Is Adam Dicker a criminal? You decide.

[S-B]

This story starts with DNF; a barren wasteland that once was a leading forum within the domain industry. While the forum itself played a huge role in propagating the myth that is Adam Dicker, the story really begins with DNF College in the summer of 2011.

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Updates / Reports
These are in no particular order.

• Report by headsupp (Resolved)
  • Relevant Videos
  • Reply to Adam
  • Update: Resolved
  
  
• Report by LannyB (Unresolved)
  • Response
    • Follow-up Questions
  
  
• Report by domainesque (Unresolved)
  • Update: Unresolved
  • Report Details
  • Update: Waiting on Refund
  
  
• Report of Shane Cultra's friends (Unresolved)
  • Update: Unpaid
  
  
• Report by Jeff Markus (Dissatisfied)
  
  
• Report by simmplex (Resolved)
  • Refunded
  
  
• Report by Blenja_Man (Pending)
  • Voucher
  • Update: Work in Progress
  
  
• Report by RandysDomains (Resolved)
  • Resolved
  
  
• Report by swamismith (Unresolved)
  
  
• Report by Charlie (Unresolved)
  • Cover-up
  • Update: Unresolved
  
  
• Report by Jaqpot (Unresolved)
  
  
• Report by anon22339 (Unresolved)
  • Details
  
  
• Report by Joseph Peterson (Resolved)
  • Update: Unpaid after 8 days
  • Update: Paid
  
  
• Report by Frank Schilling (Resolved)
  • Update: Paid
  
  
• Report by Lonewolf5503 (Paypal Dispute)
  • Update: Website not delivered and no longer accessible
  • Update: Lonewolf5503 wins PayPal dispute
  
  
• Report by GermanRaven (Unresolved)
  • Update: Full story
  
  
• Report by ClaudeDauman (Unresolved)
  
  
• Report by bobsranch (Unresolved)
  • Details
  • Update: Legal Letter Received
  
  
• Report by Newby888 (Unresolved)
  
  
• Report by dougasd (Unresolved)

From what I understand, Adam still owes north of $33,000 to previous customers and business partners. As I receive more information, I will update this figure.

 

[DomainGist]

Consider this my only significant contribution to the case against Adam Dicker...

So, how did DNF get 125185 new members in one day in May of this year?

Show attachment 17066

So to put the idea that DNF had inflated numbers to bed, here's what I know.
I believe we had users in a group that were not showing in the overall user count so they were moved to a group that would show them. We certainly did not have 125,000 users sign up that day nor did I or anyone on staff type them all in manually. I hope that helps.

Allow me to first disclose that I own an established internet forum on advanced software so I am familiar with forum back ends. Invision, the software that I also use, also has a system of 'user groups' and 'permissions'.

Let me explain that I haven't simply done this to prove Adam Dicker to be a liar, as that wouldn't be a productive use of my time, I also own the domain motorforum.co.uk (you can verify that by looking at the whois details) and I've been considering looking into xenforo should I decide to build that out.

A fellow namepros user was kind enough to allow me admin access to look at the backend of his fresh xenforo install. It appears to be the exact software version being used by DNF. I've just spent over an hour looking through every single page under options, as well as 'applications', and 'tools', and could find no settings for the standard statistics module which would allow me to count or discount members from a specific user group.

I also played with user groups. I could find no means of discounting any specific user group from the member count.

The ONLY way I could see to reduce and subsequently increase the member count is to ban a user and then unban that user, in which case they go into the 'Banned Users' group - the one user group which doesn't show in the member count. Even that appears to require a cache being cleared or a rebuild/recount to impact on the member count.

Furthermore, I contacted a programmer who I know through the invision community who sold me a plugin for an old version of invision. I did so because I know he also codes his plugins for the xenforo platform. He also could not think of any backend settings which would exclude a member from the member count, apart from the banned user group.

Then you get the possibility that there was a bug or glitch in the software which was causing incorrect member counts to be displayed. Only, a thorough search of the xenforo support topics do not provide any evidence that this is a problem experienced by any other user.

I am open to Adam Dicker giving me a more thorough step-by-step explanation which shows me precisely how it is that a user group was excluded from the member count, and if he can do that I will log back in and attempt to replicate the issue again.

As things stand the only possibilities appear to be one of these:

1. There were 125,000 banned users of dnf who were all unbanned on the same day.
2. The membership statistics were purposely falsified in some way, via custom programming or a third party plugin/script.

Either of those scenarios bring about some serious ethical questions. I'm sure I'm not alone in considering option 2 to be the more likely scenario.

Like I said, I'm open to Adam Dicker proving that there is a setting in the backend which could exclude a user group from the member count which I could subsequently attempt to replicate, or an explanation as to why he unbanned 125,000 members in one day, but I'm not hopeful that I'd get one.

As things stand this completely rules out any possibility of me ever joining that forum, and I'm sure it will influence the decision of some others too. I wouldn't sign up to a forum owned by somebody who cannot be trusted to be honest, and in the unlikely event that scenario 1 happened here, I wouldn't want to share a forum with 125,000 people who were deemed dodgy enough to warrant a banning in the past.

 

[Adam Dicker]

So I did find out what happened here:

What was done was any user that had not confirmed their email address was changed to confirmed in the database so that people could receive site emails

Feel free to test this out as well.

 

[DomainGist]

So I did find out what happened here:

What was done was any user that had not confirmed their email address was changed to confirmed in the database so that people could receive site emails

Feel free to test this out as well.

I will test that out shortly, you may be on to something there.

 

[DomainGist]

So I did find out what happened here:

What was done was any user that had not confirmed their email address was changed to confirmed in the database so that people could receive site emails

Feel free to test this out as well.

I can confirm having tested that this explanation is feasible, you could have manually approved 125000 user accounts that haven't clicked a confirmation link in their email to confirm their registration.

Unfortunately this raises another question of ethics for me, by manually approving registrations which haven't been verified by the owner of the email address used aren't you potentially sending unsolicited email to many of them? The verification process exists for a reason, for the owner of the email account to confirm that they signed up for your service and consent to receiving your emails?

And I would have to question the wisdom of approving thousands of accounts which could have been created by spam bots!

Not to mention the fact that this would still give a dishonest reflection of the true number of real life members, if unverified accounts created by spam bots are approved then it is still an artificial inflation of true member numbers!

 

[Abdullah Abdullah]

So I did find out what happened here:

What was done was any user that had not confirmed their email address was changed to confirmed in the database so that people could receive site emails

Feel free to test this out as well.

So it is not a certain user group any more? Or are the users who have not verified their emails have their own group?

 

[DomainGist]

Webinvestments you are getting yourself all confused, I post to confirm that Adam Dicker may be telling the truth about his forum statistics and you press dislike?

 

[MasterOfMyDomains]

You doing all the dirty work for Shane now? Questions questions, they want answers? Are you getting into a new line of work,Pug?

Maybe Shane has a course on the darknet "how to get every question answered."

No guarantees though, but full of great advice

 

[Abdullah Abdullah]

@ WebInvestments , Nice of you to dislike my comment. So no questions allowed or what lol I said "
So it is not a certain user group any more? Or are the users who have not verified their emails have their own group?
"

I have been reading your posts and saw how you blindly supporting Adam but even with that , I never disliked any of your posts...hmmm... Maybe I should have done

 

[DomainGist]

You doing all the dirty work for Shane now? Questions questions, they want answers? Are you getting into a new line of work,Pug?

Maybe Shane has a course on the darknet "how to get every question answered."

No guarantees though, but full of great advice

Literally no idea what you are blabbering on about. The evidence of 125,000 members being added to dnf in one day didn't even come from Shane.

 

[HeyNow]

Why are you so keen to make this about other people? This is about Adam Dicker and the various people who feel like they were deceived out of time and/or money.

That's a fair question. First, let me say that just because I'm paranoid, that doesn't mean they're not out to get me.

The "other people" are supposed to be worthy of judgement of a participant's accomplishments, character, and benefit to the industry, among other things. After all, they are tasked with bestowing an industry award for Chrissake. Are the judges supposed to overlook ethically-challenged or perhaps criminal behavior? I would prefer they didn't.

There have been public record indications that IMHO Mr. Dicker wasn't perhaps truly worthy of any award or accolades, considering the negative nature of that public record. The UDRP decision was around 2006. The Godaddy TDNAM scandal was around 2008. This shit didn't pop up yesterday. There is, IMHO, certainly a trail of crumbs leading to the determination of character here. Did the judges overlook that? Are we to believe the judges didn't bother to scan the UDRP record to help in their decision? If they didn't bother to do their due-diligence before bestowing an award, then they contributed to the deception. If they did know about any ethically-questionable behavior, and still bestowed the award on a creep (subjective opinion), then that's even worse. Either way, they've lost credibility with me and probably others too. If you chose to continue to hold them in high esteem, I respect that, but cannot in good conscience agree with it.

 

[JudgeMind]

Well, as long as ethically-challenged individuals are part of that "Agenda" in the form of speakers, then there are those of us who will opt out just for that fact. Why in the world would anyone want to attend a domainer convention where one of the speakers is an individual who, while VP of TDNAM auctions at Godaddy, bid against Godaddy's customers. Here, don't take my work, read about it for yourself:

http://www.netpaths.net/blog/godaddy-unethical-domain-name-registrar/

http://www.wired.com/2008/06/godaddy-vp-caug/

http://domainnamewire.com/2008/06/20/expired-domain-services-let-employees-bid-against-customers/

http://guyro.typepad.com/blog/2008/06/godaddy-vp-caug.html

Those who participate in sleazy auction practices should be shunned, along with those who hold the scumbags in high esteem by holding them up as shining examples of what we should all aspire to.
What a joke. Too bad about that, 'cause there are some comparatively virtuous individuals also participating at Namescon. I'm surprised anyone from Namepros would participate there, considering at least one Namepros forum participant lost a domain to that Godaddy employee in a Godaddy TDNAM auction.

The stank sticks to whomever supports such nonsense.

Good read from this thread posted prior to Namescon. Generated quite a discussion..

 

[Domain Truth]

I don't see this posted on NamePros and it is yet another testament to the modus operandi of Adam Dicker.

http://www.quatloos.com/Q-Forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=8367&start=20

The thread mentions him by name and his extortion-like business RemoveMugshots.com. Just more unethical business practices and black hat seo. Honorable mention of Sahar Sarid also included.

 

[DomainGist]

That's a fair question. First, let me say that just because I'm paranoid, that doesn't mean they're not out to get me.

The "other people" are supposed to be worthy of judgement of a participant's accomplishments, character, and benefit to the industry, among other things. After all, they are tasked with bestowing an industry award for Chrissake. Are the judges supposed to overlook ethically-challenged or perhaps criminal behavior? I would prefer they didn't.

There have been public record indications that IMHO Mr. Dicker wasn't perhaps truly worthy of any award or accolades, considering the negative nature of that public record. The UDRP decision was around 2006. The Godaddy TDNAM scandal was around 2008. This sh*t didn't pop up yesterday. There is, IMHO, certainly a trail of crumbs leading to the determination of character here. Did the judges overlook that? Are we to believe the judges didn't bother to scan the UDRP record to help in their decision? If they didn't bother to do their due-diligence before bestowing an award, then they contributed to the deception. If they did know about any ethically-questionable behavior, and still bestowed the award on a creep (subjective opinion), then that's even worse. Either way, they've lost credibility with me and probably others too. If you chose to continue to hold them in high esteem, I respect that, but cannot in good conscience agree with it.

I was a guest at an industry awards show once (not domaining), a guest of somebody who was going to collect an award.

This 'winner', the person who gave me a free ticket for my seat at a 'VIP' table, was a CEO of a medium sized business.

Paid thousands for the table, then thousands more for a drinks tab, paid to get our tickets on 'guest list', probably paid for an album of photographs too. He paid it all simply because he wanted a dozen people he knew there to witness his success, because awards are all about vanity. An industry in themselves. The hosts of the awards show were making money, mainly from the people winning the awards.

Its just a bunch of people patting each other on the back telling themselves how great they are. It doesn't have to be as complex as you are making out, its actually very simple, its just people feeding eachothers egos and having a 'feel good' day.

 

[Domain Truth]

Below was a comment left on an interview between Adam Dicker and Michael Cyger about his reputation repair business. So poignant and suitable considering it was over 3 years ago. Michael Cyger claims in a subsequent comment that he had seen Dicker's financials confirming the $150k/mo claim. Wouldn't we all love to see that.

http://www.domainsherpa.com/reputation-repair/

Geppetto
May 30, 2012 at 9:41 AM
An interview about reputation.

Interview started with “Adam: The first month, I think, was about forty thousand dollars and last month, it was about a hundred and fifty thousand and the month before that was about a hundred and fifty thousand.”

Interview ended with “Adam: I set up eight people so far and each person is making over five thousand dollars a week…. That’s their commissions”

8 people all making over $5000 per week. 8 x $5000 = $40,000/week. At a 20% commission, the total sales are $40,000 x 5 = $200,000 per week. With 4.3 weeks in a month, $200,000 x 4.3 = $860,000 in monthly sales!

By those calculations, he made an additional $700,000 in sales between the beginning and the end of this interview.

The company was started in 2012, but their website claims “Reputation Repair Consulting Since 1992” and at least one of those glowing testimonials thanked them for amazing service in 2010.

Time travel really is possible.

Their first customer paid a sum of $6000 to have them contact a newspaper and say that his charges were dismissed, and $99/year to sign up for free Google Alerts.

What was that customer originally charged with, stupidity?

In a previous interview, Adam was asked “Michael: Have you sold a domain name in the seven figures?” and he answered “Adam: Yes but like I said I can’t talk about the exact price. Two or three but I can’t talk about them because of the non-disclosures.”

Two or Three. Would you remember a minor detail such as if you had sold 2 or 3 million dollar of anything?

Michael, your interviews are inspirational, but how concerned are you that they are truthful?

 

[Argentum]

Person who cheated once someone will do that for the lifetime as he erased all moral boundaries already. Unfortunately in our world a lot of people earning their money on bread in such way.

I wonder why no one create some website where all people can collect database of person and companies with whom is not recommended to deal? Such website can save millions of dollars which is spent on scammers.

 

[DomainGist]

Michael, your interviews are inspirational, but how concerned are you that they are truthful?

Concerned enough eventually to terminate his relationship with Adam Dicker.

I really see him as a bit of a victim in all of this to be honest. He is being tarnished by association.

The only accusation that can really be leveled at him is that he is a poor judge of character, but that can be applied to all of the victims who also put a lot of trust in Adam Dicker.

 

[Domain Truth]

Concerned enough eventually to terminate a relationship with Adam Dicker.

I really see him as a bit of a victim in all of this to be honest. He is being tarnished by association.

The only accusation that can really be leveled at him is that he is a poor judge of character, but that can be applied to all of the victims who also put a lot of trust in Adam Dicker.

Do you think he (Michael Cyger) has an obligation given all that has transpired to remove all those interviews that proclaim Adam Dicker as a domain and business guru to be inspired by and learned from? Maybe Cyger was in the dark like most of us but I'm sure he knows now. Breaking his association for future interviews was a good start though.

 

[DomainGist]

Do you think he (Michael Cyger) has an obligation given all that has transpired to remove all those interviews that proclaim Adam Dicker is a domain and business guru to be inspired by and learned from? Maybe Cyger was in the dark like most of us but I'm sure he knows now. Breaking his association for future interviews was a good start though.

I haven't given it too much thought, perhaps that is something you could ask him about directly by PM:

https://www.namepros.com/members/michael-cyger.979338/

http://www.domainsherpa.com/contact/

I do get it, you'd like to see Adam Dicker's videos removed because it will lessen his ability to attract newbies in the future, but I don't think that making Cyger a public target is the right way to go about that when you could try and have this conversation with him in private.

Its a lot to ask because that is a lot of his content which would need to be removed. He could potentially noindex it and hide it away in a corner of his site (so you have to search internally to find it).

But is it really in the interests of the domain world for it to be removed? If this saga drags on then it may be possible that there are some incriminating statements in those videos which will be of value in the future, perhaps there are videos which Adam Dicker would actually WANT to get rid of.

Its also a little unfair on all of the domainers who have featured in videos with him, to build their own profile, to have that exposure taken away because of the reputation of one of the other participants. And most of the videos are surely harmless, just comparing lists of domains and giving arbitrary values to them.

 

[Jen-Sin]

Anyone ever considered there could be obligations to advertisers and Michael could not just take down videos just like that?

 

[carob]

I wonder why no one create some website where all people can collect database of person and companies with whom is not recommended to deal? Such website can save millions of dollars which is spent on scammers.

http://trustpilot.com, http://ripoffreport.com, yelp, http://www.sitejabber.com/ - any other suggestions?

Check out the reviews here: https://clarity.fm/adamdicker

And anyone can use the hashtag #adamdicker on Twitter
https://twitter.com/adamdicker

It gets better
https://plus.google.com/+AdamDicker/posts

Instructions: http://www.theartofthename.com/thea...gle-plus-local-and-avoid-common-domain-scams/
says this:

Your Google Plus local page listing includes a view section. Encourage your satisfied customers to write a short testament about your business and ask them to post something on Google Plus, your local page for all to see. You wanna show them exactly how the process is done and maybe even email them or send them a step-by-step guide on how to find your page so they can post a positive review. If they wanna give you a negative review, there’s another secret for that later. I’ll just tell you that now. If you want to put a page or section on your menu bar for customer feedback, you put up a picture of a if they say bad and they don’t like your business and you take them to a page that says “Please tell us how we can fix this? Tell us what you like and tell us what you didn’t like so we can make improvements to satisfy you.” if they said they liked it, then you take them to a page that has a few things on it: a Facebook thing so they can like your page, a Twitter thing that they can like, a Pinterest ting they can like. All the social networking sites they can like, plus a way that they can review your site on Google Plus local pages so they can go and do that stuff. You’re not gonna go and send that to people who don’t like it and this is a way to narrow them down so they won’t even find page

 

[campout]

Below was a comment left on an interview between Adam Dicker and Michael Cyger about his reputation repair business. So poignant and suitable considering it was over 3 years ago. Michael Cyger claims in a subsequent comment that he had seen Dicker's financials confirming the $150k/mo claim. Wouldn't we all love to see that.

http://www.domainsherpa.com/reputation-repair/

Geppetto
May 30, 2012 at 9:41 AM
An interview about reputation.

Interview started with “Adam: The first month, I think, was about forty thousand dollars and last month, it was about a hundred and fifty thousand and the month before that was about a hundred and fifty thousand.”

Interview ended with “Adam: I set up eight people so far and each person is making over five thousand dollars a week…. That’s their commissions”

8 people all making over $5000 per week. 8 x $5000 = $40,000/week. At a 20% commission, the total sales are $40,000 x 5 = $200,000 per week. With 4.3 weeks in a month, $200,000 x 4.3 = $860,000 in monthly sales!

By those calculations, he made an additional $700,000 in sales between the beginning and the end of this interview.

The company was started in 2012, but their website claims “Reputation Repair Consulting Since 1992” and at least one of those glowing testimonials thanked them for amazing service in 2010.

Time travel really is possible.

Their first customer paid a sum of $6000 to have them contact a newspaper and say that his charges were dismissed, and $99/year to sign up for free Google Alerts.

What was that customer originally charged with, stupidity?

In a previous interview, Adam was asked “Michael: Have you sold a domain name in the seven figures?” and he answered “Adam: Yes but like I said I can’t talk about the exact price. Two or three but I can’t talk about them because of the non-disclosures.”

Two or Three. Would you remember a minor detail such as if you had sold 2 or 3 million dollar of anything?

Michael, your interviews are inspirational, but how concerned are you that they are truthful?

And here is part of Adam's rebuttal at the time, from his own comment:

"Finally, it’s shame you’re not taking away the points you should like reputation repair is here to stay and it would be wise to get involved before you miss the boat. Also feel free to email me at [email protected] if you want further details, I have nothing to hide and I love talking to people."

His MO is to publicly portray himself as not hiding and put his e-mail out there, while using any contact initiated therein to further manipulate his victims and naysayers (actually, they are truth tellers), as you can see from the people who have come back to this thread saying things like, "I never wanted to destroy Adam's livelihood" etc. after he had contact with them through e-mail or phone.

This guy is a a straight-up 100% sociopath predator. Cyger needs to come out in no uncertain terms and COMPLETELY denounce him, without equivocation.

 

[umask077]

Do you think he (Michael Cyger) has an obligation given all that has transpired to remove all those interviews that proclaim Adam Dicker as a domain and business guru to be inspired by and learned from? Maybe Cyger was in the dark like most of us but I'm sure he knows now. Breaking his association for future interviews was a good start though.

I agree. He should remove all the content regarding him and his company. Michael is a smart and honest guy and I think he won't hesitate...

 

[umask077]

Its also a little unfair on all of the domainers who have featured in videos with him, to build their own profile, to have that exposure taken away because of the reputation of one of the other participants. And most of the videos are surely harmless, just comparing lists of domains and giving arbitrary values to them.

I think he didn't referred to those videos, the ones that should be removed are those featuring him in the form of interviews.

 

[DomainGist]

I agree. He should remove all the content regarding him and his company. Michael is a smart and honest guy and I think he won't hesitate...

I think what he needs to do is remove any mentions of NicheWebsites.com, but as another poster up thread pointed out, NicheWebsites.com was a sponsor of Domain Sherpa. He may need to review any written agreements that he had. It may not be as easy as simply acting on a point of principle.

 

[carob]

His MO is to publicly portray himself as not hiding and put his e-mail out there, while using any contact initiated therein to further manipulate his victims and naysayers (actually, they are truth tellers), as you can see from the people who have come back to this thread saying things like, "I never wanted to destroy Adam's livelihood" etc. after he had contact with them through e-mail or phone.

And see the bit I quoted from his own site above (at https://www.namepros.com/threads/is-adam-dicker-a-criminal-you-decide.883579/page-59#post-5045926 ) about his technique to prevent negative reviews - by deflecting and misdirecting discussion, asking for a suggestion and taking them away from the comment or review process and making it hard to find for anyone with a negative comment.

Someone mentioned Stockholm Syndrome, I mentioned romance scam victims staying in love with the unmasked scammer. Check this out about abusive relationships:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blo...t/200905/the-line-between-victims-and-abusers

Research and clinical evidence traditionally has shown that victims were likely to:

• Underreport or hide their partners' abusive behavior
• Not label obviously abusive behavior as abuse
• Blame themselves in part for the abuse they reveal
• Make excuses for the abuser's behavior
• Bend over backwards to see the abuser's perspective
• Describe the abuser at least partially in sympathetic terms
• Exhibit self-doubt

Have a look at the checklist there of abuser traits. Recognise any?