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FTC Busts Domain Name Scammers
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."
If they can't pay the full judgment, why not have them work off the bill in debtor's prison?
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).
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
That would be DROA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Registry_of_America
I got their invoices all the time. Good for a laugh at least. I'm sure they scammed thousands.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
They should be pounding rocks with a sledge hammer for 20 years instead. If the penalties for screwing with people's lives through these kinds of scams, identity theft, and all the botnet thievery were serious and enforced, maybe there would be less of it. In a time when our lives are increasingly open - and privacy a joke - then righteous behavior becomes a (inter) national necessity. Otherwise we have anarchy.
Honestly, I don't know why the FTC even bothers. If these clowns aren't criminally prosecuted, what exactly is the point? $10k, and an order to Go Forth and Sin No More is just a waste of time.
And the "Go Forth" orders are routinely ignored... I think Kevin Trudeau has been slapped by the FTC for infomercial scams no less than three times, and he still doesn't give a $hit.
SirWired
> Hand me your sloshdat credentials or your consequences will be permanently altered.
/dev/random. They are preceded by the phrase "sloshdat credentials", so you can grep for them easily. HTH.HAND.
In order to prevent anyone *else* from seeing my sloshdat credentials except for you, I have transferred them directly to your computer and hidden them in a special file called
Let's see if I get this right: the guys make a little over 4M dollars, get fined 10K dollars and can "keep" the rest because they have already spent it? If this is true, I'm in the wrong business!
Not to detract from the humour.... If you incorporate without a name, you get to be known by the serial number associated with your incorporation.
There was a similar scam in Canada, with some registrar sending out renewal notices to other registrar's customers. I forwarded one to the RCMP fraud division, and they said it wasn't technically illegal so they wouldn't do anything.
Sure, but is that nest egg able to be discovered by the lawyers? When you have that mush cash, it can't be TOO hard to figure out/find a way to hide some of it offshore.
Also, easy come, easy go. A lot of criminals spend cash like there's no tomorrow, because they know if they get caught, they forfeit it.
Besides, if I was an evil mastermind with untold millions, I'd spend it on the construction of an immense underwater fortress, and then kill all the people who knew the location. How are you going to find my money without a team of superheroes?!
Mwua-ha-ha.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Yeah, like putting them into the automatic mail sorting system.
Interesting. I was just thinking that the reason we're living in such an impolite society is because the penalty for cold-cocking someone for being rude is so huge.
You're saying that since we have such comfy lives, we don't punish people for taking some of our stuff, since it's easy to replace.
I get the feeling that you're referring to some kind of resource scarce apocalyptic scenario where Thog hits Grog over the head with a relic broken-off parking meter[1] because Grog tried to take Thog's supper?
I don't know if the rule of law will disintegrate so quickly... but your ideas intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
[1] Bonus points for anyone who gets this reference.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
The problem with debtor's prison is that people can fall into debt for all sorts of reasons ranging from maliciousness to recklessness to just plain bad luck. Do you really think that someone who can't pay their bills because a hurricane destroyed their house and their place of employment should be put in prison?
What you are looking for is thieves' prison and last time I checked we already have those. However, AFAIK, the FTC doesn't have the authority to prosecute criminal cases, just levy civil fines. Instead they pass on information to the appropriate authorities (the FBI or state governments may have jurisdiction depending on the offense). In this case, either the FBI would need to extradite them to face charges here, or the Canadian government would need to press criminal charges.
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.
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.
A good lawyer is one who can get a charge of sodomy reduce to one of following too close.
Amusingly, most white-collar criminals are actually republicans.
Amusingly, most white-collar criminals are actually democrats but spread the myth that such crooks are mostly republicans. B-)
Amusingly, most white-collar criminals are actually indifferent to political party and will claim whatever political affiliation they think will get them the maximum amount of leverage/sympathy/etc. possible. :-P
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
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.
Apparently the courts and the FTC actually seek to encourage crime. How is it with the overwhelming number of useless laws on the books that we do not have a single law that states that the wrong doer must always pay back more than was taken?
Are you trying to trick me?
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.