Vitaly Borker

Biography

Borker told a reporter he was born in Russia and moved to the United States with his parents as a child. He graduated from Edward R. Murrow High School in 1989 and John Jay College of Criminal Justice in 1997, then began training as a police officer, working as a cadet in a unit patrolling Brooklyn public housing. He soon changed course and enrolled in a programming school where all classes were taught in English but all students and teachers were Russian immigrants; the school taught the bare minimum to get hired and helped fabricate résumés.

Borker first worked for Wall Street firms including Lehman Brothers, where he administered mutual fund shareholder accounts. Dissatisfied with pay, he took a friend up on an offer to create an online version of his eyeglass store, continuing to run it while at Lehman and drawing lawsuits from luxury brands for selling counterfeit glasses. He left Lehman shortly before its 2008 bankruptcy to go into online retail full time.

DecorMyEyes

Borker became disillusioned with customers he said lied and cost him money, and began responding rudely. Disparaging posts on review websites, to his amazement, put DecorMyEyes near the top of Google search results because the many links boosted its PageRank. He then purposely responded to dissatisfied customers with threats and insults. The site reportedly made him $3.2 million in one year.

Customers reported threats of physical violence, abuse, poor service, and overcharges; one customer said someone called his employer accusing him of dealing drugs. Borker showed a reporter that his site ranked higher than designer Christian Audigier's in a search on that name. In 2008 he posted as "Stanley" on Get Satisfaction thanking users for links and traffic, and when administrators suggested working things out, he replied with a photo of his middle finger.

Borker called dissatisfied customers "psychos" and questioned the notion that the customer is always right, saying "not here, you understand?" He likened himself to radio shock jock Howard Stern and said "I like the craziness."

2017: OpticsFast

Before his imprisonment, Borker had a friend, Michael Voller, create OpticsFast as a successor site, with another friend's name on incorporation papers; Borker reassumed control after release. Members of Voller's family told Borker's probation officer he worked for their family business and fabricated documentation.

Borker resumed selling cheap counterfeit luxury eyewear and insulting and harassing customers who complained, again aiming to drive traffic through online complaints, primarily on Yelp. He did not physically threaten customers but charged one for a mailing label after cancellation, later admitting this was fraudulent. Communications sent as "Becky S" were the source of many complaints; Judge Paul G. Gardephe noted customers described interactions that appeared "irrational if not imbalanced.

2021–22: Eyeglassesdepot

In 2021, a site named Eyeglassesdepot showed similar behavior: threats, insults, online doxxing including credit card numbers and security codes, and attempts to intimidate customers into paying for printed mailing labels. The company representative identified himself as "Arsenio." Trustpilot hosted many negative reviews; the owner followed up one complaint by claiming it was a fake review and posting the complainant's home address and cell phone number, and threatened to post multiple fake positive reviews for each negative one.

Trustpilot investigated and found almost half of the positive reviews were fake, removed them, and sent a cease-and-desist email, which received the reply "Yeah whatever." An observer noted that Eyeglassesdepot and OpticsFast look very similar and share common third-party tags, concluding that whoever created Eyeglassesdepot cloned OpticsFast. Borker's attorney denied that his client was Arsenio; any involvement would violate Borker's parole terms forbidding online retail.