A copyright notice sent to Google on September 17, 2026 asks it to remove from search results a report on this site about Anthony Pellegrino, his brother Michael Pellegrino and their firm Goldstone Financial Group. The notice was filed by Simple SEO Group, a Chicago-area marketing agency, and names Anthony Pellegrino as the principal on whose behalf it acted.
Its entire claim is one sentence: The photo being used on the webpage is Goldstone Property. As the original copyrighted work, it lists a single address, hannahhowell.com/wp-content/uploads/anthony-pellegrino-goldstone-financial-group.jpg. That file sits on this publication’s own server. The notice identifies no page where Goldstone ever published the image. And the URL it asks Google to delist is not the photograph but the whole article, including its account of a settled order from the Securities and Exchange Commission.
What the notice targets
The report at issue, published in May 2026, describes a settled SEC order dated March 28, 2022. The Commission found that Goldstone and the Pellegrinos sold about $37M of unregistered 1 Global Capital notes to roughly 445 clients between May 2017 and June 2018 and collected $1.6M in referral fees they did not disclose. Michael Pellegrino was permanently barred from the industry. Anthony Pellegrino and the firm were censured and paid civil penalties.
None of that is anyone’s property. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act protects creative expression, and a notice about a photograph can reach, at most, the photograph. A notice framed around an image but aimed at the page address asks Google to remove a regulatory record along with it.
A record of takedown attempts since 2023
This is not the first attempt to clear Goldstone material from search.
In August 2025, UCLA law professor emeritus Eugene Volokh reviewed dozens of DMCA requests filed with Google from 2023 to 2025 against material critical of the firm and concluded that many had no apparent foundation. One claimed that a page about the Pellegrinos infringed an unrelated article about a Kentucky murder exoneree. Others targeted a court filing on PacerMonitor and a story in the Cook County Record. Volokh also checked court records for a purported court order sent to a critic’s web host and found it did not appear to be genuine.
Two weeks later he reported a further request asking Google to deindex government records: Anthony Pellegrino’s SEC adviser record, Michael Pellegrino’s FINRA BrokerCheck page, the SEC order itself, a Florida class settlement order naming Goldstone, and an Idaho order from that state’s Department of Finance. Pellegrino’s adviser record states that Idaho found he recommended an unregistered security and made an unsuitable recommendation. Volokh noted that this particular request did not appear fraudulent in itself and that its sender was not identified.
Goldstone and Pellegrino have denied sending or authorizing the earlier DMCA requests or the purported order. According to correspondence Volokh reviewed, the firm said it had no knowing affiliation with any of the submitters.
The lawsuit over the same allegation
On June 27, 2025, Goldstone and Anthony Pellegrino filed a federal lawsuit in the Northern District of Illinois against FinanceScam.com, a site that had accused Pellegrino and his reputation managers of filing fake copyright notices and forging a court order. The complaint alleged that FinanceScam published AI-generated defamatory content and then charged its subjects to remove it.
Judge Sunil Harjani granted a restraining order finding the plaintiffs likely to succeed on claims including defamation per se, and ordered FinanceScam to take down statements alleging the conduct. The defendant did not appear likely to contest the case. Volokh criticised the order on the ground that the takedown allegations it suppressed appeared to have some basis in the Lumen record.
That leaves an unusual public position. A court has restrained one publisher from saying that Pellegrino was behind deceptive takedowns, while the takedowns themselves remain documented and unexplained.
The agency that filed it
Every earlier request Volokh examined was either anonymous or filed by a sender whose connection to Goldstone was unclear. The September 17 notice is not. It carries the name of an identifiable agency and names Anthony Pellegrino as its principal.
Simple SEO Group was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Chicago, a short drive from Goldstone’s offices in Oakbrook Terrace. Its website says it has more than 30 staff, has worked for over 400 brands and is led by Brendan Egan. Most of what it sells is conventional search and web design work.
It also sells reputation management, and the page describing that service is specific about what it handles: bad reviews, lawsuits, bankruptcies, divorces, or other negative information. It says its tactics can bury damaging content and in some cases even have that content completely removed from the internet. Asked in its own FAQ how it resolves negative search results, the agency lists removal first, removal from search results second, and burying the material only if both fail.
A regulatory order is the kind of negative information that page describes. The order cannot be removed at source, because the SEC publishes it. What the agency sent Google instead was a copyright claim over a photograph, attached to the address of a page reporting that order.
A DMCA notice requires the sender to state, under penalty of perjury, that it is authorized to act for the owner of the work. Federal law makes a knowing material misrepresentation in a takedown notice actionable. The record reviewed here establishes that Simple SEO Group told Google it acted for Pellegrino. It does not establish what instructions he gave, or whether anyone at the agency checked where the photograph came from before naming this site’s own server as the source.
Conclusion
A firm the SEC censured, whose co-founder it barred, has had an agency acting in its CEO’s name ask Google to remove a report on that order, on the strength of a photograph and a source address that points back to the report’s own publisher.
Anthony Pellegrino has said he played no part in the anonymous notices that preceded this one. This notice arrives with his name on it, sent by an agency that advertises removing lawsuits and other negative information from search. Whatever the status of the image, the SEC order, the Idaho finding and the $37M in unregistered notes are public records, and a copyright claim over a photo gives no one a right to remove them from search.
Disclosure: this report concerns a takedown notice filed against HannahHowell.com, the publication on which it appears. The notice details are drawn from the Lumen Database record. Goldstone Financial Group, Anthony Pellegrino and Simple SEO Group have been invited to comment, and any response will be published.
