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information Brent Oxley Loses Access to Create.com, Plus Millions of Dollars Worth of His Domains

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Brent Oxley, the founder of HostGator, has been accruing a portfolio of ultra-premium domain names since he sold his hosting company for close to $300 million in 2013.

With purchases such as Give.com for $500,000, Broker.com for $375,000, and Texas.com for $1,007,500, Oxley has spent millions of dollars over the past few years accumulating this collection. According to his website, the portfolio is worth more than $25 million.

Oxley has now, however, lost access to a proportion of his portfolio

Read the full report on my blog
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
Wow as a law student and a new domain investor this is just shocking and heartbreaking. I bought my blog site from godaddy thinking I’d be safe. They had a great reputation and just a few days ago I was even looking at making a huge investment in their stocks based on my new hobby with domains. I’ve traded stocks for a long time and I’m so glad I found this thread. I’m in the process on transferring my domains out to epic or NameSilo ASAP.
For me now it’s about the principle. @GoDaddy how the hell can you give credit to someone who spends 12$ on a law suit out of the United States and not require a USA order ? How the hell do you not give any weight to this guys history?? The lawsuits he has lost? How can you be ok with doing this to someone when there is so much evidence pointing you to this being a scam ?! I am so glad I didn’t pull the trigger on my stock buy and that I found this thread. I will be transferring my domains out because of the mistreatment and UNREASONABLE UNFAIRNESS of this situation. I know I only have a few domains but I also have some friends and they have a few and all of us will be on our way out and spreading the word about this because people deserve to know. This is completely unacceptable and consideration was not properly given to the situation. Very shady business.
 
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Wow as a law student and a new domain investor this is just shocking and heartbreaking. I bought my blog site from godaddy thinking I’d be safe. They had a great reputation and just a few days ago I was even looking at making a huge investment in their stocks based on my new hobby with domains. I’ve traded stocks for a long time and I’m so glad I found this thread. I’m in the process on transferring my domains out to epic or NameSilo ASAP.
For me now it’s about the principle. @GoDaddy how the hell can you give credit to someone who spends 12$ on a law suit out of the United States and not require a USA order ? How the hell do you not give any weight to this guys history?? The lawsuits he has lost? How can you be ok with doing this to someone when there is so much evidence pointing you to this being a scam ?! I am so glad I didn’t pull the trigger on my stock buy and that I found this thread. I will be transferring my domains out because of the mistreatment and UNREASONABLE UNFAIRNESS of this situation. I know I only have a few domains but I also have some friends and they have a few and all of us will be on our way out and spreading the word about this because people deserve to know. This is completely unacceptable and consideration was not properly given to the situation. Very shady business.

Welcome to namePros!
 
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Also, if this is a dispute between a broker and a client, why is a registrar involved? What am I missing?

Nothing.

The issue is two-part.

1. Godaddy being a ***k. That is a dangerous precedent and concerns us as DN sellers and buyers.

2. The agreement/understanding/discussion between Oxley and Puneet. Legally, I would love to see how courts interpret that.
 
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Exactly.

In the spirit of fairness, when GoDaddy is facing any type of lawsuit they should lock all their own domains as well.

It doesn't matter which court.
It doesn't matter if there is an order.
It doesn't matter if they were served.

Surely, in the same situation GoDaddy should lock all their own domains for an indefinite period of time, maybe even years. It would only be fair.

:)

Brad

people keep saying only gd would do this lock...is it true? why other registrars wouldn't do it in similar situations?
 
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people keep saying only gd would do this lock...is it true? why other registrars wouldn't do it in similar situations?

Rob Monster has replied on Page 3. “ Unless there is a court order, how is this justified”?
 
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As some of you may know, Brent likes guns. Big guns. Like this one:

tank.jpg


Yup, that's Brent's rig - courtesy of Andrew Allemann.

On January 11, Godaddy dumped AR15.com, which is believed to be the largest gun site in the USA.

https://domainnamewire.com/2021/01/17/godaddy-explains-ar15-com-boot/

AR15.com landed at Epik. The people who run the site are law-abiding and highly competent folks. I am dumbfounded that they were terminated by Godaddy.

I am told that on the same day, many other gun-related sites were also told to leave Godaddy. I won't quote the number I heard, but the number surprised me.

While Godaddy founder Bob Parsons liked guns, apparently the current leadership, or their handlers, don't like guns, and perhaps don't care for people who support the 2nd amendment (2A).

Specific to the case between Puneet and Brent, ultimately, it is for the courts to decide whether there was some breach of contract, or economic injury.

Unless there was a specific court order mandating Godaddy to seize Brent's names, I don't see how it can be justified. It is the antithesis of the registrar's job, which is to protect the registrant within the law.

If Godaddy has a problem with Brent, and does not have a court order mandating seizure of Brent's assets, they should just let Brent move on.

As for Puneet, I have interacted with him, including over this issue. Like all of us, he is on a journey. My hope is that the parties resolve their private dispute amicably and reasonably.

Good luck to Brent and Puneet in burying the hatchet.

In the meantime, Godaddy needs to release Brent's domains. An open refusal to do so sets a terrible precedent when it comes to sovereignty of personal property.

If Godaddy refuses to stand down, I believe Brent should pursue a legal path which serves to discover all communications at Godaddy related to policy and practices related to impairing 2A enthusiasts.
Absolutely spot on!
 
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Hello,

Brent Here. I had to create a new account as the old one had my old company Hostgator in the name. =)

I don't think a lot of you realize how serious this is. A scammer spent a little over $12 in India, and without proof, a contract, or even a court order, was able to abuse Godaddy's policy and lock over $10mm worth of my domains!

These names have been locked for over a year now, and I've spent $10,000's in legal bills trying to get a court order to get them unlocked as Godaddy requires. (covid hasn't made it easy with the courts) The legal fees pale in comparison to the millions in deals I've had to turn down. The lock prevents you from changing a domain's DNS or transferring it, which means you can't sell it.

This scam is pretty genius if you think about it. Just about any scammer in the world can file in their country courts for a small fee; email GoDaddy that the domains are under "dispute," and bam Godaddy will lock whatever domains the scammer asks them to in their email to [email protected]. (at least that's what happened to me)

The scammer doesn't even have to show up for court to keep your names locked and most likely won't. Godaddy will lock the domains without a court order and then require you to get a court order to unlock them all.

Getting a court order to get your domains unlocked is very costly, time-consuming, and can take several years with how backed up most of the courts are from Covid.

If you're with Godaddy and you think your account is safe from this scam, I'd recommend you email them and find out for yourself that your names can be locked from a "dispute." and their UTOS says such.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but I had a few moments of weakness and offered the scammer Puneet over $10,000 to drop the "dispute" with Godaddy. I even had some of the potential buyers wanting to pay Puneet $10,000's in extortion money in order to close on the names locked. He was too greedy, demanding millions, and as a result, I'm not going to pay him a dime in extortion money. Instead, I'm paying lawyers in India to make sure he serves prison time for both extortion and fraud.

At one point, I even offered Godaddy full indemnification from the "dispute" if they unlocked my names. This is off the table now, but I can't for the life of me figure out why'd they turn this down and continue to keep my names locked without any proof or court order.

Below is the email in which I found out why my names were locked. In this email Godaddy lied about there being a court order to lock my names. I don't know why they lied about this but I'm guessing it's because the file Puneet attached was in Hindu and they took his word for it.

"Dear Brent,



We have been notified that per documents filed in the District Court in Alwar, Rajasthan, the domain names below are the subject of a legal dispute:

HYBRID.COM, DISTRIBUTE.COM, ADMIRER.COM, DRONE.COM, CIA.COM, DEMOLISH.COM, EMIR.COM, DARM.COM, BRIDE.COM, ADVISE.COM, FLUTE.COM, LOANTAP.COM, JEWEL.COM,

ITEM.COM, PIANO.COM, DEVOTE.COM, VTOK.COM, ATHLETE.COM, BONJOUR.COM, VALENTINE.COM, DUST.COM, DETECT.COM, VIAJE.COM, MESSAGE.COM



The court ordered that the domain names are to be locked pending further order of the court. Accordingly, we have locked the domain names.



If you have any questions regarding these actions or this court case, please contact the Court or Plaintiff’s Counsel directly. Contact information for Plaintiff’s Counsel can be found below:



Puneet Agarwal

** email removed **



Kind regards,



Lisa

Disputes Administrator

GoDaddy"



When I pressed them on there being no such legal ruling or court order, they quoted their UTOS:

"Per Section 14 of GoDaddy’s Universal Terms of Service (“UTOS”), we reserve the right to lock domain names to defend any legal action or threatened legal action without consideration for whether such legal action or threatened legal action is eventually determined to be with or without merit.

"

I had a registrar back in the day named launchpad.com and sold it with the sale of hostgator.com. I don't think anyone could ever picture something like this happening and it really doesn't make sense to have a registrar for less than 150 domains.

Had the domains that I bought before I launched Create been with Namecheap or Epik, this would never have happened!

I'm positive Puneet is insane. He has sent me thousands upon thousands of emails, messages, calls, etc, etc. Many of these messages involve death threats, talking about praying to the devil, drugs, pictures of mutilated naked bodies, and all kinds of craziness. In a few of the messages, he told me he got in trouble for waiting outside Prime Minister Modi's private house and office for trying to talk to him. I'm not sure I would have even believed this if it wasn't for him sending over a document that was an official complaint against the officer that questioned him for harassment!
We will be boycotting godaddy from now on! We have had our own complaints with godaddy but this all we can handle. We stopped using them prior to hearing about this and now we will also be transferring all of our domains out immediately. Cancel culture fools. Sorry this sad situation has happened to you. We're on your side Brent and believe you will prevail. We will celebrate when that day comes!
 
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We will be boycotting godaddy from now on! We have had our own complaints with godaddy but this all we can handle. We stopped using them prior to hearing about this and now we will also be transferring all of our domains out immediately. Cancel culture fools. Sorry this sad situation has happened to you. We're on your side Brent and believe you will prevail. We will celebrate when that day comes!

ok but plz do not fire at giraffes from the tanks during celebrations ;)
 
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Hello,

Brent Here. I had to create a new account as the old one had my old company Hostgator in the name. =)

I don't think a lot of you realize how serious this is. A scammer spent a little over $12 in India, and without proof, a contract, or even a court order, was able to abuse Godaddy's policy and lock over $10mm worth of my domains!

These names have been locked for over a year now, and I've spent $10,000's in legal bills trying to get a court order to get them unlocked as Godaddy requires. (covid hasn't made it easy with the courts) The legal fees pale in comparison to the millions in deals I've had to turn down. The lock prevents you from changing a domain's DNS or transferring it, which means you can't sell it.

This scam is pretty genius if you think about it. Just about any scammer in the world can file in their country courts for a small fee; email GoDaddy that the domains are under "dispute," and bam Godaddy will lock whatever domains the scammer asks them to in their email to [email protected]. (at least that's what happened to me)

The scammer doesn't even have to show up for court to keep your names locked and most likely won't. Godaddy will lock the domains without a court order and then require you to get a court order to unlock them all.

Getting a court order to get your domains unlocked is very costly, time-consuming, and can take several years with how backed up most of the courts are from Covid.

If you're with Godaddy and you think your account is safe from this scam, I'd recommend you email them and find out for yourself that your names can be locked from a "dispute." and their UTOS says such.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but I had a few moments of weakness and offered the scammer Puneet over $10,000 to drop the "dispute" with Godaddy. I even had some of the potential buyers wanting to pay Puneet $10,000's in extortion money in order to close on the names locked. He was too greedy, demanding millions, and as a result, I'm not going to pay him a dime in extortion money. Instead, I'm paying lawyers in India to make sure he serves prison time for both extortion and fraud.

At one point, I even offered Godaddy full indemnification from the "dispute" if they unlocked my names. This is off the table now, but I can't for the life of me figure out why'd they turn this down and continue to keep my names locked without any proof or court order.

Below is the email in which I found out why my names were locked. In this email Godaddy lied about there being a court order to lock my names. I don't know why they lied about this but I'm guessing it's because the file Puneet attached was in Hindu and they took his word for it.

"Dear Brent,



We have been notified that per documents filed in the District Court in Alwar, Rajasthan, the domain names below are the subject of a legal dispute:

HYBRID.COM, DISTRIBUTE.COM, ADMIRER.COM, DRONE.COM, CIA.COM, DEMOLISH.COM, EMIR.COM, DARM.COM, BRIDE.COM, ADVISE.COM, FLUTE.COM, LOANTAP.COM, JEWEL.COM,

ITEM.COM, PIANO.COM, DEVOTE.COM, VTOK.COM, ATHLETE.COM, BONJOUR.COM, VALENTINE.COM, DUST.COM, DETECT.COM, VIAJE.COM, MESSAGE.COM



The court ordered that the domain names are to be locked pending further order of the court. Accordingly, we have locked the domain names.



If you have any questions regarding these actions or this court case, please contact the Court or Plaintiff’s Counsel directly. Contact information for Plaintiff’s Counsel can be found below:



Puneet Agarwal

** email removed **



Kind regards,



Lisa

Disputes Administrator

GoDaddy"



When I pressed them on there being no such legal ruling or court order, they quoted their UTOS:

"Per Section 14 of GoDaddy’s Universal Terms of Service (“UTOS”), we reserve the right to lock domain names to defend any legal action or threatened legal action without consideration for whether such legal action or threatened legal action is eventually determined to be with or without merit.

"

I had a registrar back in the day named launchpad.com and sold it with the sale of hostgator.com. I don't think anyone could ever picture something like this happening and it really doesn't make sense to have a registrar for less than 150 domains.

Had the domains that I bought before I launched Create been with Namecheap or Epik, this would never have happened!

I'm positive Puneet is insane. He has sent me thousands upon thousands of emails, messages, calls, etc, etc. Many of these messages involve death threats, talking about praying to the devil, drugs, pictures of mutilated naked bodies, and all kinds of craziness. In a few of the messages, he told me he got in trouble for waiting outside Prime Minister Modi's private house and office for trying to talk to him. I'm not sure I would have even believed this if it wasn't for him sending over a document that was an official complaint against the officer that questioned him for harassment!

I have feeling u were not fond or liking gd much b4 all this
... I cant help but wonder why u did not pick another registrar. people keep saying there is more to this story between u and gd... so if true then why even at slightest onset of problems or misunderstandings with registrars would someone still insist keeping millions dollars names there. just trying understand.
 
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LOL. That is not how it works.

GoDaddy is orders of magnitude larger than Epik.

Brad

epik can't, but we could, as GD is a public company ;)
 
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Instead of a passive aggressive one-liner, perhaps you should elaborate on what it is specifically that is "incorrect" in my above statement regarding the disproportionate number of scams that originate from countries such as India and Nigeria, and why another namepro member choosing to use Nigeria in their hypothetical example, lacked relevance. If they happened to have used Denmark, Canada or even Russia in their hypothetical fraud scenario above, would you have even brought up nationality as the focus of discussion? I'm betting no. Why is that?


I simply said his points can be made without the stereotypes. If you had come back with, "No, his points couldn't be valid without those stereotypes", that would have been a logical line of debate for me. Instead, you went off on a tangent with statistics.

I am not here to argue about the nitty gritty of where the crime capital is in the world seeing as it remains invalid in this particular discourse.

The way I see it, you are right, I am right. We are just coming at this from different angles.

Once again, thank you (in a non-passive agressive way)
 
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It seems to me that Mr. Aman Bhutani did not pay attention to what happened to Mr. Gerald Ratner and his company when he made such a gaffe as GoDaddy is now.


When the comments made by Mr. Ratner became public it destroyed both him and his company. It seems to me that with 'domainers' this sorry tale and the lack of action of GoDaddy to immediately rectify THEIR OBVIOUS MISTAKE is equivalent to Ratner's mistake. Forever in the future domainers will recall this shambolic GoDaddy affair.

Of course at first it will not seem to be on the same level, after all domainers as a whole make up only a small percentage of GoDaddy customers - but we domainers are the bedrock customers that GoDaddy relies upon. To make up for the loss of domainer customers GoDaddy is going to have to advertise and market more to end-users - and that will cost them big bucks, indeed millions of dollars, and no matter how you look on it this is going to be a huge hit against GoDaddy.

Now of course this is not Mr. Aman Bhutani's direct fault initially, but having been made aware of this sorry situation he should have acted immediately and made sure through his underlings that the situation was resolved immediately. The obvious failure to do this now means that the buck must lie with Mr. Bhutani even though initially this sorry affair had nothing to with him.
 
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I just want everyone to know there are two sides to every story, and this one is no different. The more I'm involved, the more corruption I'm learning about.....i'm just saying:xf.rolleyes:
 
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Infact, if it is true that it costs $12 and an elaborate claim to have multi-million dollar assets frozen, I wonder how long it will take for spammers, phishers, and con artists of any color to leave low efficiency scams for a 100% hit-rate activity. The obvious angle would be blackmail against withdrawal of claim. Any premium domain target.
 
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Infact, if it is true that it costs $12 and an elaborate claim to have multi-million dollar assets frozen, I wonder how long it will take for spammers, phishers, and con artists of any color to leave low efficiency scams for a 100% hit-rate activity. The obvious angle would be blackmail against withdrawal of claim. Any premium domain target.

well I never heard of this scam type before... have u? why this has not happened before? maybe the success of it is not guaranteed and requires a very
special set of events or circumstances to come together or cooperate.

I mean isn't it a good question why we never heard of similar thing happen before. well at least I have not
 
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It’s a good question, because scammers are inventive.

One way to be inventive is keeping your ear to the ground. I’m pretty sure this has happened before, just not publicly. The publicity here means exponentially more criminal ears are evaluating this opportunity.

Once upon a time there was a first ”Nigeria-letter”.

Your question is almost - if this has not happened before - how can it happen now? Ever heard of evolution?
 
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It’s a good question, because scammers are inventive.

One way to be inventive is keeping your ear to the ground. I’m pretty sure this has happened before, just not publicly. The publicity here means exponentionally more criminal ears are evaluating this opportunity.

Once upon a time there was a first ”Nigeria-letter”.

Your question is almost - if this has not happened before - how can it happen now? Ever heard of evolution?

yes I've heard of evolution.

well I guess mr brent could go visit india in a tank..and call that evolution too.
 
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after all domainers as a whole make up only a small percentage of GoDaddy customers - but we domainers are the bedrock customers that GoDaddy relies upon. To make up for the loss of domainer customers GoDaddy is going to have to advertise and market more to end-users - and that will cost them big bucks, indeed millions of dollars, and no matter how you look on it this is going to be a huge hit against GoDaddy.

Agreed. Their business model doesn't resolve around domainers. I do think they are unfortunate to have picked Brent's domains to mess with as this 'news' will reach beyond the Domaining world.

In tech, hosting etc, he's kind of a celebrity, cult figure if you like. Very bad PR that may have a bigger impact on GD than they are realising.
 
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well I never heard of this scam type before... have u? why this has not happened before? maybe the success of it is not guaranteed and requires a very
special set of events or circumstances to come together or cooperate.

I mean isn't it a good question why we never heard of similar thing happen before. well at least I have not
Well, it didn't happened because is not working usually at most registrars, because they need a court order to do anything and the court order takes long time( 6 years in this case) and 99% of the times you loose with a complain like this... This guy tried the same thing with namecheap and he was refused without a court order. What's changing now is that godaddy starts locking domains without a court order, just based on a complain, so that will attract scamers.
 
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As a side note, GoDaddy's Chief Legal Officer will be leaving this year. From GoDaddy's latest earnings call with Aman:

Our leadership team is also evolving. 2020 was a year of milestones and career-defining achievements for many GoDaddy leaders. After having truly accomplished herculean tasks, both in 2020 and over their respective careers, our Chief Legal Officer, Nima Kelly, and our Chief Financial Officer, Ray Winborne, have each expressed a desire to retire at some point this year.

https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-...dy-inc-gddy-q4-2020-earnings-call-transcript/
 
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true... this is open season invitation to scammers...if gd doesnt fix this..like yesterday.. they are playing a very dangerous game here..
 
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GoDaddy email showing that the web domain registrar is complying with a court order issued by the High Court of Singapore ...

Source: cointelegraph

ku.png
 
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so why people here keep saying there is no court order.
 
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