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According to Rick DeBruhl, Chief Communications Officer of the State Bar of Arizona, Attorney Daniel Warner is currently under investigation by the Arizona Bar. The Arizona Bar is also considering whether to launch an investigation on Warner’s partner, Attorney Aaron Kelly, in which we will cover in a follow-up story.

This investigation may have been prompted by a formal complaint filed by Eugene Volokh, a frequent contributor to the Washington Post.

In an article published recently in the Washington Post, Volokh describes how Attorney Daniel Warner and his partner Aaron Kelly have engaged in litigation that seems to be fraudulent. The purpose of the lawsuits? To “trick” Google into removing negative articles and comments from their search results about people accused of very serious crimes and other misdeeds.

Eugene Volokh wrote an article last year describing how certain lawyers and their clients are using less-than-legal methods to remove damaging information from Google’s search results. As a result of his discoveries, he began investigating Daniel Warner and Aaron Kelly’s connections to alleged court fraudster Richart Ruddie, publishing his findings here.

We are going to break down the details of the alleged fraud that has taken place here, and will dig a little deeper into a few connections that were not fully made in the Washington Post article.

Let’s start with Aaron Kelly and Daniel Warner. These two, through their firm Kelly/Warner Internet Law, specialize in “internet defamation law and reputation management.”

On their website, KellyWarnerLaw.com, they state:

“As one of the first firms to concentrate on Internet reputation legalities, Kelly / Warner has assisted hundreds of businesses and individuals with various online defamation challenges. We represent businesses, professionals, and persons who’ve been unfairly disparaged online.”

On their website, they also mention that the truthfulness of the “defamation” is not always important. “You’ve heard the saying:  ‘it’s not defamation if it is true.’ And yes, for the vast majority of slander and libel lawsuits, this adage holds true – but not always.”

It would be hard to dispute that both Warner and Kelly advertise themselves as experts at internet defamation. They imply as much and claim to know exactly what processes to take when removing content from Google.

“We know how to get disparaging, negative comments removed from the Web – quickly.” - Daniel Warner & Aaron Kelly

The rapid way that information is shared, re-shared, and spun across the internet has resulted in the rise of attorneys that specialize in “removals” of internet defamation from Google. The services provided by these law firms has become more important than ever to large corporations and public figures.