitimate agencies and brands even though they knew their junk mail had little or no chance of achieving the business objectives of these agencies and brands.
To see Tapstone listed as Telic Interactive, click here.
To see Telic Interactive listed as a spam operation, click here.
To see Telic on the ROKSO list, click here.
Jeff Morgan also known as Jeffrey Morgan and Jeffrey Perry Morgan, pictured here, was the Founder and CEO of Telic Ventures also known as Telic Interactive, and simply Telic.com.
Jonathan David was a longtime Vice President at Telic and Mr. Morgan’s right hand man.
What other names was Tapstone Holdings known as?
Telic Interactive, Adaptive Media, Inc., AIM RESNER/MARKETINGOPS, Current Technologies, LLC, Digitalbuildbrick, FlashJack Marketing, LightWave Ventures, Limewave Technologies, Linewave Technologies, Morgan Family Trust, Onfourtesstech, Pete’s Hosting, Telic Ventures, Inc., Teleinteractive Telemarketing, WaveWordSolutions, WebTech Designs, and Zexochip Hosting.
From here on in, for the sake of convenience, the companies will be referred to as Tapstone and Telic or Telic Interactive.
Where did you get this information?
We’ve aggregated publicly available data for the purpose of dissecting a proven spam operation and it’s apparent rebrand. This is part 2 in a series. If you haven’t done so please read part 1 titled “Did Tapstone spin off from a spammer?” or continue on to read part 3, “Tapstone and Telic. Spam operation?” The links are located at the bottom of the page.
Why set up dummy corporations?
It seems that all of the advertising Telic Interactive and Jeff Morgan (Jeffery Perry Morgan) did was based on spam. Telic Interactive went to a lot of trouble to set up dummy corporations to try and hide its activities. The spam was sent mainly through large IP blocks leased in Eastern Europe, and thousands of nonsense domains were used. These are techniques intended hide “identity” and to avoid spam filters. This is called snowshoe spamming. A company that does this is known as a snow shoe spam operation. More about that here, Snowshoe Spamming.
Based on legal rulings, spammers can be considered to be violating CAN-SPAM or other California laws if the email “From” headers do not identify the sender of the email. Read more here, No generic from lines.
Since morally isolated people involved with operations like this know they are spamming; they don’t want, for example, people to see “Telic Interactive” listed as the sender. As a result these companies go to great lengths to set up dummy shell corporations with dozens of “trade names” to be used for registering domains. That way if anyone complains, the sender is always seems to be a “real” company that doesn’t have obvious ties back to the spam operation.
They were sloppy operators
However, in the opinion of people far more knowledgeable that us, Telic Interactive, Jonathan David, Jeff Morgan, and their partners were sloppy about making sure everything was registered properly — meaning they were probably violating laws just as often as not.
Also, using fake names as the Registrant when registering a domain indicates deception, if not outright illegal activity.
Their attempts to send “legal” spam made it easy to track them. However they made numerous mistakes along the way, which means much of their email was not only “spam” to most people but was probably “illegal” too.
What is considered “spam”?
On the definition of “Spam” itself, the most important aspect is that the email recipient has given explicit, verifiable permission for the sender to contact them. A spammers excuse of “they must have signed up somewhere” should not be acceptable.
What’s wrong with what Telic Interactive aka Tapstone Holdings did?
For one thing, a lot of these schemes to collect email addresses are not using “confirmed opt-in” which usually means people can give them any email address belonging to anyone, and they will consider that address “opted in”, even if it was entered by mistake or out of malice.
Also, “opt-in” permission should not be transferable. A lot of these affiliate places will claim they get permission to share email addresses with their partners. If you follow this line of thinking to it’s logical conclusion then in reality their partners, would be partners of partners, and so forth until eventually everyone is a partner of everyone in the marketing world. Explore the word “partner” when it’s used in a pitch. Ask who the partners are. Don’t accept generalization and ambiguity.
While not “illegal”, look at the methods they are using to send email. Registering thousands of domains to dozens of different identities, sending through tens of thousands of IP addresses. The only reason for doing this is to try and get around email filters. They know their email is not wanted but try to get it delivered at all costs. No legitimate email sender ever needs to do any of this.
To be clear, while most of what they were doing was “legal”, it would still be considered spam by most people, and should probably be considered low-quality dirt data.
For more information:
Click here to read part 1, “Did Tapstone spin off from a spammer?”
Click here to read part 3, “Tapstone and Telic. Spam operation?”
Click here to read part 4, “Does Tapstone sell data of this quality?”
For pictures of these paragons of integrity:
Click here, Find the Fraud
In our next article we’ll take a look at how it should work and more. Direct communications to The Narrator should be made through the contact link at the bottom of this page.