We’ve seen plenty of kooky schemes for tweaking a website’s search-engine performance, but online merchant Vitaly Borker took it to such a level that it appears he’s a shoe-in for a special prize all his own: prison time.

As described by the New York Times last week, Borker was convinced that Google’s inscrutable algorithm that determines a website’s search engine rankings could not distinguish between praise and complaints. According to his website optimization strategy, Borker embraced the old chestnut that there's no such thing as bad pr and took it a step futher. He figured that even negative postings translated into buzz that helped push his business, DecorMyEyes, higher in search results and increased his sales.

According to police reports, Borker set about menacing his customers with disturbing threats of violence. He is now being held without bail, charged with one count each of mail fraud, wire fraud, making interstate threats and cyberstalking.

Writes the NY Times: It is unclear if Mr. Borker was right about the cause of DecorMyEyes’ surprisingly strong showing in online searches. But last week, Google published a post on its official blog stating that it had changed its search formula so that companies were penalized if they provided customers with what it called “an extremely poor user experience.”