Attorney General Files Lawsuit

An Attorney General, Lisa Madigan, has recently filed a lawsuit against a company in Illinois. The reason for the lawsuit is because the company apparently sold fake advertisement space to different businesses. These advertisement spaces did not actually exist which means the company is accused of fraud.

In the lawsuit, Lena Lockwood and Julia Drahos are named as operating a business, Yellow Page Quick Reference Index, in which they sold fake advertisement space to different local directories. These two women misled many of their customers by making them believe that they had some sort of affiliation with the actual Yellow Pages director and its providers, according to WLS 890 AM.

There have been many business in various counties, including Will, Kendall and Winnebago county, that have made reports of falling for their scheme, losing thousands of dollars along the way. Many small businesses believed they were getting the advertisement they needed to help their business grow and expand when actually, that just wasn’t the case.

Attorney General Lisa Madigan says, “Small businesses are already struggling in this difficult economy.” She also says, “The last thing business owners need is to be targeted for false advertising opportunities that clearly have no benefit.”

The Yellow Page Quick Reference Index business was developed in 1996 and seemed to fall apart by 1998. However, although the company fell apart and actually dissolved in the late 90’s, these two women, Lockwood and Drahos, continued to do fraudulent business with customers by using the company name all the way up until 2008.

These two women promised advertisement on the covers of Yellow Pages. Business owners believed that their advertisements would be seen by plenty of the local consumers. This was a promise that was never kept and was actually constantly broken.

The way these two women operated was to target small businesses that were actually struggling. They would draw them in buy talking to them about cover advertisements and how beneficial these advertisements could be for their business. They would charge fees of hundreds of dollars and constantly misled their customers.

Customers have made claims that they often felt a lot of pressure to purchase advertisement space from these women and that they were rushed into doing so and signing the appropriate documents without having enough time to review the documents fully. Customers have also said that they received copies of the documents that were very hard to read, making it hard for them to understand what the contract entailed.

The defendants, Lockwood and Drahos, consistently failed to place advertisements on the covers of the Yellow Pages. And, when the covers were actually made, they were of such poor quality, it was definitely not worth the money that these customers were putting out for such services.