MARION, Wayne County — News10NBC Chief Investigative Reporter Berkeley Brean uncovered a growing problem with fake garage door repair websites that has plagued one local company for six years.
In 2020, Bryan Lousley got an angry call from a customer. She thought she was dealing with his company, Marion Garage Door.
“And so when she called I said ‘ma’am, I don’t know who’s there but it’s not us,” Lousley said.
This is how it works
Like thousands of people, the customer clicked on a fake garage door repair website with a local number. The websites look professional and appear at the top of search results because scammers pay Google, but the work can be shoddy and the price is usually doubled.
Brean: “So there was a garage door repair crew on site.”Bryan Lousley, Marion Garage Door: “With California plates.”Brean: “California plates. Claiming they were you.”Lousley: “Claiming they were us.”
This spring, security cameras caught an unmarked truck with California plates at the customer’s home in Charlotte. The repairman showed up 15 minutes prior to a scheduled appointment with a repairman from Tracy Door, an established garage door company in Rochester.
A camera outside a home in Walworth, Wayne County captured an unmarked truck with no front plates.A sting by a real garage door company outside Buffalo recorded a repairman who showed up in an unmarked minivan.
Why is this a crime?
“Why do you think what’s going on is a crime?” Brean asked.“Because they’re faking, they’re portraying themselves as a company that they’re not,” Lousley said.
Tracey Hawkins is known as Tracey the Safety Lady. From her home in Kansas City, she says News10NBC’s reporting exposes a pattern of a growing threat — fake repair websites built in seconds by artificial intelligence.
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“So someone is taking a legitimate website and they’re duplicating it. And with AI it is way too easy to do that,” Hawkins said.
The problem has gotten worse over the past six years. Lousley says every month he finds 10 to 30 fake repair websites using his company’s name.
Lousley says when he finds these fake websites he contacts Google and they take them down in about 72 hours, but only because his company has a trademark. Without that trademark, Google won’t do it.
How to protect yourself
To protect yourself, scroll past the sponsored sites on Google. Then use whois.com, which will tell you when the website was created. For instance, Marion Garage Door’s website started in 2015, while the fake websites were made in the last 12 months. To test it, copy and paste the web address in the search box on the top banner where it says “Enter domain or IP.”
News10NBC Investigates: Marion, Wayne County garage door company finds up to 30 fake websites using its name every month WHEC.com.
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