FTC Busts Domain Name Scammers 125
coondoggie writes "The Federal Trade Commission said today 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. As with so many of these cases however, the defendants get off paying back very little compared to what they took. With today's settlement order, entered against defendants Isaac Benlolo, Kirk Mulveney, Pearl Keslassy, and 1646153 Ontario Inc., includes a suspended judgment of $4,261,876, the total amount of consumer injury caused by the illegal activities. Based on what the FTC called the inability of the settling defendants to pay, they will turn over $10,000 to satisfy the judgment."
Re:DOA - Domains of America (Score:2, Interesting)
I also used to receive postal mail from these guys, but haven't seen anything recently
On a somewhat related note, I have noticed that the fake lottery scammers and 419'ers seem to have migrated from email to actual physical postal mail. It's not a lot (over the last year I've received maybe 4-5 of them) but it makes me wonder whether these scams are actually lucrative enough to cover the cost of postage (often from overseas). The other possibility is that these scammers have figured out a way to hack the postage metering system so they're sending their mail for free (minus the cost of paper).
Not debtor's prison (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:DROA (Score:2, Interesting)
They apparently also run The Domain Registry of Canada. I received a bunch of letters from these scammers. These guys have scanned the one they received.
http://www.sibername.com/support/droc.php/a [sibername.com]
Re:4 million dollar scam = $10k? (Score:1, Interesting)
It's really not that difficult to make illegally-gained money "disappear". For example, overpay for fictional services provided by businesses set up by people who aren't officially tied to your main business. It's a lot harder to prove that money paid for, say, marketing consulting wasn't legit, at least without launching a full-scale investigation into the company that supposedly provided it. If that company is actually semi-legit (but happens to be taking a kickback, or has the perp's wife's sister-in-law as an employee, skimming the extra off into her own bank account, etc) the money might never be traced back to you, or can't be reclaimed even if it is. It's effectively laundered. Toss in a few overseas bank accounts, and a whole bunch of money becomes unrecoverable and undetectable by the authorities, but still remains available to you.
Re:In due time... (Score:3, Interesting)
The rules regarding theft of property and the use of lethal force (which in today's language is nearly any force, not just the use of firearms or dangerous weapons) have really changed radically since the mid-1960s.
Prior to the mid-1960s, the law appeared fairly soundly on the side of theft victims. I trolled the back issue database of the NRA's "Armed Citizen" column and was surprised to see a ton of stories from about 1965 and earlier where theft victims shot thieves *in the back* as they ran or even *drove* away, often killing them and getting absolutely no resistance from the police.
Since then there have been a number of legal changes but I also think there has been an increasing pacification of society and a concomitant attitude that "it's only stuff" and it can be replaced by insurance or whatever.
I'm sure this has something to do with the proliferation of "stuff" people own; the more we own, the more is at risk of theft, but at the same time, the more we own, the less value any of it has to us, let alone life/death value.
At any rate, its an interesting to think it was perfectly acceptable to shoot a man in the back for stealing your wallet 50 years ago and now it's considered homicide.
Re:Blame Canada (Score:5, Interesting)
I forwarded one to the RCMP fraud division, and they said it wasn't technically illegal so they wouldn't do anything.
You know, that's the RCMP's answer to everything. I have sent them so many tips on how to catch these guys - from the phone numbers they call from, the email servers they use, the post box they send from, and even how I as a regular citizen was capable of tracking all that info to at least a common city - if not an address that they could raid.
However, there is nothing I can do, and the police all claim that this kind of cyber crime isn't in their jurisdiction, so no one does a damn thing about it. I had someone sending me emails saying that they were going to sell me medical records for a low cheap rate - which already sounded sketchy enough as is but I decided to follow it through on the premise that if this was someone illegally selling that kind of stuff I could aid in his capture.
However, the RCMP basically told me that until they actually sell it - it wasn't enough for them to go on, and that following through would make me a criminal for purchasing it, and that they weren't capable of following the lead. That was the day I lost my faith in the legal system.
My boss got suckered. (Score:4, Interesting)
Our domain was up for renewal in September. In July we get a letter from Domain Registry of Canada (Domain Registry of America is their US version). Looking like a normal and official bill, the boss paid it by VISA despite it being nearly 10x what a domain registrar should be charging. The next day I'm going through the paperwork and find the DROC invoice. I'm baffled because they are not our domain registrar. First thing I do is call our real company and confirm that the domain is still locked. I also renewed at the time just to make sure. I then called DROC and after a few minutes on hold I was assured that the charge was cancelled. I contacted VISA the next day and was informed that the charge had been cancelled. They seemed to be pretty routine and mechanical about cancelling people though I imagine a few people never realized they had been suckered.
Re:In due time... (Score:2, Interesting)
I was in Enschede when the fireworks storage exploded in 2000.
Aside from the really bad devastation to the surrounding area, the blast also broke pretty much every window in the inner city. Within less than 5 minutes people were looting from the stores that had thus been exposed.
The layer of veneer between our civilization and the return to good old "my club is bigger than yours so hand over everything you have" barbarism is very, very thin indeed.