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Bidding on your own names at NameJet...?

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Once in awhile I see people bidding on their own domains at NJ. I would think it would be frowned upon.

Today's seems more obvious than normal. Or am I missing something here?

Airlinejobs.com owned by Andy Booth at Booth.com and high bidder is BQDNcom (James Booth).

3 bids down we see Boothcom as a bidder.

Same thing with MovieZone.com. Owned by Andy Booth in which he currently appears to be the high bidder.

High Bid: $2,475 USD by boothcom

They actually won their own domain airplanesforsale.com. Im guessing it didnt get as high as they wanted so needed to protect it.

Bidder Amount Date
bqdncom $2,001 7/17/2017 12:23 PM
boothcom $1,950 7/17/2017 12:23 PM
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
In his daily blog post today, Domain Shane reports that TLDPros has taken part in "unnatural bidding at Namejet", which he reported to NameJet. Kudos to Shane, while most of the bloggers stay silent when industry figures and companies/blog sponsors get exposed, he dares to speak up when there is sufficient evidence to do so (he criticized Dicker, while most bloggers stayed mum). He comes off as one of the more principled and ethical parties in the domain industry, compared with a lot of other "thought leaders" and prominent domainers.

However, this is how his report about TLDPros went:
"Long story short, TLD claimed they didn’t realize what they were doing was wrong. Namejet gave them a chance to continue if they let the auctions continue naturally."

In other words, they did not take a strong stance against them, which was echoed today when we saw NameJet's initial lackluster investigation into and response to the issues highlighted in this thread.

I don't know the nature of TLDPros "unnatural bidding" at NameJet, but they are still heavily promoted by NameJet...
tldpros.png
 
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Unfortunately I found two more featured auction pages that appear to be Oliver:

http://www.namejet.com/featuredauctions/2cpd2hzh
http://www.namejet.com/featuredauctions/7syi4nah

So now here are the totals from the two accounts I'm pretty sure are him:

6ifd5lvs - Seek bid on 18, winner8888 bid on 318.
8fyd9zfl - Seek bid on 17, winner8888 bid on 286.
9rev0pcj - Seek bid on 46, winner8888 bid on 217.
2cpd2hzh - Seek bid on 25, winner8888 bid on 261.
7syi4nah - Seek bid on 42, winner8888 bid on 54.

That's a total of 1,284 auctions that are suspect.

A few hours ago I got an interesting email from someone who wishes to remain anonymous saying that "hkdn" is suspected to be Oliver as well. I can't find any direct link because the WHOIS is always the same (and fake) when this account wins, at least after spot checking a bunch. But then I noticed something interesting:

6ifd5lvs - HKDN bid on 935, won 84, and was the runner up in 432.
8fyd9zfl - HKDN bid on 1035, won 75, and was the runner up in 403.
9rev0pcj - HKDN bid on 1271, won 64, and was the runner up in 625.
2cpd2hzh - HKDN bid on 841, won 56, and was the runner up in 409.
7syi4nah - HKDN bid on 1115, won 100, and was the runner up in 464.

That in and of itself is not interesting other than the huge volume, 5197 auctions bid on, but where it gets interesting is that 72% of the public auctions this account has ever participated in were Oliver's. Highly suspicious, but circumstantial.

And there were several examples of domains that were auctioned by Oliver, won by HKDN, WHOIS changed to the fake one, and then changed back to Oliver a couple of months later. Again I'm out of WHOIS history queries so I can't independently confirm this, but the source seems solid. Plenty of potential explanations for that so still nothing definitive as far as this alias is concerned, but NJ should still look into it.

If that alias is also Oliver, this already-serious problem just got 5x worse. And this account is by far the most aggressive at pushing bidders up.
 
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I think you missed the point.
Both Russel and HKDN made exact same amount bid on both the domains, and HKDN just let it short of the reserve and that's shill bidding too.
I googled about HKDN, and found a 14-05-2017 DSAD.com article reference / excerpt on Google, that this user's bid is just short of reserves...etc, but couldn't find it when I visited the website.
Maybe DSAD.com must have removed the reference as NameJet is a sponsor for them.

No, I did not miss the point.

Are you happy with the purchase?
 
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`Holy moly! I need to step my investigative game up. This research is spectacular! The industry would be in trouble if you created an anonymous NP account, and started grilling the industry without fear of it effecting your business relationships. Regardless, THANK YOU for all you do in the industry.


@Michael is one of the brightest minds in the business.
 
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This thread is a real eye opener especially for a newb. I find it pretty disturbing that so many domainers have apparently gotten domains for artificially inflated prices and how consistently NameJet sales show up on the top sales of the day list. Its like the Wizard of Oz "Pay not attention to the man behind the curtain".

Its one thing to know and agree to a set price. Another thing entirely to be manipulated into paying more by the owner, a brother, friend or associate. What a racket. All parties who have done this should be ashamed of their fraud. Let's call it what it is- perpetrating fraud on another domainer intentionally.

This level of greed is not good where an anything goes situation happens for certain people scratching each other's backs at someone else's inflated expense. Did I think this business was full of angels with halos? No.

But this kind of thing makes you question the entire industry and wonder what is smoke and mirrors and deceit and what isn't. Trust is a hard thing to build in the first place. Then you read stuff like this and get even more skeptical. You guys who have been at this for years and years you must have spines of stainless steel.
 
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Unfortunately I found two more featured auction pages that appear to be Oliver:
So now here are the totals from the two accounts I'm pretty sure are him:

6ifd5lvs - Seek bid on 18, winner8888 bid on 318.
8fyd9zfl - Seek bid on 17, winner8888 bid on 286.
9rev0pcj - Seek bid on 46, winner8888 bid on 217.
2cpd2hzh - Seek bid on 25, winner8888 bid on 261.
7syi4nah - Seek bid on 42, winner8888 bid on 54.

That's a total of 1,284 auctions that are suspect.

A few hours ago I got an interesting email from someone who wishes to remain anonymous saying that "hkdn" is suspected to be Oliver as well. I can't find any direct link because the WHOIS is always the same (and fake) when this account wins, at least after spot checking a bunch. But then I noticed something interesting:

6ifd5lvs - HKDN bid on 935, won 84, and was the runner up in 432.
8fyd9zfl - HKDN bid on 1035, won 75, and was the runner up in 403.
9rev0pcj - HKDN bid on 1271, won 64, and was the runner up in 625.
2cpd2hzh - HKDN bid on 841, won 56, and was the runner up in 409.
7syi4nah - HKDN bid on 1115, won 100, and was the runner up in 464.

That in and of itself is not interesting other than the huge volume, 5197 auctions bid on, but where it gets interesting is that 72% of the public auctions this account has ever participated in were Oliver's. Highly suspicious, but circumstantial.

And there were several examples of domains that were auctioned by Oliver, won by HKDN, WHOIS changed to the fake one, and then changed back to Oliver a couple of months later. Again I'm out of WHOIS history queries so I can't independently confirm this, but the source seems solid. Plenty of potential explanations for that so still nothing definitive as far as this alias is concerned, but NJ should still look into it.

If that alias is also Oliver, this already-serious problem just got 5x worse. And this account is by far the most aggressive at pushing bidders up.

Thanks. Exactly my point, that this HKDN guy knew about the reserve and just made a bid that was just short of the reserve.
I too think it's Oliver only.
I would request DSAD staff and Shane to clarify as to why they removed content from May 14th article about HKDN.
It's getting indexed on Google but not there in the post.
I think they got some warning from NameJet, their sponsors, or were asked by Oliver to put that down.
If NameJet asked them, then I think NameJet would be in deep trouble here.
 
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@Beezy I am not defending wrong doers.

I have read the post. I have read the whole thread, this is upsetting because I like most members here have spent a lot of money on NJ.

At least NJ need to come here and provide an update. The figures (commissions) being discussed are huge, surely there should have noticed that something was wrong earlier. Thanks to OP for bringing this up. @Hemanttilotia I am with you 100% do what needs to be done & contact NJ with your findings.
 
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Unfortunately I found two more featured auction pages that appear to be Oliver:

http://www.namejet.com/featuredauctions/2cpd2hzh
http://www.namejet.com/featuredauctions/7syi4nah

So now here are the totals from the two accounts I'm pretty sure are him:

6ifd5lvs - Seek bid on 18, winner8888 bid on 318.
8fyd9zfl - Seek bid on 17, winner8888 bid on 286.
9rev0pcj - Seek bid on 46, winner8888 bid on 217.
2cpd2hzh - Seek bid on 25, winner8888 bid on 261.
7syi4nah - Seek bid on 42, winner8888 bid on 54.

That's a total of 1,284 auctions that are suspect.

A few hours ago I got an interesting email from someone who wishes to remain anonymous saying that "hkdn" is suspected to be Oliver as well. I can't find any direct link because the WHOIS is always the same (and fake) when this account wins, at least after spot checking a bunch. But then I noticed something interesting:

6ifd5lvs - HKDN bid on 935, won 84, and was the runner up in 432.
8fyd9zfl - HKDN bid on 1035, won 75, and was the runner up in 403.
9rev0pcj - HKDN bid on 1271, won 64, and was the runner up in 625.
2cpd2hzh - HKDN bid on 841, won 56, and was the runner up in 409.
7syi4nah - HKDN bid on 1115, won 100, and was the runner up in 464.

That in and of itself is not interesting other than the huge volume, 5197 auctions bid on, but where it gets interesting is that 72% of the public auctions this account has ever participated in were Oliver's. Highly suspicious, but circumstantial.

And there were several examples of domains that were auctioned by Oliver, won by HKDN, WHOIS changed to the fake one, and then changed back to Oliver a couple of months later. Again I'm out of WHOIS history queries so I can't independently confirm this, but the source seems solid. Plenty of potential explanations for that so still nothing definitive as far as this alias is concerned, but NJ should still look into it.

If that alias is also Oliver, this already-serious problem just got 5x worse. And this account is by far the most aggressive at pushing bidders up.

@NameJet - you better pull your head out of your ass and start answering.

1. Why was a person allowed to sell domains if their info was not in the whois?

2. Technically in the system, are people who sell domains able to submit a bid from their same account for a domain that they are selling?

3. Are you aware with the auctions concerning user Seek that Michael from Namebio is publishing? Or are you grossly incompetent and unable to run fair auctions? Or do you just turn a blind eye because you're making more money?

If anyone spent a ton of money on these auctions that allegedly were run up I'd like to see this go to court and see what comes out of the discovery period.
 
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Unfortunately I found two more featured auction pages that appear to be Oliver:

http://www.namejet.com/featuredauctions/2cpd2hzh
http://www.namejet.com/featuredauctions/7syi4nah

So now here are the totals from the two accounts I'm pretty sure are him:

6ifd5lvs - Seek bid on 18, winner8888 bid on 318.
8fyd9zfl - Seek bid on 17, winner8888 bid on 286.
9rev0pcj - Seek bid on 46, winner8888 bid on 217.
2cpd2hzh - Seek bid on 25, winner8888 bid on 261.
7syi4nah - Seek bid on 42, winner8888 bid on 54.

That's a total of 1,284 auctions that are suspect.

A few hours ago I got an interesting email from someone who wishes to remain anonymous saying that "hkdn" is suspected to be Oliver as well. I can't find any direct link because the WHOIS is always the same (and fake) when this account wins, at least after spot checking a bunch. But then I noticed something interesting:

6ifd5lvs - HKDN bid on 935, won 84, and was the runner up in 432.
8fyd9zfl - HKDN bid on 1035, won 75, and was the runner up in 403.
9rev0pcj - HKDN bid on 1271, won 64, and was the runner up in 625.
2cpd2hzh - HKDN bid on 841, won 56, and was the runner up in 409.
7syi4nah - HKDN bid on 1115, won 100, and was the runner up in 464.

That in and of itself is not interesting other than the huge volume, 5197 auctions bid on, but where it gets interesting is that 72% of the public auctions this account has ever participated in were Oliver's. Highly suspicious, but circumstantial.

And there were several examples of domains that were auctioned by Oliver, won by HKDN, WHOIS changed to the fake one, and then changed back to Oliver a couple of months later. Again I'm out of WHOIS history queries so I can't independently confirm this, but the source seems solid. Plenty of potential explanations for that so still nothing definitive as far as this alias is concerned, but NJ should still look into it.

If that alias is also Oliver, this already-serious problem just got 5x worse. And this account is by far the most aggressive at pushing bidders up.
This is really disturbing if true. The HKDN account is extremely active in NameJet auctions. I have bought many names where the price was driven up by HKDN... And I just checked last few days auctions records for short names, and HKDN was among the highest or the second highest bidder for a lot of them.
 
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I did a little digging myself into the featured seller account mentioned initially. These featured pages seem to all be Oliver Hoger's:

http://www.namejet.com/featuredauctions/6ifd5lvs
http://www.namejet.com/featuredauctions/8fyd9zfl
http://www.namejet.com/featuredauctions/9rev0pcj

So I can also check which auctions run through those featured pages were bid on by "seek" which is Oliver's known NJ alias.

Take a look at this (click for larger):

oliver-hoger.jpg



Auctioned by Oliver, bid on by Oliver above the min back order, and confirmed by WHOIS history to have been owned by him at the time.

So I dug deeper. It turns out for the first featured seller account above, user "seek" bid in 18 of those auctions and was the runner-up in three. For his second featured seller account he bid in 17 auctions and was the runner-up in four. For his third featured seller account he bid in 46 auctions and was the runner up in one. Didn't win any though, that's some fancy shilling! I can provide proof of all this if you need more than the above screenshot.

Here's where it gets REALLY interesting:

IAOR.com | Ended 2016-12-13 & Re-auctioned 2017-01-17
http://www.namejet.com/Pages/Auctions/StandardDetails.aspx?auctionid=3866603&lt=reports
http://www.namejet.com/Pages/Auctions/StandardDetails.aspx?auctionid=3879552&lt=reports

Seek bid in the first auction which is how it got my attention. Picked up from Domain Capital around April 15, 2015. Switches to privacy a few months later as part of a move to eNom (but the NS never changes) and is then auctioned by Oliver. Then a month after the first auction WHOIS switches back to his name, is re-auctioned, and then stays in his name another four months before he sells it to another domainer. The same alias won it both times and it never changed hands.

Auction doesn't show as cancelled, so this could be an example where he won by accident and ate the commission, and warrants further exploration. Checking "winner8888" this alias has bid in 318 of Oliver's first featured account (a quarter of all of them!), was the winner in 6 of them, and was the runner up in 17 of them. In fact, all six of Oliver's auctions that winner8888 won are still owned by Oliver, or were owned by him months after the auction completed successfully before being re-sold:

http://www.namejet.com/Pages/Auctions/StandardDetails.aspx?auctionid=3880556&lt=reports
http://www.namejet.com/Pages/Auctions/StandardDetails.aspx?auctionid=3879552&lt=reports
http://www.namejet.com/Pages/Auctions/StandardDetails.aspx?auctionid=3866603&lt=reports
http://www.namejet.com/Pages/Auctions/StandardDetails.aspx?auctionid=3864440&lt=reports
http://www.namejet.com/Pages/Auctions/StandardDetails.aspx?auctionid=3862385&lt=reports
http://www.namejet.com/Pages/Auctions/StandardDetails.aspx?auctionid=3862353&lt=reports

What are the odds that all six domains won were paid for (we know because it wasn't cancelled and the user wasn't banned) but the winner never once updated the WHOIS? I'm not a betting man, but I'd be willing to wager that winner8888 is (one of) Oliver's shill account(s). So I spot checked a bunch of other domains won by this account, and all that I checked had WHOIS in Oliver's name. Seems this account belongs to Oliver, unless I'm missing something.

So I checked Oliver's two other featured auction pages to see what kind of damage winner8888 is doing. This account bid in 286 auctions run by his second featured account, won one, and was the runner-up in 14. And it bid in 217 auctions for his third featured account, won two, and was the runner-up in three.

In total it seems that he has bid in at least 902 of his own auctions from two different aliases, and that's just the accounts we know about.

Anyway, it's harder to do this kind of deep dive for the Booth brothers since they don't have their own auction page, and they likely legitimately bid in many of Oliver's auctions since all three guys are into short domains. But let's check.

Bid on by "boothcom":

6ifd5lvs: Bid on four, won one, runner-up in two.
8fyd9zfl: Bid on 0.
9rev0pcj: Bid on 0.

And for "bqdncom":

6ifd5lvs: Bid on eight, won two, runner-up in one.
8fyd9zfl: Bid on 0.
9rev0pcj: Bid on one, runner-up in one.

I blew through all my WHOIS history queries for the month (ouch!) but if anyone wants to look into these 13 auctions to see if any were owned by the Booth brothers at the time they were bidding on them shoot me a PM and I'll get you the list. EDIT: Someone is running this for me now, no need for further assistance. Thanks.

Time for me to be black-balled, lol :) These views are my own, and I'm not speaking on behalf of any company I work for and the respective company owners are not aware of this post. I have to run out for a few hours so might be slow to reply to any follow-up questions.

The majority of domainers will not allow you to be blackballed, after this anyone messing with you in an unfair manner will feel the wrath of thousands of small to mid sized and I think many big domainers. Thanks for the work you did.
 
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I'd like to see Namejet reply to this. Every domain blogger should be writing a post and pointing it to this thread to put pressure on them. I haven't blogged in many months but I'll do it because it is important.

I posted right at the beginning on TheDomains.com and there are a lot of comments there, but I tell people make sure to come back here as the bulk of the data is here.
 
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Thanks. Exactly my point, that this HKDN guy knew about the reserve and just made a bid that was just short of the reserve.
I too think it's Oliver only.
I would request DSAD staff and Shane to clarify as to why they removed content from May 14th article about HKDN.
It's getting indexed on Google but not there in the post.
I think they got some warning from NameJet, their sponsors, or were asked by Oliver to put that down.
If NameJet asked them, then I think NameJet would be in deep trouble here.

maybe @Domain Shane can respond to your query
 
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Most get advertising revenue from them, so they won't.

NameJet advertises with very few (DSAD.com/DnGeek.com) so that shouldn't be a concern. I know no advertising here at Namepros or 4 blogs I write for. And as always on TheDomains/TLDinvestors we tell sponsors if we see something we don't like or have suggestions, we will discuss privately and also we will write about them publicly.

Full disclosure NameJet advertised on TheDomains late 2014, early 2015.
 
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I have been associated with more failed startups than successful ones. I can stand failure but can't allow someone to make a fool out of me.
It has hurt.
 
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Unfortunately I found two more featured auction pages that appear to be Oliver:

http://www.namejet.com/featuredauctions/2cpd2hzh
http://www.namejet.com/featuredauctions/7syi4nah

So now here are the totals from the two accounts I'm pretty sure are him:

6ifd5lvs - Seek bid on 18, winner8888 bid on 318.
8fyd9zfl - Seek bid on 17, winner8888 bid on 286.
9rev0pcj - Seek bid on 46, winner8888 bid on 217.
2cpd2hzh - Seek bid on 25, winner8888 bid on 261.
7syi4nah - Seek bid on 42, winner8888 bid on 54.

That's a total of 1,284 auctions that are suspect.

A few hours ago I got an interesting email from someone who wishes to remain anonymous saying that "hkdn" is suspected to be Oliver as well. I can't find any direct link because the WHOIS is always the same (and fake) when this account wins, at least after spot checking a bunch. But then I noticed something interesting:

6ifd5lvs - HKDN bid on 935, won 84, and was the runner up in 432.
8fyd9zfl - HKDN bid on 1035, won 75, and was the runner up in 403.
9rev0pcj - HKDN bid on 1271, won 64, and was the runner up in 625.
2cpd2hzh - HKDN bid on 841, won 56, and was the runner up in 409.
7syi4nah - HKDN bid on 1115, won 100, and was the runner up in 464.

That in and of itself is not interesting other than the huge volume, 5197 auctions bid on, but where it gets interesting is that 72% of the public auctions this account has ever participated in were Oliver's. Highly suspicious, but circumstantial.

And there were several examples of domains that were auctioned by Oliver, won by HKDN, WHOIS changed to the fake one, and then changed back to Oliver a couple of months later. Again I'm out of WHOIS history queries so I can't independently confirm this, but the source seems solid. Plenty of potential explanations for that so still nothing definitive as far as this alias is concerned, but NJ should still look into it.

If that alias is also Oliver, this already-serious problem just got 5x worse. And this account is by far the most aggressive at pushing bidders up.

Thank you for this!

Now we can get down to math and @MediaOptions can see why this is wrong:

5197 auctions, let's assume average sale price of $500 for total revenue of around $2,500,000 (assuming $0 for those that did not sell)

NJ's cut: $250,000, so they have obvious financial incentive.

Now they seem to win around 7% of their auctions and are runner up in about 45%, which means they really have learned to tune up their gaming of the bidders. And even when they are not runner-up, they fake the sense of urgency and desirability of the names.

So for 7% names they win, they had to pay out of pocket commission of around $17,500. But if they managed to drive up the end sales in average by 30%, then that is more than compensated by over $650,000 made additionally.

Again, some numbers are assumptions, but feel free to adjust them a bit higher/lower and you'd still see how they have earned $xxx,xxx by gaming the system and having no genuine intention/interest in winning the names back. In fact, the winning back scenario is the undesirable one and they have perfected it so well that they do it only in 7% of cases.

For NJ, most of that $250,000 commission only from this part of investigation wouldn't have happened, as these guys wouldn't bring those names to platform without knowing that they'd get blind eye for shilling practice.
 
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HKDN example:

SGTO.com was auctioned on NameJet by Oliver Hoger 4 days ago, here is prior WHOIS for this name:
SGTO whois.png


HKDN (Oliver Hoger) was the second bidder in the NameJet auction for his own domain, SGTO.com. Taryn (Frank Schilling) won the auction:
SGTO Namejet.png
 
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See 'Russel' with $200 above.
 
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maybe @Domain Shane can respond to your query
I'm on vacation with my family and will respond tonight. Please do not make assumptions. I will answer any questions. As big as this is my family still trumps it today
 
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HKDN example:

SGTO.com was auctioned on NameJet by Oliver Hoger 4 days ago, here is prior WHOIS for this name:
Show attachment 64603

HKDN (Oliver Hoger) was the second bidder in the NameJet auction for his own domain, SGTO.com. Taryn (Frank Schilling) won the auction:
Show attachment 64604

See Russel making a usual bid of $200 and HKDN falling just short of reserve. This time Frank made that $10 incremental bid to win this.
 
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Interesting little article about HKDN...
http://namejetusername.blogspot.com/2016/10/namejet-user-hkdn.html

And here's a mention from Domain Shane back a few months ago...didn't pay much attention back then...

WMUK.com I like the name but there is a bidder for all this sellers reserve auctions with the bidder name of HKDN who’s bids are always right below reserve. Not saying that its not legit but I stay away from situations like this when there are patterns. Bidder may not even know the person so not accusations here, just saying take a look. That’s why Namejet put a “look at this seller’s other auctions”
 
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Thanks. Exactly my point, that this HKDN guy knew about the reserve and just made a bid that was just short of the reserve.
I too think it's Oliver only.
I would request DSAD staff and Shane to clarify as to why they removed content from May 14th article about HKDN.
It's getting indexed on Google but not there in the post.
I think they got some warning from NameJet, their sponsors, or were asked by Oliver to put that down.
If NameJet asked them, then I think NameJet would be in deep trouble here.

The post is still there, it seems (not sure if I am allowed to link):

https://dsad.com/domain-shanes-daily-list-domains-auction-sunday-may-14th/

Kudos to Shane for bringing stuff like this up!
 
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