Beck’s the attorney heading up the class action filing against Yelp.As noted earlier today, Yelp is in the legal frying pan for, as Jason Sheehan puts it, “pretty much the definition of extortion, just with a nice internet-age twist.”Yelp is being targeted in a class action lawsuit brought by a Southern California veterinary hospital which claims Yelp would only agree to scrub negative reviews from its site if the hospital agreed to pony up $300 per month to make them disappear. The lead attorney in the case is a Miamian named Jared Beck, who, come to think of it, looks a lot like what the Subway Jared would look like if he grew a modest beard.And Beck, who no doubt hopes to herd as many plaintiffs into his suit as attended the NBA All-Star Game, is a man of tough talk, reports Miami New Times, a sister paper of ours. “Our client is a veterinary hospital in Long Beach,” says Beck. “They came with an issue that a number of negative postings were there about them. Flat-out falsehoods. They contacted Yelp directly. ‘What can you do about these negative reviews?’ they asked. ‘The content is completely false.’ The response from Yelp was that, ‘We can do this for you if you enter into an advertising contract for $300 a month for 12 months. We can manipulate the content. We can bury them so the visitors won’t see them.’ They demonstrated this to our client, who decided it was unethical and wanted no part of it.”We looked into the situation further. We realized it wasn’t a rogue sales rep, but a company-wide practice.We feel that filing this as a class action is the way to go. Since filing it, we have been inundated with calls from around the country by people claiming the same kind of conduct. We expect to be adding a number of other businesses to that lawsuit as representatives. We have received dozens and dozens of calls.”