War of words erupts between lawyers for Petito and Laundrie families over Yelp page

Yelp users flooded the page with negative reviews calling Bertolino "scum" and "disgusting" for not making his client available to talk to authorities after Petito was reported missing earlier this month.

News 12 Staff

Sep 22, 2021, 11:04 PM

Updated 1,190 days ago

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A Yelp page belonging to Steven Bertolino, the attorney representing Brian Laundrie has erupted into a war of words between him and the lawyer for Gabby Petito's family.
Yelp users flooded the page with negative reviews calling Bertolino "scum" and "disgusting" for not making his client available to talk to authorities after Petito was reported missing earlier this month.
Cyber security expert Adam Schwam says when it comes to Yelp, reviewers can say whatever they want.
"You can't monitor what's happening on those pages," says Schwam. "From moment to moment almost anything can be posted, you have to review it. There are alerts when new posts come in and that's unfortunate that this happened."
Things got more heated when the Petito family attorney, Richard Stafford, sent a letter demanding that Bertolino remove pictures of Gabby that were on his Yelp age or any other social media pages. The image that appeared may have been uploaded by a Yelp user and was removed.
Bertolino says that Yelp has shut down his page.
In a statement to News 12, Bertolino says, "I would certainly agree with Mr. Stafford that any such post he is referring to should be removed but advise him that I have no control over that yelp site."
Schwam agrees that was the right move.
"You have the ability to stop it for fraudulent and unique activity for a temporary period of time, some people pull down reviews others don't," says Schwam.
Stafford had said that the family tried to remove their daughter's picture from the Yelp page and were informed that only the business owner could add or remove pictures.
Bertolino also says he has "not advertised or sought business in more than 20 years and would certainly not use this case to drum up any business."