A Brooklyn man who terrified customers of his online eyewear store with threats of violence, including rape, was sentenced on Thursday to four years in federal prison and ordered to pay nearly $100,000 in restitution and fines.

Vitaly Borker, 36, who owned and operated DecorMyEyes from his home in Sheepshead Bay, pleaded guilty in May 2011 to charges of fraud and sending threatening communications. He admitted that he had scared dissatisfied customers with phone calls and e-mails, in some cases vowing rape, murder or dismemberment, according to prosecutors.

Mr. Borker was the subject of a November 2010 article in The New York Times in which he claimed that frightening consumers was a way to generate Internet publicity about his business, which purportedly elevated his profile in Google searches, generating more traffic and revenue. His theory was that any kind of online chatter lifted DecorMyEyes in Google’s rankings.

A few days after the article was published, Google announced on its blog that the company was “horrified” by Mr. Borker’s strategy and in response had already tinkered with its algorithm so that “being bad is, and hopefully will always be, bad for business in Google’s search results.”