Cybersquatter Faces Jail Time For Wire Fraud

coondoggie writes to mention that a Las Vegas man faces about 20 years in prison today after pleading guilty in a case where he impersonated intellectual property lawyers and tried to bully owners out of their domain names. "According to the FBI, David Scali is charged with registering an e-mail account under an alias and then sending e-mails in which he claimed to be the intellectual property lawyer. In the e-mails, which were sent in late June and early July of 2006, Scali threatened to file $100,000 trademark infringement lawsuits against the owners of various Internet website names unless they gave up their domain name registrations within two days."

Thats step 1

[AuMatar]

Now when is the FBI going to come down on the real lawyers who do the exact same thing?

Choose your target

[Hatta]

If you're going to rip someone off, don't rip off a lawyer. And if you're going to rip someone off on the internet, especially don't rip off a technology lawyer. Jeeze.

Ignore legal threats

[QuantumG]

Which is exactly why you should ignore legal threats.

"I'll see you in court then" is the only sensible response.

Re:Choose your target

[QMalcolm]

I don't know how successful the scam was, but an attitude could be really beneficial to a guy like him.

"Gee, lawyers are bloodsucking villains who will stop at nothing to win, I better just hand over the domain instead of fighting them in court. They're a LAWyer, after all, they must know the law!"

Reminds me of how a scientist seems much more trustworthy to the public if they're wearing a lab coat.

Re:Ignore legal threats

[QuantumG]

You offer to settle once you have those numbers, not before.

Re:Ignore legal threats

[QuantumG]

Blah. People threaten to sue you all the time in business. You just gotta roll with it. When it starts costing you money, they you worry about it.

It's about time

[Oztechreich]

We've had several similar threats from cybersquatters in the past. As well as the usual imposters trying to get us to transfer domain registrations.

This sort of thing deserves closer policing. It is a drain on the time of registrars and registrants alike to have to deal with these sorts of charlatans.