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

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.

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:I knew something was fishy in his takedown requ

[DavidJSimpson]

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

You mean Lionel Hutz. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_Hutz
If you are going to impersonate someone, at least impersonate the right person.

Not necessarily jail time

[arth1]

From the bottom of TFA:

"The plea agreement contemplates a sentence ranging from probation to six months in custody, but the sentencing judge will make the final decision as to what Scali's sentence will be."

In other words, the title of this article is very misleading.

Re:20 years or only probation? Article says both.

[AuMatar]

The maximum sentence is 20 years. Prosecutors agreed to ask for something in the probation-6 months range in exchange for a guilty plea. The judge makes the final decision and he is allowed to give up to the maximum, although they usually follow the plea agreement.

Probation more likely than 20yrs jail time

[fv]

The article title says he "faces 20 years in prison" to be sensational, and maybe that is the theoretical maximum. But the last line of the article says that "the plea agreement contemplates a sentence ranging from probation to six months in custody". The judge gets the final decision, but he is much more likely to get probation than a 20yr sentence.

Fyodor

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:Ignore legal threats

[QuantumG]

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

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.

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.