iharris

Background: My wife works as an administrator at a Canadian cosmetic surgery clinic. The physician, Dr. C., is quite successful and is ranked #1 in our city on sites like RateMD.

Yesterday, she was cold-called by an SEO startup in an attempt to sell her a revamped website and SEO services. He said they had already designed a placeholder website, and that he would personalize it for them if the clinic would purchase their services. She politely refused.

Out of curiosity, her colleague, J, called the phone number on this fictional web site. J pretended to be a potential client and asked to schedule a consultation. The other party said "The doctor is currently busy; I'll check with him and call you back." J asked which physician she would be seeing. He gave her the name of Dr. C (the physician at J's clinic!) along with his background and credentials (gleaned from the bio on Dr. C's website). When pressed for the clinic's location, they gave J a (fake) address in Chinatown.

My wife then called the SEO company to complain that they seemed to be impersonating a legitimate clinic in order to sell SEO services (she did not mention J's call). The person she spoke to (listed as one of co-founders) became very rude. He denied that they were doing anything wrong and huffed that "If you don't want to grow your Web presence then we don't want your business!"

I believe that this is an attempted "growth hack" and not an outright scam, but they are taking it too far. Using a real physician's identity, even in a placeholder website, can damage his reputation, not to mention displacing him as #1 in Google search results for our city.

HN, do you have any thoughts on what action my wife can take to stop this behavior?

Update 1: Interestingly, the fake clinic domain name is VERY similar (one letter difference) to another, legitimate clinic in the city.

Update 2: Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons is in contact with wife's clinic. Preparing to unleash the hounds, no doubt.