Cedar Rapids company must halt deceptive practices and refund customers

CEDAR RAPIDS - A Cedar Rapids company will be required to change deceptive business practices and pay $100,000 to people who made charitable donations - often unknowingly - when subscribing to the company's services online.

In a settlement with the Iowa Attorney General's Office, Newspaper Archive Inc. is barred from using a pre-checked box on its website to collect donations for Global Way Makers, a charity linked to the company founder's wife.

The company also must stop automatically renewing subscriptions and alert subscribers to price increases, among other terms of the consent judgment signed Thursday by a Polk County judge.

'I'm very glad to hear that the state of Iowa is holding NewspaperArchive.com accountable for their actions,” said Kerry Scott, an Albuquerque, N.M., genealogist who ripped the company in a May 2, 2014, post on her blog, www.cluewagon.com. 'It sounds like this will go a long way toward ensuring that genealogists who choose to do business with this company will be able to make informed decisions about their purchase.”

The Iowa Attorney General started investigating Newspaper Archive Inc. in July 2014 after The Gazette reported subscribers like Scott were upset about being tricked into making donations to a charity they may not support. Subscribers also had filed more than 100 complaints with the state and the Better Business Bureau about the company not allowing customers to cancel services, refusing to grant refunds and failing to answer calls or emails.

Christopher Gill, formerly of Cedar Rapids, started Newspaper Archive Inc. in 1999 after buying the microfilm division of Cedar Rapids-based Crest Information Technologies in the mid-1990s. NewspaperArchive.com bills itself as the world's largest online newspaper database.

Unlike other companies that digitize legal files, church records or census reports, Newspaper Archive Inc. focused on scanning newspapers for online access. The company still has many Eastern Iowa clients, including The Gazette.

Newspaper Archive Inc. and related firm, Heritage Microfilm, had 80 employees at one point in Cedar Rapids. In June 2014, the company had a handful of staff members at 855 Wright Brothers Blvd., Suite 2A, but the office appeared to be vacant during a recent stop. The company moved most operations to Mexico in 2009.

Gill and his wife, Debora Leitner, now live in the Cayman Islands, the AG's office reported.

David Glenwinkel, a California tax preparer listed as the company's president in July 2014, signed the settlement Nov. 24.

Leitner founded Global Way Makers in California in 2003 as a religious corporation distributing humanitarian aid. In 2010, NewspaperArchive.com started using a pre-checked box online to gather donations, according to the AG.

'Some of the donations were routed to schools or other causes in the Cayman Islands, where the Gills now reside, or to other charities associated with Newspaper Archive,” the AG's office reported. 'Many consumers whose credit cards were charged for donations may not have chosen to donate, or would not have made the same choices the Gills made in re-distributing charitable donations.”

The settlement requires Newspaper Archive Inc. to pay $100,000 to the AG's office, which will refund customers unwittingly charged for donations. The company provided payment records that will be used for refunds, but anyone charged for donations who wants a refund may contact the Consumer Protection Division at consumer@iowa.gov or (515) 281-5926.

As part of the settlement, Newspaper Archive Inc. admits no wrongdoing, but agrees to make changes within 30 days. The donation box still is on the website, but it's no longer checked.