Scorpion Wants $32,000 or They Kill This Roofer’s Website

Bill and Mona Stillwell own Hippo Roofing in Melbourne, Florida. They hired Scorpion to run their digital marketing, paying around $13,000 a month. They trusted Scorpion to manage their Google Ads, Local Service Ads, website, and SEO.

After months of declining sales, they reached out to me for help. I referred them to Ethan Van De Hey at Roof Launch Marketing, who specializes in roofing. Ethan ran a full audit and found that Scorpion had not logged into the ad account in months. Nobody had touched the Local Service Ads the entire year. Out of the $13,000 monthly spend, only about $4,000 was going toward actual advertising. The rest was agency fees.

Refused to look at the data

When the audit results were presented, Scorpion was offered the chance to review the findings and fix the issues at no charge. We even offered to train their team. Instead of accepting the help, their account manager Mario Narang demanded immediate payment and refused to look at the data.

This is exactly why every business owner needs to know how to audit their own marketing. In this video, I walk through the five steps you should take to protect yourself from situations like this.

The $32,000 shakedown

When Bill and Mona formally requested to cancel their contract and asked for their website files, Scorpion refused to hand them over.

Mario claimed that Mona and their office manager Chrissy had agreed to pay the full balance of $32,000.

Mona denied this in writing. She never agreed to that amount.

Mario then began aggressively calling and texting Mona multiple times trying to pressure her into paying. He called the office trying to reach her and Chrissy.

When I asked him to stop bombarding her and communicate through the group email thread so everything would be on the record, he continued pushing.

Holding the website hostage

Scorpion responded with a final ultimatum. Pay $8,801 by end of day June 22 and the remaining $23,403 by June 28, or they would take the website offline and pursue the balance. They also required a signed confidential settlement agreement.

A small business that was already hurting because of poor marketing performance is now being threatened with losing their website. Scorpion is holding the website files hostage and demanding payment for services that were never properly delivered. They set an artificially tight 48 hour deadline and are threatening real economic damage to a business that depends on its website to generate leads and revenue.

Being held hostage is bad enough. Demanding the ransom in 48 hours or they kill the victim is absolutely savage.

Locking clients into contracts they cannot escape

Scorpion’s contracts require completing a full 12 months of billing before they will release website files. They use auto-renewal clauses that lock clients in unless they cancel within a narrow window. When clients try to leave, Scorpion ties the release of the website to full payment of the disputed balance. This means even when the work was never done, the client still cannot get their own website without paying.

As Mona discovered, even getting access to their own Local Service Ads account required fighting with Scorpion because Scorpion held ownership. When she tried to give access to her new team, she could not because Scorpion controlled it.

$13,000 a month and only $4,000 went to ads

This is one of the most common problems I see with agencies. Hippo Roofing was paying approximately $13,000 a month in total marketing costs. Only about $4,000 of that was going toward actual advertising spend. The remaining $9,000 was absorbed by management and agency fees.

This is not unique to Scorpion. I see this pattern across the industry. But when you combine inflated fees with zero account activity and then threaten to shut down the website when the client tries to leave, that is a different level.

Nobody was watching the account

When the Local Service Ads account was finally accessed, nobody at Scorpion had ever rated a single lead.

Nobody had cleaned up the account. Nobody had done anything to optimize it the entire year they managed it. The account was a ghost town.

This is not an isolated incident

I have been through this exact situation hundreds of times with agencies like Scorpion. The pattern is always the same. Lock the client into a long contract, collect fees while doing minimal work, and when the client tries to leave, hold the website and accounts hostage until they pay up.

Other agencies named after dangerous creatures like Rhino, Relentless, and Viper have done the same thing. You know what scorpions do, right? They sting you.

I already know what the next few acts in the circus are. This is not my first rodeo. I know all the excuses. I have gone through it many times. It is Groundhog Day for me.

What you can do

If you are a contractor and your marketing agency is not delivering results, you have the right to ask for the data. Run an audit. Look at whether anyone is actually logging into your accounts and doing the work. If they get defensive when you ask to see the numbers, that tells you everything you need to know.

Do not wait until your website is being held hostage to start asking questions. Get admin access to every platform today. Check the change history. Compare what the agency says they spent versus what was actually spent. These are simple steps that take 30 seconds and do not require any technical expertise.

If you work at Scorpion or know their CEO, tell them to do the right thing. Release the website files. Stop threatening small businesses. The data speaks for itself and the truth is an absolute defense.

I am publishing the full audit, the email chain, and the video so everyone can see exactly what happened. I will see this through, whatever it takes.