Slashdot Mirror
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."
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
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.
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.