More Fraudulent Bidding Activity at DropCatch.com

[Arca]

DropCatch.com just can't get rid of fraudulent bidding activity on their platform. Fraudulent bidders bid up prices, don’t pay when they win, and then the names are re-auctioned again and again until a legit bidder wins.

It is a win-win system for DropCatch. If the fraudulent bidders bid up a legit bidder, DC cash out even more thanks to the fraudulent bidder driving up the price beyond where it would have gone with only legit bidders. If the fraudulent bidder wins, they simply hold and re-auction the name over and over until they get a legit bidder that pays. It's a problematic system for regular bidders, because before these fraudulent bid handles get suspended, they bid up legit bidders in various auctions.

DropCatch's system enables them to get paid for names even with so many fraudulent non-paying bidders on their platform. But even with this auction restarting system in place, there are simply so many fraudulent bidders that they sometimes struggle to find a legit winner, despite multipe re-auctions. Take CannaMarket.com. The domain has already been won by THREE DIFFERENT fraudulent bidders. The first winner, in the original auction, was fraudulent. The name was re-auctioned. The second winner was fraudulent. The name was re-auctioned. The third winner was fraudulent (he bid the name up to $4K). When a name can score a triple fraudulent bidder combo streak on their platform, with no legit winner in sight, it’s clear that there is something wrong with how their system works. They are currently holding cannamarket.com in a dropcatch.com holding account, and I wonder whether they will try to re-auction the name a fourth time, or just let it drop since this is obviously a bad look for them when three out of three attempts of auctioning off the name ended up with fraudulent bidding activity (and who is going to be brave enough to bid against all the fraudulent bidders in a fourth auction? This name is apparently a fraud magnet).

Then there was this auction for lumeo.com recently (it was bid up to $14K by a bidder that most likely is fraudulent, and the winner has not yet paid, and the payment deadline passed a few days ago). How long until this name gets re-auctioned due to fraudulent bidding activity?

I often get emails from dropcatch saying "due to complications involving potentially fraudulent activity, the following auctions you had participated in are being restarted". A quick search shows an inbox full of emails notifying me of fraudulent bidding activity and auctions being restarted:

I just received another one today. It contained another SEVEN auction names that closed recently with fraudulent bidding activity:

cybercorp.com - Sold for $1251
sefin.com - Sold for $665
devlog.com - Sold for $343
thermair.com - Sold for $457
simplypretty.com - Sold for $515
finte.com - Sold for $350
kinovo.com - Sold for $330

All these auctions involved fraudulent bidding, and have now been restarted (you can go to dropcatch.com and bid on them right now). A quick visit to the dropcatch.com website shows a other restarted auctions as well, such as for evinite.com (sold for $142) and acercloud.com (sold for $370). Will legit bidders win these restarted auctions this time around?

DropCatch.com is very much like a game of hot potato, where fraudulent bidders bid up auctions and don't pay when they come out winning. There is a significant amount of auctions being restarted due to winners not paying up, when compared with other expired domains auctions platforms. The result is that legit bidders have to pay, literally, for the presence of so many fraudulent bidders on this platform that bid up the prices for legit bidders. Just an advice for everyone to be aware of this issue when participating in auctions at dropcatch.com.

 

[Michael]

corebody.com was won in an auction on November 11. I don't know the price and winner since this info is still not available in the dropcatch system once an auction gets restarted. The winner turned out to be fraudulent and didn't pay, the auction was restarted, and the domain sold for $1,707 in the restarted auction. Did your system manage to catch the Nov 11 winning price for this domain?

Regarding some of the older auctions previously won by WittyNut, like TZFX.com or VVYA.comndid you manage to grab the initial prices WittyNut won these for on separate days in August?

While we delete the sales from our database, we don't go back and delete them from our Daily Market Report blog posts. It is too much effort to then update all the stats in the title and intro paragraph, fix the next day's percentage changes, update where they were posted to social media, etc.

So you can go to Google and search like this:

site:namebio.com/blog "corebody.com"

CoreBody.com showed closing November 7th at $1,059.

Didn't catch either of the 4L.com the first time around though. Might have ended on a day where they made changes to their site that broke our tracking or the site was too slow to respond.

 

[Arca]

PerformanceTraining.com sold for $3200 to "tintin" on Nov 22. Tintin did not pay. The domain auction has now been restarted.

The auction for tuncan.com has also been restarted. The domain sold for $390, also on Nov 22. I don't know who won this auction.

 

[Arca]

cannamarket.com
WittyNut: $4,383
New: $2,005

The full auction history of CannaMarket.com:

CannaMarket.com Auction 1 - July 10 - $5,101 (non-paying winner - not sure who won)

CannaMarket.com Auction 2 - July 24 - $5,070 (non-paying winner: guest1234 - second highest bidder was wittynut. From $1205 to $5070 this was purely a bidding war between guest1234 and wittynut - again, shows you the impact a bidder like wittynut can have!)

CannaMarket.com Auction 3 - August 06 - $4,383 (non-paying winner: wittynut)

CannaMarket.com Auction 4 - December 01 - $2,005 (fourth winner paid: ckrgksanrndghk)

 

[wwwweb]

PerformanceTraining.com sold for $3200 to "tintin" on Nov 22. Tintin did not pay. The domain auction has now been restarted.

The auction for tuncan.com has also been restarted. The domain sold for $390, also on Nov 22. I don't know who won this auction.

Tintin if you notice has cost a lot of us a lot of money, if he is another non paying bidder, who continues to bid. Bid me up, and others many times, without any sort of let up, full on bid assault.

 

[Arca]

Tintin if you notice has cost a lot of us a lot of money, if he is another non paying bidder, who continues to bid. Bid me up many times, without fail.

I assume he has been banned as a result of not paying for his performancetraining.com win (as the auction has now been restarted, which "confirms" that he is now deemed a fraudulent/non-paying winner by DropCatch).

 

[wwwweb]

I assume he has been banned as a was result of not paying for his performancetraining.com win (as the auction has now been restarted, which "confirms" that he is now deemed a fraudulent/non-paying winner by DropCatch).

If you look below you can see how much damage a person like tintin can do, then simply run away. This is the dangers with these rogue bidders, they cost honest bidders thousands of dollars. One of many examples.

 

[Arca]

DropCatch just sent out an email stating that performancetraining.com and tuncan.com have now been paid for, and that they will no longer be reauctioned. The restarted auctions, that were already running, have now been removed.

 

[wwwweb]

DropCatch just sent out an email stating that performancetraining.com and tuncan.com have now been paid for, and that they will no longer be reauctioned. The restarted auctions, that were already running, have now been removed.

That is hilarious, they had already deemed it deliquent, what kind of Show are they running over there.

Start an auction, end an auction ... you have to work by a strict set of internal controls, not make them up as you go along.

 

[tonyk2000]

performancetraining.com and tuncan.com have now been paid for,

Both domains have some unusual whois, as if somebody trying to impersonate tucows/hover - powered privacy service. I'd say that this whois is incorrect for any namebright/dropcatch domain:

Registrant Name: Contact Privacy Customer
Registrant Organization:
Registrant Street: 96 Mowat Ave
Registrant City: Toronto
Registrant State/Province: Ontario
Registrant Postal Code: M6K 3M1
Registrant Country: CA
Registrant Phone: +1.3044056263
Registrant Phone Ext:
Registrant Fax:
Registrant Fax Ext:
Registrant Email: [email protected]

So, somebody with incorrect account details can be allowed to participate in dropcatch auctions, have their winnings be extended in non-paid status, and reauctions to be canceled?

 

[wwwweb]

Tuncan.com closed on nov 22, today is dec 5th, that is one hell of a payment window?

 

[wwwweb]

Both domains have some unusual whois, as if somebody trying to impersonate tucows/hover - powered privacy service. I'd say that this whois is incorrect for any namebright/dropcatch domain:

Registrant Name: Contact Privacy Customer
Registrant Organization:
Registrant Street: 96 Mowat Ave
Registrant City: Toronto
Registrant State/Province: Ontario
Registrant Postal Code: M6K 3M1
Registrant Country: CA
Registrant Phone: +1.3044056263
Registrant Phone Ext:
Registrant Fax:
Registrant Fax Ext:
Registrant Email: [email protected]

So, somebody with incorrect account details can be allowed to participate in dropcatch auctions, have their winnings be extended in non-paid status, and reauctions to be canceled?

Good catch, wow scanning that you would overlook it right away, maybe report it to icann. These people are not your average bear for sure, probably play with a lot of trademark names.

 

[tonyk2000]

Start an auction, end an auction ... you have to work by a strict set of internal controls

In order to work by a set of internal controls, one needs to have such controls, and there is no evidence that DropCatch has any. Indeed, permitting live domains (and bidding aliases?) to be "owned" by external registrars privacy service - which simply cannot happen as tucows registrar and namebright are different entities - is an example of _lack_ of such controls
I personally do not care whether whois record of any particular domain is correct or not, it is the job of namebright / dropcatch to verify what is happening inside their system, and they are not doing their job correctly (or at all).

 

[wwwweb]

In order to work by a set of internal controls, one needs to have such controls, and there is no evidence that DropCatch has any. Indeed, permitting live domains to be "owned" by external registrars privacy service - which simply cannot happen as tucows registrar and namebright are different entities - is an example of _lack_ of such controls

I wonder if these auctions which became past due on Nov 27th, follow the course, and go up for reuaction on Dec 4th, all the sudden got paid as Whisky was run up over $1K by tintin 1 bid at a time for like 30 minutes, so 27th was Monday, Day 5, we all know payments are due within 4 days, so they didn't pay tues, wed, thur, fri, and payment was overlooked all weekend, and even monday morning as reauction had started, along with emails going out, all the sudden paid, well I am sorry, it's to little to late, this person failed by 2x the payment due date?

These are special concessions that are being given to allow people to keep outbidding legit bidders who are chained to actual rules, by people who have magical rights, and powers to play as they please without recourse.

After we got that speech about everything is now different, etc etc, well looks like more of the same, and I have never seen an auction that has been started clawed back.

 

[wwwweb]

69 auctions were restarted as a result of WittyNut's months long streak of fraudulent bidding activity. Those auctions have now closed, and there is a clear price difference after the presence of that particular fraudulent bidder was eliminated. I've included some of the results from these newly closed auctions. Shows you the impact that these fraudulent bidders at dropcatch can have on auction prices. This issue seems to still be ongoing (I have not had time to post updates about auctions being restarted subsequent to fraudulent bidding, but there have been several non-wittynut related auctions restarted due to other non-paying bidders since my last post about it).

WittyNut in red and no WittyNut (restarted auction result) in green:

cannamarket.com
WittyNut: $4,383
New: $2,005

cannabishq.com
WittyNut: $3,500
New: $308

generaldoctor.com
WittyNut: $2,228
New: $488

smokewatchers.com
WittyNut: $2,550
New: $112

herbremedies.com
WittyNut: $905
New: $320

ecopot.com
WittyNut: $1,000
New: $439

orderorganic .com
WittyNut: $1,101
New: $210

ghorganics.com
WittyNut: $1,800
New: $810

customplastic.com
WittyNut: $1,551
New: $348

alternativeliving.com
WittyNut: $1,251
New: $755

bluepharm.com
WittyNut: $464
New: $701

ehio.com
WittyNut: $1,150
New: $905

kgarden.com
WittyNut: $244
New: $225

livingmindfully.com
WittyNut: $1,113
New: $827

biomaps.com
WittyNut: $370
New: $145

pawh.com
WittyNut: 381
New: $285

We all saw the extent of wittynut's damage here, and this is just a small sample, anyone get any of the promised refunds yet?

 

[Jasonn]

Will be interesting to see if filmmaking gets paid for..

 

[wwwweb]

Will be interesting to see if filmmaking gets paid for..

Wow filmmaking.com $35K, anyone catch the username that should be the key?

filmmaking.com 55,000 USD 2008-07-23 T.R.A.F.F.I.C.

I have sen a few of these 2008 sales that are still sitting with domainers, and selling for much less, who bit on that one 10 years ago.

Well if they get paid they better start refunding wittynuts scam bids, it's been over a month, they have already reauctioned those domains, and been paid for it, otherwise they are profiting from allowing fraud to happen, and continue on their platform.

 

[main]

https://dropcatch.wordpress.com/2017/12/07/dropcatch-re-auctions-and-winning-bidder-credits/

 

[wwwweb]

https://dropcatch.wordpress.com/2017/12/07/dropcatch-re-auctions-and-winning-bidder-credits/

Great find, thank you for taking the time to post that.

The only concern I would have for people bidding on dropcatch is that everyone has the same timeline to make payment, no special considerations, all clients should be valued equally.

 

[Jasonn]

Wow filmmaking.com $35K, anyone catch the username that should be the key?

filmmaking.com 55,000 USD 2008-07-23 T.R.A.F.F.I.C.

I have sen a few of these 2008 sales that are still sitting with domainers, and selling for much less, who bit on that one 10 years ago.

Well if they get paid they better start refunding wittynuts scam bids, it's been over a month, they have already reauctioned those domains, and been paid for it, otherwise they are profiting from allowing fraud to happen, and continue on their platform.

infoXX and namesatz (not sure the exact spelling on that) were going at it for hours. Not sure who won though.

 

[wwwweb]

infoXX and namesatz (not sure the exact spelling on that) were going at it for hours. Not sure who won though.

After using dropcatch for several years, and bidding on a daily basis in the past, I try focus very hard on usernames to know what I am up against, and those two are not familiar at all. Chinese bidders love to sit there, and pushing the min bid, and waiting for the reset clock to go back to zero, and then bid a minimum bid again from my experience.

I even scanned some more popular past auctions, and I can't find any action on those usernames.

Those usernames are not striking a bell for me, either of them. Maybe others can weigh in also?