Article - FTC busts domain name scam

[TestCase]

Not sure if this belongs here or under "Legal Issues"...

FTC busts domain name scammers | NetworkWorld.com Community

The Federal Trade Commission said today that it had permanently killed the operations of a group that it said posed as domain name registrars and convinced thousands of US consumers, small businesses and non-profit organizations to pay bogus bills by leading them to believe they would lose their Web site addresses if they didn't.

A federal district court shut down Internet Listing Service, a Toronto-based group the FTC said sent fake invoices to small businesses and others, listing the existing domain name of the consumer's Web site or a slight variation on the domain name, such as substituting ".org" for ".com." The invoices appeared to come from the businesses' existing domain name registrar and instructed them to pay for an annual "WEBSITE ADDRESS LISTING," the FTC stated.

 

[Sparhawke]

they will turn over $10,000 to satisfy the judgment.

It seems to me that this amount is nowhere near enough, this should be per domain name and if they do not have the money to pay the fine then take it off their brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles...their whole bloody family. Let them deal with doling out an appropriate punishment.

This is the problem with justice, the penalties are so far out of whack with the damage they do that the courts might as well instead give them the money.

 

[MT Domains]

Checked my PO Box (which is on the whois for most of my domains) for the first time in several months this weekend.. I had a few of those scam letters in there. I have them still sitting on my computer desk at home, since I planned on messing with them a bit this coming weekend.. I wonder if the three "companies" my letters all came from were these people from Ontario..

The $10,000 does seem like way too little...