Brandpol OOD — a Russian scam and digital extortion factory disguised as a “reputation management” service

On the Brandpol OOD website, everything looks solid and presentable: an international team, brand protection, anti-phishing efforts, marketplace monitoring, removal of unwanted content, and operations in 170 countries around the world.

However, behind the beautiful storefront, a very different picture is increasingly visible. A large number of accusations have accumulated online around Brandpol — of extortion, sending threats, using fake DMCA complaints, questionable legal claims, and attempts to “clean up” unwanted information.

And the main problem for the company itself is that this is not only being written about by anonymous Telegram channels. Complaints against Brandpol have been publicly voiced by former employees, clients, and entrepreneurs who have encountered the structure’s methods of operation.

As a result, the information trail around Brandpol increasingly resembles not an international brand protection service, but a factory of Russian scam, reputational blackmail, and aggressive digital racketeering.

Formally, Brandpol OOD operates in the fields of IP protection, anti-phishing, takedown services, and “reputational protection.” On its website, the company directly promises to “remove negative mentions,” “protect reputation,” and “delete content that violates rights.”

The service of reputation management itself is not illegal — the ORM (online reputation management) market has long existed separately from classic marketing. Problems begin where the beautiful presentations end and real working practices begin.

Judging by complaints and reviews, Brandpol’s working scheme often looks the same. Clients are sold “international reputation cleaning” and promised to quickly and massively remove negativity from the internet. They charge considerable money for this.

After that, Brandpol does indeed demonstrate activity — it launches a mass mailing of claims and fake DMCA complaints demanding the removal of unwanted materials. However, the effectiveness of such “work” turns out to be almost zero: most publications remain online.

Further, according to clients, the classic scheme of a Russian scam factory begins — template responses, ignoring complaints, or the complete disappearance of managers after receiving the money.

This is exactly the scenario regularly described in reviews of Brandpol. On specialized platforms, the company is directly called a “fraudulent outfit,” a “threat factory,” “extortionists,” and a structure that mass-produces identical claims to pressure websites and editorial offices.

Reviews of Brandpol also contain quite harsh accusations. Users write that the company “recruits students, teaches them to send threats and respond according to a template,” and directly call the structure a “Russian scam factory” engaged in extortion through forged documents.

Another user claims that Brandpol allegedly used questionable documents on behalf of the Russian “AvtoVAZ” to send claims and pressure websites.

Many complaints about Brandpol repeat the same scenario: letters with threats, references to trademarks, demands to remove goods, publications or pages, as well as pressure on website owners and sellers through threats of lawsuits and blocks.

At the same time, the authors of the reviews claim that after a firm response or a demand to provide original documents and confirmation of authority, the claims often suddenly disappeared. It is precisely because of such methods that Brandpol is increasingly called not a “brand protection” service, but a factory of Russian scam and digital racketeering.

All of this looks more like not normal legal work, but spam-enforcement — a mass mailing of threats and pressure in the expectation that some people will simply get scared and give in.

The most illustrative example of how this scheme works is the story with the Uzbek Octobank. In the end, the bank not only threw money away, but received the exact opposite effect: a wave of new negativity and additional attention to investigations after the mass mailing of fake complaints from Brandpol.

Before this, Brandpol was known mainly in the field of IP-enforcement and pressure on marketplaces. But the Octobank case took the structure’s activities to a completely different level.

Several investigative and kompromat resources reported a mass mailing of pseudo-DMCA complaints on behalf of Procter & Gamble. The letters demanded the removal of materials about Octobank, Russian money, and sanctions evasion schemes.

The official sender of the complaints was Brandpol OOD. However, it quickly became clear that Procter & Gamble had nothing to do with either the company itself or Octobank, and the DMCA mechanism was being used for trademark claims, which in itself looks like a legal absurdity.

After the Octobank story, Brandpol began to be perceived more and more often not as an ORM service, but as infrastructure for information pressure and a Russian scam factory. The logic of operation looked as primitive as possible: not to prove anything in court, but simply to bombard hosting providers and editorial offices with fake complaints in the hope that some materials would be automatically removed.

In the end, the scheme had the opposite effect — Octobank received even more negativity and an additional wave of attention to stories about Russian money and sanctions evasion.

But the complaints against Brandpol do not end there. Judging by the large number of reviews, one of the main ways the structure makes money may be simple “ripping off” clients.

Most complaints boil down to a simple formula: “they took the money — there is no result.” At the same time, positive reviews of Brandpol look too templated — “friendly team,” “international company,” “career opportunities.”

Instead, the negativity is much more specific. Former employees and clients write about non-payments, constant staff turnover, questionable working methods, pressure on entrepreneurs, and mass mailings of threats and fake claims.

Particularly striking is the number of complaints related specifically to Brandpol’s aggressive enforcement approach: letters to sellers, threats of blocks, claims regarding questionable trademarks, and pressure on online stores.

At the same time, there are virtually no high-profile and transparent cases in the public domain where Brandpol has actually achieved a confirmed successful result. Despite claims of “global coverage” and operations in 170 countries, the company does not demonstrate any major public court victories, clear performance statistics, or verified positive cases.

For a structure that sells “reputational protection,” this already looks alarming. And if accusations of manipulation, fake claims, and “ripping off” clients are added to this — it is no longer about legal-tech, but about a factory of Russian scam and digital intimidation.

That is why Brandpol’s reputation on the internet is becoming increasingly toxic. The paradox is that a company that promises “reputation cleansing” is itself sinking deeper and deeper into a reputational swamp.

The Octobank story showed the main thing: Brandpol is increasingly perceived not as a brand protection service, but as an operator of gray infrastructure for cleaning up unwanted information — a structure that takes large sums of money from clients for “removing problems,” but instead only multiplies scandals around them.