Victims of a big fraud - And now what ?

DomainEmpire.com · Sep 29, 2019

It's the first time in my 19yr experience in the domain business that we get victims of a big fraud and I can't yet believe that, to be honest.

Well, in the first week of September I saw a domain auctioned at Flippa and I made a bid but the reserve didn't get met so the auction ended with the name unsold.

The auctioner approached me privately and proposed to close a deal out**** so we reached an agreement on a fair price and used Sedo.com for the private transaction (we had some credit there so we decided to use it despite the fact we paid a bit higher fee than on Escrow).

The transfer has successfully completed in few days so he proposed a second domain and we reached a fair agreement as well ... Again we used Sedo to close this deal and anything worked fine till Thursday when GoDaddy removed both names from our account by following an US court order.

Oh, we got shocked ! It seems this guy stolen both names from the original registrant and sold them fraudolently.

Well, we've lost an high $xx,xxx in favor of this scammer ... What next ?

Obviously we know nothing about him, we're aware of the identity theft fraud and similar stuff so, it's really worth investing on a legal action/investigation to try getting our money back ?

Obviously no, I'd say ... but I'd like to know your advice.

The only 'real data' is the bank account he has surely used to cash funds from Sedo so I've some questions here: let's suppose a judge should order Sedo rto reveal his bank account details then we should find a second judge belonging to that jurisdiction ready to order the bank to reveal their client details but what next ?

No bank account is anonymous, he might have used a nominee to open that account or who know what other dirty trick.

What's your thought ? It was really hard to suspect a fraud considering he was auctioning one of his domain at Flippa without being apparently in a rush to sell ...

But now I've other concerns regarding our future purchases too: let's say we find a domain listed with a fixed BIN of $200k on a public marketplace and we close a deal then few weeks later a court order force our registrar to move the domain back to his original registrant. How may we avoid similar frauds to happen again ? What should we do to prevent them ? Things are not so easier as in the past when all public details where listed in whois so it was easy querying whois history, calling the person who owned it till few months before (in case of a recent registrant change) and checking nobody stolen his name.

In the past we risked to be victims of a similar fraud but some lucky circumstances made as suspicious so we avoided it at the last second.

In that case, the hacker didn't change whois info (so there was no recent update to the whols record) because he gained control over the registrant email so it was very hard suspecting something was wrong there ...

winst · Oct 7, 2019

Wow. This is incredible, and very difficult to defend.

Here are my observations: multiple systems may be compromised and the scammer seems to be monitoring the transactions and knew exactly when to ask for money and how to conduct transactions.

It was on the news that a home buyer lost $100k because a scammer send him an email about a change in wiring instruction. The scammer knew when to send him the email instructions.

I've recently received a domain renew bill from PayPal by GoDaddy (with GoDaddy logo) but the domain was set to auto-renew the next day via credit card. The scammer knew when the domain name is expiring and I had a PayPal account (I have since changed email addresses for each)

Perhaps the Flippa auction was by the real owner, the scammer had already compromised his email, but waited for just the right time to scam the interested buyers.

Perhaps we need to rethink security best practices. Systems are being compromised everywhere. Adding authentication steps and rules seems to not help much.

DomainRecap · Oct 8, 2019

winst said:
It was on the news that a home buyer lost $100k because a scammer send him an email about a change in wiring instruction. The scammer knew when to send him the email instructions.

There is a lot of email info out there on the dark web, along with tons of 3rd-world social engineers stealing your account from moron CSRs, but many of them are now playing the "long con" whereby they just monitor the compromised email and look for an opening.

Wire transfers, banking info, Paypal, Bitcoin, etc. anything financial sets off an alert and off they go to work on your ass.

Due to this, I regularly change the passwords on my ISP account and associated emails, because those are the main targets. Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, Bell, Rogers, Time Warner, Spectrum, etc., etc. - they've all been hacked a zillion times and your data is out there, and the only thing you can do is try to stay ahead of the scammers by regularly changing passwords.

platey · Oct 9, 2019

DomainEmpire.com said:
It's the first time in my 19yr experience in the domain business that we get victims of a big fraud and I can't yet believe that, to be honest.

Well, in the first week of September I saw a domain auctioned at Flippa and I made a bid but the reserve didn't get met so the auction ended with the name unsold.

The auctioner approached me privately and proposed to close a deal out**** so we reached an agreement on a fair price and used Sedo.com for the private transaction (we had some credit there so we decided to use it despite the fact we paid a bit higher fee than on Escrow).

The transfer has successfully completed in few days so he proposed a second domain and we reached a fair agreement as well ... Again we used Sedo to close this deal and anything worked fine till Thursday when GoDaddy removed both names from our account by following an US court order.

Oh, we got shocked ! It seems this guy stolen both names from the original registrant and sold them fraudolently.

Well, we've lost an high $xx,xxx in favor of this scammer ... What next ?

Obviously we know nothing about him, we're aware of the identity theft fraud and similar stuff so, it's really worth investing on a legal action/investigation to try getting our money back ?

Obviously no, I'd say ... but I'd like to know your advice.

The only 'real data' is the bank account he has surely used to cash funds from Sedo so I've some questions here: let's suppose a judge should order Sedo rto reveal his bank account details then we should find a second judge belonging to that jurisdiction ready to order the bank to reveal their client details but what next ?

No bank account is anonymous, he might have used a nominee to open that account or who know what other dirty trick.

What's your thought ? It was really hard to suspect a fraud considering he was auctioning one of his domain at Flippa without being apparently in a rush to sell ...

But now I've other concerns regarding our future purchases too: let's say we find a domain listed with a fixed BIN of $200k on a public marketplace and we close a deal then few weeks later a court order force our registrar to move the domain back to his original registrant. How may we avoid similar frauds to happen again ? What should we do to prevent them ? Things are not so easier as in the past when all public details where listed in whois so it was easy querying whois history, calling the person who owned it till few months before (in case of a recent registrant change) and checking nobody stolen his name.

In the past we risked to be victims of a similar fraud but some lucky circumstances made as suspicious so we avoided it at the last second.

In that case, the hacker didn't change whois info (so there was no recent update to the whols record) because he gained control over the registrant email so it was very hard suspecting something was wrong there ...

The simple way is to list the two domain names you bought here in this post

I know you may not want to but by listing the domain names in question you effectively act as a digital bug zapper and reverse the situation which allows the public on here to help you as they may have brokered one or other of the domain names or previously sold them etc

platey · Oct 9, 2019

DomainEmpire.com said:
It's the first time in my 19yr experience in the domain business that we get victims of a big fraud and I can't yet believe that, to be honest.

Well, in the first week of September I saw a domain auctioned at Flippa and I made a bid but the reserve didn't get met so the auction ended with the name unsold.

The auctioner approached me privately and proposed to close a deal out**** so we reached an agreement on a fair price and used Sedo.com for the private transaction (we had some credit there so we decided to use it despite the fact we paid a bit higher fee than on Escrow).

The transfer has successfully completed in few days so he proposed a second domain and we reached a fair agreement as well ... Again we used Sedo to close this deal and anything worked fine till Thursday when GoDaddy removed both names from our account by following an US court order.

Oh, we got shocked ! It seems this guy stolen both names from the original registrant and sold them fraudolently.

Well, we've lost an high $xx,xxx in favor of this scammer ... What next ?

Obviously we know nothing about him, we're aware of the identity theft fraud and similar stuff so, it's really worth investing on a legal action/investigation to try getting our money back ?

Obviously no, I'd say ... but I'd like to know your advice.

The only 'real data' is the bank account he has surely used to cash funds from Sedo so I've some questions here: let's suppose a judge should order Sedo rto reveal his bank account details then we should find a second judge belonging to that jurisdiction ready to order the bank to reveal their client details but what next ?

No bank account is anonymous, he might have used a nominee to open that account or who know what other dirty trick.

What's your thought ? It was really hard to suspect a fraud considering he was auctioning one of his domain at Flippa without being apparently in a rush to sell ...

But now I've other concerns regarding our future purchases too: let's say we find a domain listed with a fixed BIN of $200k on a public marketplace and we close a deal then few weeks later a court order force our registrar to move the domain back to his original registrant. How may we avoid similar frauds to happen again ? What should we do to prevent them ? Things are not so easier as in the past when all public details where listed in whois so it was easy querying whois history, calling the person who owned it till few months before (in case of a recent registrant change) and checking nobody stolen his name.

In the past we risked to be victims of a similar fraud but some lucky circumstances made as suspicious so we avoided it at the last second.

In that case, the hacker didn't change whois info (so there was no recent update to the whols record) because he gained control over the registrant email so it was very hard suspecting something was wrong there ...

Plus that is just two domains etc how many more have left that account or are currently at auction about to leave that account but if a us court is on the case they will be back tracking the transaction etc

But on a similar note etc

Every phone signal is tracked but so is the signal used to track phone signals etc

Every thing a person types says hears views and it's location is recorded but that scenario is a two way Street Eg it works both ways

People don't realise that when they are typing in to their phone they are being watched from behind the screen Eg someone is watching them via their phone as they type

A person's phone is like a mirror Eg if you place a mirror on the front of your phones screen that's what is seen by those who have access to your phone

You might want to think a that next time you shop on amazon starkers on the loo lol

Arfy · Oct 9, 2019

Lox said:
Me, in short, when buying above $10k:

1. Agreement (recorded conversation)
1a. Pre-contract (identity, rec. transcript, acknowledgment)
1b. Due diligence (usually cost $1k+)
2. Contract (lawyer, i’m using online SignNow service or face to face, lawyer = lawyer)
3. Bank transfer only ( call gaining bank to confirm the account (record conversation) , no online escrow or 3rd party involved).
...
Ask your lawyer how to make it right.
Regards

how does due diligence cost $1k+?

mAd MaX · Oct 9, 2019

Scammers are from which country?

Lox · Oct 9, 2019

Crypto King said:
how does due diligence cost $1k+?

I do perform my own In-house DD and deepening on the outcome , getting an independent report from tx external DD provider can be ”save my a**” . I don’t buy “sell me- sell back” , soapy, recycling$, off$hore , etc names... that’s why I’m willingly paying $1k+ for on-the-ground DD Investigation. I like multivitamin insurance. Btw. I don’t go out to sell my rare coins / rare domains. The hardest thing in life is the patience to wait for the right moment, right mindset- buyer. Regards

DomainEmpire.com · Oct 11, 2019

Well, I've read and appreciated all your feedback.
I've hired an attorney just to play my 10% chance to recover back some funds or at least to know more about the whole story but he's eating money and doing almost nothing so far just words ...

He talked to the attorney of the real registrant but I'm afraid he's not qualified to work on domains because he gave me different versions of some facts in two diff. moments so I'm thinking to look for a new attorney but let me ask for your final feedback on the following points.

I can't trust at 100% things worked as he said (for several reasons) but let's suppose he's right:

1. The registrant lost his 2 names in late 2017 but he discovered the theft only few months back (that's too strange unless he renewed them in advance for at least 2 years) so he hired 2 attorneys to take care of the case.

2. It seems that both Dynadot (the original registrar) and the current fake registrant got warmed of not selling/transferring the domain but the hacker has been able to call Dynadot to authorize a 2min transfer to our GoDaddy account and to complete quickly this final stage of the deal without having to wait for the usual 5 days.

Now, 'supposing' (but I need to verify better all facts by hiring a more qualified attorney) that Dynadot got few months earlier a court order asking them to prevent any change to the domain registration but they've ignored it by allowing the hacker to transfer them to a diff. registrar, may I sue Dynadot and expecting to get a partial refund for my loss ? It is worth spending some more money in attorneys/courts ?

3. I'd like to get his bank details through Sedo and to ask them to try recalling back the original wire but Sedo can't cooperate without an explicit court order I guess considering their attorney isn't very cooperative (according to the words of mine) so let's do a quick recap...

4. Is it worth hiring an attorney to get a court order which will force Sedo to reveal the seller details/bank account info and a second court order in the bank jurisdiction to force them to disclose the real identity of the account holder ?

Yes, I might discover there's a ghost behind such account ... but it's also possible this person hasn't been so smart to hide his identity n the right way and even supposing he closed that account, I might have his real details and try to sue him ... but I'm starting to thing the whole process might cost a lot and I'm not sure it's worth this further investment.

Any opinion ?

Another interesting thing is that the hacker proposed me a third domain that I didn't buy ... It has been bought by another ingenuous domainer and he didn't loss it yet, obviously it's another stolen asset but apparently owned by a diff registrant so he has been luckier but always in possess of a stolen property now and I'm informing him of the whole story.

DomainEmpire.com · Oct 11, 2019

In cooperation of the other attorney, mine put together some data and started to suspect the hacker was probably from China (but who knows ...) with a virtual office registered in Los Angeles ... The point is that his bank account has for sure a real owner and it's really hard opening an account with a fake id considering all banks follow a complex due diligence process wihile accepting new customers, this's what I've learned from my personal experience so there're some chances to get a real name after a deep investigation simply I'm unsure this might be worth the effort and the investment ...

draco · Oct 11, 2019

If they're smart, and they appear to be, the money is long gone from that bank account. Especially if they're from China or another country. They may have an accessory or patsy that opened the bank account. You might have some luck with them (if there is someone else), depending on their assets.

DomainEmpire.com · Oct 12, 2019

I've just got access to the original court order, it's really a big mess

The court order has been transmitted to some registrar in the first week of June including godaddy (our domains weren't there at that time but probably other domains of the same registrant have been transferred there so they were basically aware of the whole thing since a long time it seems).
Oh yes, this hacker stolen a portfolio of 31 nice names to the same registrant even if he has been successful in selling just some of them to diff. parties.
I've also tracked another scammed domainer who spent $xx,xxx for his asset.

Seeing no realistic way to recover our investment and a so complex matter, I'm afraid we'll soon make the decision to leave unless we should see the possibility to sue in some way godaddy but this might result in thousands of dollars of legal expenses and months of legal fights ...

The involved attorneys doesn't have enough knowledge of the domain industry in my opinion, they're starting to think the hacker is behind a company called world biz without realizing that 'World biz domain' is just one of the registrars where part of the portfolio has been moved.
Really a mess and the original registrant hasn't yet recovered all his names considering his attorneys aren't qualified for this job so he's surely spending a fortune but on the wrong people while trying to resolve this complex matter.

Embrand · Oct 12, 2019

DomainEmpire.com said:
I've just got access to the original court order, it's really a big mess
The court order has been transmitted to some registrar in the first week of June including godaddy (our domains weren't there at that time but probably other domains of the same registrant have been transferred there so they were basically aware of the whole thing since a long time it seems).
Oh yes, this hacker stolen a portfolio of 31 nice names to the same registrant even if he has been successful in selling just some of them to diff. parties.
I've also tracked another scammed domainer who spent $xx,xxx for his asset.

Seeing no realistic way to recover our investment and a so complex matter, I'm afraid we'll soon make the decision to leave unless we should see the possibility to sue in some way godaddy but this might result in thousands of dollars of legal expenses and months of legal fights ...

The involved attorneys doesn't have enough knowledge of the domain industry in my opinion, they're starting to think the hacker is behind a company called world biz without realizing that 'World biz domain' is just one of the registrars where part of the portfolio has been moved.
Really a mess and the original registrant hasn't yet recovered all his names considering his attorneys aren't qualified for this job so he's surely spending a fortune but on the wrong people while trying to resolve this complex matter.

Sorry to hear about this mess. So it seems Dynadot is not to blame in any way in this case? Just asking since I have most of my names there.

cuni.co · Oct 13, 2019

I really dont understand, why not spend a few hundred extra and fly to the persons location and do a face to face deal, get a lawyer as well. I would do that for xxxxx sale tbh even high xxxx

Domiwire · Apr 19, 2021

DomainEmpire.com said:
It's the first time in my 19yr experience in the domain business that we get victims of a big fraud and I can't yet believe that, to be honest.

Well, in the first week of September I saw a domain auctioned at Flippa and I made a bid but the reserve didn't get met so the auction ended with the name unsold.

The auctioner approached me privately and proposed to close a deal out**** so we reached an agreement on a fair price and used Sedo.com for the private transaction (we had some credit there so we decided to use it despite the fact we paid a bit higher fee than on Escrow).

The transfer has successfully completed in few days so he proposed a second domain and we reached a fair agreement as well ... Again we used Sedo to close this deal and anything worked fine till Thursday when GoDaddy removed both names from our account by following an US court order.

Oh, we got shocked ! It seems this guy stolen both names from the original registrant and sold them fraudolently.

Well, we've lost an high $xx,xxx in favor of this scammer ... What next ?

Obviously we know nothing about him, we're aware of the identity theft fraud and similar stuff so, it's really worth investing on a legal action/investigation to try getting our money back ?

Obviously no, I'd say ... but I'd like to know your advice.

The only 'real data' is the bank account he has surely used to cash funds from Sedo so I've some questions here: let's suppose a judge should order Sedo rto reveal his bank account details then we should find a second judge belonging to that jurisdiction ready to order the bank to reveal their client details but what next ?

No bank account is anonymous, he might have used a nominee to open that account or who know what other dirty trick.

What's your thought ? It was really hard to suspect a fraud considering he was auctioning one of his domain at Flippa without being apparently in a rush to sell ...

But now I've other concerns regarding our future purchases too: let's say we find a domain listed with a fixed BIN of $200k on a public marketplace and we close a deal then few weeks later a court order force our registrar to move the domain back to his original registrant. How may we avoid similar frauds to happen again ? What should we do to prevent them ? Things are not so easier as in the past when all public details where listed in whois so it was easy querying whois history, calling the person who owned it till few months before (in case of a recent registrant change) and checking nobody stolen his name.

In the past we risked to be victims of a similar fraud but some lucky circumstances made as suspicious so we avoided it at the last second.

In that case, the hacker didn't change whois info (so there was no recent update to the whols record) because he gained control over the registrant email so it was very hard suspecting something was wrong there ...

I also become a victim. I sold my few domains to someone ([email protected]) Buyer asked me to pay escrow payment. Based on escrow payment/acknowledgement Slip I have transferred my domains to that person. Few days later when I have not received the payment I asked escrow I have not received the payment but I have already transferred my domains to him. Than escrow saying we are on further process to determine since you have transferred the domains we have to cancel this transactions now. I lost my brand names now buyer is not responding. It's such a same from escrow. They should not show me any acknowledgement slip that we are on process or it should not be cancelled. This industry is full of fraud persons. Don't trust escrow till you have not received your payment. I can't rollback my domains but I request you be aware in future.

Domiwire · Apr 19, 2021

[email protected] is a big cheater. Don't buy from him. He is a BS person.

Victims of a big fraud - And now what ?

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