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."

Comments

I knew something was fishy in his takedown request

[bobdotorg]

Maybe he shouldn't have signed it Lionel Hutch, Esq.

Darwin Awards - Legal Edition

[evil_aar0n]

Would this be the equivalent of "winning" the Darwin Awards in the legal field?

Re:Darwin Awards - Legal Edition

[Anonymous Coward]

Not unless they started implementing some very inhumane punishments.

There can be only one

[cheebie]

"The" intellectual property lawyer?

It's been just one person causing all this pain?

And step 2 is...

[Kelson]

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

And do what, indict them for impersonating themselves?

Re:And step 2 is...

[kmac06]

That'd be awesome if being a lawyer were an indictable offense.

Re:Just clumsy

[DustyShadow]

Yea but no one goes into a lawyer's office asking "hey can you help steal a bunch of shit?" ...oh wait

I say throw the book at him

[adona1]

Impersonating a lawyer is bad enough, but going so far as to impersonate an intellectual property lawyer? The man clearly has no shame. Society must be protected from people as depraved as him.

Re:I say throw the book at him

[MLease]

Is it worse to impersonate an intellectual property lawyer, or to be one?

-Mike