'Halvarez' at Snapnames auctions uncovered

[prague7]

Ooer - this one's going to run for a while... :O

From DomainNameNews:
SnapNames User Name “Halvarez” Was Nelson Brady, VP of Engineering Bidding on Domain Names [Updated]

[Updated] According to a statement from Oversee.net’s SnapNames, an employee was found to have bid in 5% of their auctions since 2005 and in some cases arranged for a partial refund of the sales price after winning an auction. DNN also confirmed the bidder as Nelson Brady, the VP of Engineering. He was bidding under the username “halvarez”.

From Snapnames:
SnapNames User Name “Halvarez” Was Employee Bidding on Domain Names

To avoid any question about whether the company benefited from this conduct, SnapNames will offer a rebate to impacted customers, including 5.22% interest (the highest applicable federal rate during the affected time period), of the difference between the prices they paid in winning auctions, and the prices they would have paid had the employee not bid in the auctions. Impacted customers will be notified by SnapNames or its representative with instructions for the offer of a rebate.

SnapNames also has taken further action to ensure its policies regarding auctions are followed, and the company remains committed to taking whatever action is necessary to protect the integrity of its auction platform.

SnapNames deeply regrets this situation and is committed to addressing its customers’ needs quickly and fairly.

There's also a FAQ page at Snapnames

 

[MakrsChick]

Here is the deal:

I have privacy protection at SN. If a third party is going through the stuff at SN they will know what I have. That alone is a big case.

 

[robertjr]

reinstate immediately the auction history

I could not agree more!

It's unacceptable to ask a customer to trust a third party after such a fiasco. "Trust, but Verify" The only way to rebuild a relationship in such a situation.

With over 150 winning auctions during this time period, I'm not looking forward to going through them all.

 

[Acroplex]

Exactly. Any auction of domains at Snapnames that halvarez participated MUST be accounted for.

 

[daj]

Namejet seizes the opportunity to announce no shill bidding ever takes place at Namejet:
Namejet seizes the opportunity to announce no shill bidding ever takes place at Namejet | DomainGang

LOL...seizes the opportunity for sure.
Has anyone suspected that POOL.com has had shill bidding take place?
I've read on a number of occasions how others have said
they make you compete against yourself in bidding wars as well
(in order to make more money). Isn't that also questionable?

 

[Acroplex]

daj, that's a real email though. Not a spoof; the Editorial section at DomainGang.com is about cauterizing reality. So yes, Namejet is taking that opportunity to kick Snapnames while it's down.

 

[deb]

Exactly. Any auction of domains at Snapnames that halvarez participated MUST be accounted for.

From what date?

 

[Acroplex]

From what date?

From the day "halvarez" was created as an account. That's the minimum acceptable; of course, there might be other accounts that performed the same trick.

 

[deb]

From the day "halvarez" was created as an account. That's the minimum acceptable; of course, there might be other accounts that performed the same trick.

Acroplex "The "forensic accountants" is a company hired by Oversee to protect their interest and their assets against litigation, while minimizing financial damage: Rust Consulting Inc., the Leader in Class Action Settlement Administration"

These are Big Questions that need answering SOON please Rob

 

[Embrand]

Could someone please explain why he would get a partial refund when winning auctions?

 

[cmason]

DNJournal's take on the scandal with images of the shill.

 

[Keral_Patel]

Well he was on almost all auctions that I tried in 2006

But then I backed out and don't know what happened to those domains. [As I assume he wasn't buying them all up]

So Snapnames did lost lots of real customers too, due to this guy.

 

[daj]

Guy looks possessed. Such cold dark eyes.
Maybe they should also check his house for dead bodies.

 

[deb]

Guy looks possessed. Such cold dark eyes.
Maybe they should also check his house for dead bodies.

Maybe we should hear his story....im sure he knows where the bodies are buried but will he spill "Industry Secrets" along the way? Probably Yes to take the spotlight off him imo

 

[maxeaus]

I laughed my head off when i received this email today in my inbox, i have publicly stated my position on these sites before, that they are DODGY. I have never used these sites and never will as long as this type of garbage goes on.

It's about time these companies cleaned up their act.

NP's is the only site i trust 100% when running an auction IMO.

Namejet seizes the opportunity to announce no shill bidding ever takes place at Namejet:
Namejet seizes the opportunity to announce no shill bidding ever takes place at Namejet | DomainGang

LOL...seizes the opportunity for sure.
Has anyone suspected that POOL.com has had shill bidding take place?
I've read on a number of occasions how others have said
they make you compete against yourself in bidding wars as well
(in order to make more money). Isn't that also questionable?

 

[deb]

Snapnames was and Still is the Leader in Dropping Domains....they are a Great Company spoiled by a "Few Rotten Eggs". The company Has Done the Right Thing and i am sure one way or another things will work out "Fairly" for all involved.

A tip - be Very Careful of RUST's Agenda.

 

[bmugford]

4 years of repeated warnings to SnapNames about Halvarez. They have defended the bidder in the past saying he was a high volume customer.

They were either unwilling, or unable to catch him sooner. It had to effect so many divisions of SnapNames I have a hard time believing this has not been known for awhile. How was this hidden from accounting for over 4 years?

I have used SnapNames.com a lot, but in my opinion this could be a death blow to the company, and everything under Oversee.net is tarnished.

There is more to this story which I am sure will come out.

Brad

Snapnames was and Still is the Leader in Dropping Domains....they are a Great Company spoiled by a "Few Rotten Eggs". The company Has Done the Right Thing and i am sure one way or another things will work out "Fairly" for all involved.

A tip - be Very Careful of RUST's Agenda.

 

[Jaco]

There isn't even anything about Rust Consultings "agenda" to be careful about. It's all very much up-front.

They are what they are; dog-waggers, pure and simple. They are paid (probably enormous sums of) money by businesses in trouble to get their heads out of the mousetrap, perform miracles of damage control and mitigate liability outlays. They're basically the corporate equivalent of Winston Wolf

"Oh, crap... Some janitor left the lunchroom door open at Capital One, a kid snuck in and stole three laptops containing the names and social security numbers of 2,000,000 people... CEO Of Capital One: Call Rust Consulting..."

"Crap... Some pervert hid cameras in fifty hotel rooms at fifty different Holiday Inns... CEO of Holiday Inn: Call Rust Consulting..."

"Crap... Some employee at Casino XYZ was running a slot machine fraud and manipulated 600 machines, played buy tens of thousands of customers over the last 5 years... CEO of Casino XYZ: Get Rust on the line..."

"Crap... Some pencil-necked computer geek at an online domain name auction house had been manipulating the auctions for the past few years, to the tune of many millions of dollars in fraudulent bid prices... CEO At Oversee: Get on the phone to Rust...

There are outfits like this in the airline industry that get the phone call whenever a plane crashes, they have 'em in politics and RUST apparently makes a damn good business out of handling calamities for businesses that suffer some sort of catastrophic failure of policy that places them in the liability crosshairs.

 

[MakrsChick]

I know people received emails from SnapNames about this in the past. Please forward them to me, as I'm building a case against them. I have few evidence, but I need more. Thanks in advance.

 

[Jaco]

I know people received emails from SnapNames about this in the past. Please forward them to me, as I'm building a case against them. I have few evidence, but I need more. Thanks in advance.

Who are you?
Because if I were "Rust Consulting" or an Oversee attorney, I'd do something very similar to this in an effort to gather as many loose ends as possible so I know where I stood; where I had deniability and what I could 'make disappear', what I couldn't deny and generally, what I was up against... It's probably best for no one to divulge anything unless it's to their lawyer.

 

[deb]

I have over 850 Snapnames Auctions with a 98% Win success rate since Nov-2004 Halvarez was in roughly 40% and second highest bidder....

 

[DN BROKER]

LOL

http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/4828/snapnames.jpg

 

[Michelle]

Snap :imho: They knew

 

[daj]

Maybe this is also slightly relevant to some of you who think Oversee.net is such a decent company...
it's from back in 2006-2007 when oversee.net was involved in domain squatting, tasting, and phishing under various other "holding" companies.

To summarize:

Chesterton Holdings swipe domains following whois searches in online whois portals
Chesterton Holdings register those domains through NameKing.com
Chesterton Holdings use the Information.com service to monetize the domains
The same goes for Jucco, Munchale, and LaPorte, and all of the other "holdings" companies.

And the link to Oversee.net?

Oversee.net own NameKing.com, their pet domain registrar
Oversee.net own DomainSponsor, which operates Information.com
Oversee.net share a corporate HQ with Chesterton Holdings

Interesting timeline:

Sep 2004 - Karsten M. Self identifies domainsponsor.com as a homepage hijacking site

Dec 2005 - A blogger details AdWords clickfraud involving searchportal.information.com

Dec 2005 - Respected Search Engine Watch (and now Search Engine Land) editor Danny Sullivan declares Google AdSense For Domains Program Overdue For Reform

Dec 2005 - Microsoft Research includes information.com and domainsponsor.com in a list of Typo-Squatting Domains that Serve Questionable Advertisements

Dec 2005 - AdWords for Domain Garbage Traffic thread on SEW forum illustrates search traffic pattern that suggest click fraud: "The proportion of the search traffic is way out of line (Google 20%, domainsponsor 29%, information 41%)"

Jan 2006 - Search Engines Making Millions Off Type-In Traffic From Domains

Apr 2006 - Click Fraud thread on SEO Chat says, "virtually all of google traffic is coming from searchportal.information.com"

Jun 2006 - Oversee.net Buys Domain Portfolio of 35,000 Names, CEO claims, "An estimated 10-20% of paid search traffic now comes through direct navigation. This provides a great opportunity for Oversee.net, which has a rich history in this space."

Jul 2006 - An outfit called Chesterton Holdings is exposed as a "domain tasting" rat

Sep 2006 - Chesterton Holdings shares the same corporate address as the Oversee.net company headquarters?

Sep 2006 - Oversee.net Completes Acquisition of Ten Domain Portfolios

Nov 2006 - Oversee.net posts a 640% growth rate through 2005

Dec 2006 - Jeffrey K. Rohrs drafts The Sausage Manifesto, An Open Letter to Paid Search Networks on Behalf of PPC Advertisers

Jan 2007 - I pose this question: Is Google Partnered with Spammers?

Links about this:
Spam Links Blog: Chesterton Holdings are swiping spammers' domains from under their noses - but who are "Chesterton"?
Spam Links Blog: Oversee.net's Chesterton Holdings carry on domain swiping as Maltuzi Holdings
Apogee Weblog: Not Search Engine Spam

The whole company is shady, and has been since it's conception, as far as I'm concerned.

 

[deb]

The Plot Thickens

More to come.....

Maybe this is also slightly relevant to some of you who think Oversee.net is such a decent company...
it's from back in 2006-2007 when oversee.net was involved in domain squatting, tasting, and phishing under various other "holding" companies.



Links about this:
Spam Links Blog: Chesterton Holdings are swiping spammers' domains from under their noses - but who are "Chesterton"?
Spam Links Blog: Oversee.net's Chesterton Holdings carry on domain swiping as Maltuzi Holdings
Apogee Weblog: Not Search Engine Spam

The whole company is shady, and has been since it's conception, as far as I'm concerned.

Who really thinks ONE person was involved???

---------- Post added at 10:37 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:23 PM ----------

Scott H, i hope your not involved...

 

[DubDubDubDot]

Does anyone really believe that an employee was acting alone and had a personal interest in 5% of all SnapNames auctions for the past several years?

I will be filing a written complaint with the Federal Trade Commission in the coming days, and I urge all American domainers to do the same. This needs to be investigated.