Has Couri and Scamraiders.com scammed News Channel 3 and KESQ.com?

Reporter Emilie Voss of News Channel 3 and KESQ.com reported on December 4, 2009 that James C. Couri's website Scamraiders.com receives 1.5 million hits per month and that it is the go-to website to learn about scams.

Significantly, News Channel 3 did not report that Couri is a twice convicted felon, is subject to a lifetime ban of securities law violations, is a prolific and abusive pro se litigant, is a  legally declared nuisance (resulting from his campaign of harassing letters, telephone calls and verbal threats to a tenant and the family from which he rented an apartment), is heavily in debt, is described by his mother as a ruthless, amoral, liar, in need of psychiatric help, who maintains his lifestyle by cheating others, is accused by a California notary public of forging her signature on 33 of Couri's court affidavits in 2009, and is currently being sued for $8M for fraud in NYC. This information may be found from a Google search of his name. Naturally, the Scamraiders website which is desperately in need of credibility, prominently displays the KESQ news story.

Contrary to Couri's claims, Compete.com reports that the number of website hits are nowhere near the 1.5 million reported by Emilie Voss. For example, in October and November 2009, the number of hits were 722 and 408, respectively. Further, the most hits in a month was in August 2009 when there were 2,925. If Couri so grossly misrepresented the volume of traffic to his website, what else did he misrepresent? Finally, a review of the Scamraiders website found that many of the third-party posts were by spammers or by scam artists themselves.

This is where Channel 3 News and KESQ.com suggest their viewers and website readers go for help? They owe it to their consumers to set the record straight.

According to Compete.com, the number of hits generated by Scamraiders.com are as follows:

293 June 2009
297 July 2009
2,925 August 2009
2,454 September 2009
722 October 2009
408 November 2009

EDITOR'S NOTE: KESQ.com removed the television broadcast video from its website on December 14, 2009, at approximately 4:00 pm. KESQ.com, however, over my objection, left the print version of the story on it's website.

To contact KESQ-TV write or call:
Bob Smith
Director of News and Promotion
KESQ-TV/KDFX-TV/KCWQ-TV/KUNA-TV
42-650 Melanie Place
Palm Desert, California 92211
(760) 340-7091