Guy Robs Someone At Gunpoint For Domain Name, Gets 20 Years In Jail (vice.com) 134
Yesterday, 43-year-old Iowa man Sherman Hopkins Jr. was sentenced to 20 years in prison for attempting to rob a domain name from another man at gunpoint in 2017. As Motherboard reports, "this may be the first time someone has attempted to steal a domain name at gunpoint." From the report: Last June, Hopkins broke into the home of 26 year-old Ethan Deyo in Cedar Rapids, Iowa one afternoon and demanded that Deyo to log on to his computer to transfer the domain name for "doitforstate.com" to another account. According to Deyo's bio on his personal website, he is a web entrepreneur who previously worked for the web hosting service GoDaddy. After seeing Hopkins enter the apartment, Deyo locked himself into his room and Hopkins kicked in the door. Hopkins kicked in the door and "pistol-whipped" Deyo, held a gun to his head and used a stun gun on him during the encounter. While he attempted to wrestle the gun away from Hopkins, Deyo was shot in the leg, but he eventually gained control of the firearm and shot Hopkins multiple times in the chest. It's unclear why Hopkins wanted the domain name or who he was transferring the domain name to.
wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
"guy robs" ...
"Deyo was shot in the leg, but he eventually gained control of the firearm and shot Hopkins multiple times in the chest."
That doesn't count as "robs", but "attempts to rob".
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Have you been living under a rock? Corporations are people you caveman.
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No. They may be "persons in law" but they are NOT people.
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Unless the transfer was already done.
Re: wait, what? (Score:3)
Whatever the case, the web developer guy is a goddamn badass. I ain't gonna lie , someone points a gun at me, I'm complying, to wrestle a gun off an armed home invader and win, that takes balls of cast iron.
Re:Bad movie script (Score:5, Funny)
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Ehh, I can't say that it sounds particularly interesting to me. The ability to look people up via whois kinda destroys any dramatic tension, ya know?
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... The ability to look people up via whois kinda destroys any dramatic tension, ya know?
If you remember from the film The Net [wikipedia.org] the "whois" command can return a picture of a person's drivers license - so there's that. (sigh)
Re:Bad movie script (Score:4, Funny)
Plot for Taken 4. Terrorists steal Liam Neeson's domain name.
Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson): "I have a particular set of skills -- and a Security+ certification..."
Re: Bad movie script (Score:2)
Movie! (Score:3)
Ocean's Eleven Chest Holes.
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I knew an old fat guy. His wife emptied the clip of a 25 into his chest. He beat the shit out of her, then drove himself to the emergency room. She went to prison.
The 25 really is the lamest of all calibers. Like a 22 _short_, but even lamer.
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He said "That's our sniper model." His exact words.
The story is that two dudes got in to a f
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A
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it's less about what caliber, and more about the amount of powder behind the projectile.
FTFY.
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Heart, brain, spinal cord. Not like movies (Score:2)
Poking a hole in someone's spinal cord, heart, or certain parts of the brain will kill them. Other that, doctors intentionally remove lungs, kidneys, etc, to make someone's life better in some cases. Poking a hole in one is unlikely to kill someone.
Real life shootings are very, very different from movies. Getting shot doesn't knock you back either. You may recall Newton's third law says the force backward on the person shooting is at least equal to the force of the bullet. Actually the person shooting gets
200% - 15% is still more than 100% (Score:2)
Here we're talking about a handgun. In a handgun, approximately half of the forward energy is in the projectile, so without a muzzle brake the shooter would absorb twice as much energy as the target.
Not that hardly anyone uses a muzzle brake on a handgun, but let's suppose someone does. At handgun pressures, the muzzle brake might reduce recoil by 10%-15%. So through the grip, the shooter feels 185% of the energy that the target gets.
Suppose a perfect muzzle brake which redirects all of the excess up and s
The bullet AND EVERYTHING ELSE (Score:2)
Re-read the first half of the sentence you quoted.
Approximately half of the energy of the expanding gas is imparted to the projectile. The other half is gas amd other residue shooting out of the muzzle, at a velocity higher than that of the projectile. A low single-digit percentage is lost to friction.
Handguns and rifles have "rifled" barrels, meaning there are deep grooves in the barrel, through which a round bullet passes. A portion of the expanding gas escapes through the grooves, never imparting any ene
Only if it passes all the way through the target (Score:2)
> For a target, a bullet designed for penetration will not impart all the energy into the target. For a hollow point of the same energy, more will go into the target and will deliver more 'knock back'.
It doesn't matter if it penetrates one inch or six inches. When it comes to rest, all of the energy has been transferred to the target.
This would only matter if the projectile passes all the way through the target, and exits at a significant velocity.
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Take the domain and run
Why didn't he just send a (Score:1)
phishing email like everybody else does? Hard to get shot in the chest that way...
99 problems and a domain name ain't one... (Score:2)
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He could have just added an 's' to the domain and bought it for .99 cents.
I don't know if they still do but you used to go to cheap domain registration sites like GoDaddy and 'check domain availability', it would tell you whatever you searched for wasn't available, then within an hour you'd get an email offering to sell it to you for $1,000 or so.
What do you mean no one knows? (Score:5, Funny)
"Do It For State" is a millennial phrase out of Iowa State like, "Do it for the boobies" or "I did it for the nookie" or "Man up and do it."
As for everyone saying that no one knows why Hopkins did it...
Obviously he did it for state.
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Naw, given the domain, clearly the guy wanted it for Kendy.
Integral Trees. Think about it.
Public Registration Information. (Score:5, Insightful)
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This story reminds me why I make sure to pay the fee to protect my privacy before complaining about my privacy...
But yeah, it would be nice if privacy was included.
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This story reminds me why I make sure to pay the fee to protect my privacy before complaining about my privacy...
But yeah, it would be nice if privacy was included.
Namecheap JUST announced free privacy on all domains. No more worried about your door getting kicked in and being shot. I didn't realize privacy was useful until now, I mean "doitforsate.com" is a pretty stupid domain name and if you can get shot for that...
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Yeah, I'll try to keep that in mind in 10 years when they've been around long enough to be willing to try them.
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Probably because Google Domains has been doing it since the beginning [geekwire.com].
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That (to not publish personal registration information anymore) is what DENIC does since May, and I guess it's really a good thing.
So small caliber weapon? (Score:2)
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How do you get shot 4 times in the chest and still make it to get 20 years?
Probably something low-power, like a .25.
("Not much stopping power. Even less with a silencer." M to James Bond, when confiscating his beloved Beretta and replacing it with a Walther PPK. Or was it Q? I forget...)
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It was M. And Bond tried to steal the gun after that.
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It was a 9mm, not exactly small caliber.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndia/pr/cedar-rapids-felon-sentenced-twenty-years-federal-prison-after-attempting-extort/ [justice.gov]
Re:So small caliber weapon? (Score:5, Funny)
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How do you get shot 4 times in the chest and still make it to get 20 years?
Posthumously?
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http://www.cracked.com/article... [cracked.com]
In real life, unless you're one of those dudes getting shot in the head or perfectly in the heart, you're probably going to make it if you can get medical attention. According to one doctor who has a little experience with these things, as long as your heart is still beating once they wheel you into the hospital, there is a 95 percent chance of survival.
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Holistic body armour. There's a steampunk game which had the observation that of all the people who survived fighting in the trenches, 30% had a bible in their top left pocket, another 40% had a hip flask and the other 30% had a metal neck brace. Therefore, wearing all three simultaneously would provide 100% protection.
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ICANN should stop requiring physical address (Score:5, Interesting)
This is precisely why ICANN should stop requiring postal and/or phone number in the WHOIS records.
ICANN should start requiring PO Box. (Score:2, Informative)
Google number, and P.O. Box. Failing that, a small company front.
Re: ICANN should stop requiring physical address (Score:1)
He should sue icann for disclosing his address to the attacker
Re:ICANN should stop requiring physical address (Score:5, Informative)
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My accountant or lawyer? Seriously? If someone is rich enough to have either, they're already on top of this.
Guns don't kill people ... (Score:3)
Wellllll in this case nobody got kilt. And you could argue it was a domain name registration. But that just ain't bumper-sticker worthy.
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No no no, it's gargoyles. Just ask Nick O'Malley.
Sounds like a case for a mental institution (Score:2)
These 20 years will do nothing to deter anything like this and when he comes out, he will probably still be dangerous. Fail.
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IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer) but even I can think of 20 years of charges... criminal trespass, break and enter, assault and battery, extortion, unlawful access to a computer account (think CFAA). Many jurisdictions also throw in extra prison tine if a gun is used in the commision of a crime.
Re: Sounds like a case for a disbarment (Score:1)
You're thinking of the charges, but not changing the underlying nature of the preposterous crime.
For example, robbing a bank for money? A crime. Robbing a sperm bank for money, evidence of your client's mental state.
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No, this guy worked for the devil. He deserved to bleed out. I guarantee to you that he was guilty of a lot worse he was never caught for, and even if you saw proof of what type of risk was just avoided here you would still not believe it.
History here? (Score:2)
Hmm - wonder if since the victim used to work for godaddy that this was a grievance thing? Maybe he used to have the domain and perceived that it was taken from him by nefarious means? Anybody got a subscription to a whois history service that can take a peek? Doesn't condone this nutter's action, but surely there's more to this than a random attempt to grab a (presumably) valuable domain? I mean there are other more obvious targets if you're willing to do this at gunpoint!
Do you want to know what a hero looks like? (Score:1)
Because this is what a hero looks like.
out of the box (Score:2)
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This is America. Rich people don't go to prison unless they piss off other rich people.
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A former American President also stole Domain names and then gave those domain names to the United Nations. He may have done this to keep Hillary's additional dirty laundry from wikileaks. He's facing a lawsuit from four state attorneys and it doesnt look like he's going to jail ....
Of course not. They used to call Reagan the teflon president. He had nothing on Obama. Man that guy is slicker than a used car salesman.
I have a deal for you. Hope and change. Just vote for me. Millions did. Suckers.