Jailtime for a domain transfer?

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SeoDave

Bumbling Optimist
Mar 22, 2007
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This is a new one to me, although the guy sounds like he's serious (I think he's full of hot air).

Back story: I bought this domain September 12th from a reputable seller on DP (if there is such a thing). I've never had this happen before, but today I received an email from a previous owner who was still listed as the admin contact on the whois info. (I thought I had changed everything over, but apparently I missed the Admin contact). Anyway I'll let you read it for yourself and get your opinions on it.

Email 1: TO ME

Hello,

It seems that you have stolen my domain _______.TV.
I still have all order details and transfer emails from the domain. I have been trying to call you on your phone (as shown in whois) but i can't reach you. I am also still listed at administrative contact in the whois with this email adress i'm sending this email from. Please retunr the domain to me. I have been in contact with authorities in your area and will drom charges on you for stealing my high value domain. Get in contact with me within 12 hours or i will contact all authorities back and drop charges and you might end up in jail.

Regards,
Jona Van den Broeck.




Email 2: MY RESPONSE
Dear Jona Van den Broeck,
Your false accusations do not concern me. I paid for this domain and received it upon payment for it. It was never stolen and has been purchased by me from this seller on DigitalPoint:

forums.digitalpoint.com/BLAH-BLAH

If you have a problem with how that seller obtained the domain you may contact them directly. I will not surrender my rights to this domain and if you believe that the domain should be yours you may argue that point with the person that sold it to me. Also, I have received no phone calls from you with regards to this domain. I believe you are a liar and a con artist, but you will not deceive me. Have a nice day.

David ____________


Email 3: HIS REPLY
Dear David _______,

I have tried to call this number several times: XX-X-XXX-XXXX but i always get transfered to an answering machine.
Since you do not want to work with me on getting my domain back i will now contact your local authorities again and drop charges, this is a Federal charge so the FBI will take care of this matter. I also still have the original order details and emails from when i bought the domain so i will also forward this to them.
Since you are in the whois details of the domain i only need to deal with you, nobody else. If you bought this domain illegaly, you need to take this up with the person you bought it from. You accuse me of being a con artist........ i got news for you, you will be accused the same but in a court room.
You also call me a liar...... this was one of the biggest misstakes you ever made. You own a stolen domain and you will be jailed for it.
I forwarded all emails and print screens of my account at RegisterFly to the authorities i contacted. I also included three print screens for you. I also have 3 emails from Registerfly with the domain name succesfully being paid for, succesfully registered and the payment email from paypal. I also forwarded all paypal details to the authorities with emails and print screens. I am NOT gonna just let this high value domain go, i just returned out of the hospital after a long stay. You WILL be charged as YOU are the person on the whois info. You WILL be sorry for calling me a liar and a con artist instead of trying to work with my on this.

Not so kind regards,
Jona Van den Broeck


Now clearly no one would go to jail for a domain name (duh), and it's very unlikely the FBI would ever be contacted, but is it possible to steal someone's domain name and then sell it to someone else, and if so - is the person who bought the domain liable? I've been hit with C&D's before, and I've had disgruntled owners of dropped domains contact me trying to get domains back, but no one has ever accused me of STEALING a domain. At first I almost laughed it off as a typical phishing scam to try to get domains from people, but when I checked the Admin contact, his name was indeed there - so just wondered what you guys thought of this.
 


I'd look into whether the seller was reputable to begin with. Do they have a good rep over at DP? Talk to them and see what's up.

Also, head on over somewhere like whois.sc and get the past whois history to see what happened. You will have to pay a bit for this but if the guy e-mailing you was the previous owner and then within a short period of time the domain was transferred and sold to you there might be something fishy going on. Maybe the guy that sold you the domain got his account details and trasnferred the domain to his account?

If this is indeed a valuable domain it's probably nothing more than a scam artist. Regardless I highly doubt you would go to jail nor would the FBI get involved.

Once you've talked to the seller and checked past whois and everything looks ok tell this guy to take a hike. If he wants let him take you to court. There's no way you'd get penalized for this since you're not the one who stole the domain and you would have evidence that you "unknowingly" purchased a stolen domain. If anything the seller would be responsible IMO.

Also, I imagine if the domain was stolen this is something the registrar would be looking into and would give the domain back to the rightful owner. Since he is choosing to deal directly with you it sounds very fishy. Contact the registrar and see what they have to say about this.
 
Could still be a phising scam, having gotten the admin details from the whois you forgot to change. Even if it looks like he's sending the e-mail from the listed e-mail addy, that could be fake as well.

Real legal action doesn't occur through e-mail. If he DOES contact police or the FBI, (HAH!) chances are they'll tell him it's a civil matter and to take it up with a lawyer. IF you get a REAL letter from a REAL lawyer, then you can go to the trouble of enlisting the aid of an attorney your own.

Rest assured, the police are NOT going to show up at your door and haul you off to jail.

For an interesting read, if you're so inclined, here's a link to the story behind the guy that stole sex dot com and all the hoops the rightful owner had to go through to get it back. Sex.com - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Follow the links at the bottom of that page to read even more.
 
Ha this guy is a complete joke. If he was serious, or had any brain cells, he would have had a lawyer contact you. He would just talk to the registrar and prove its rightfully his if it was.
 
If he was stupid enough to put someone else on the billing/technical portion of the whois, that person has every right to sell the domain. It is their domain, not his. It sucks for the guy to loose a domain (although he more than likely really is a scammer, or just a big time idiot) but he doesn't have shit on you. I wouldn't even respond to his emails and I wouldn't allow him to call you. Just make sure the domain locking is on, he'll more than likely try whatever he can to get whatever access he can to the domain.
 
A little update:
So I dug around a little, did some searches and found out some stuff. Apparently this Jona guy has been doing business for many years now and this isn't the first time he's fucked people over with domains. Anyway, it turns out that when I put 2+2 together, this Jona guy IS THE GUY WHO SOLD ME THE DOMAIN ON DP. The bastard is selling other domains right now that have this same Jona guy as the admin/techinical/registrant contact. In fact, I did a few quick whois searches and found that every domain this seller on DP has sold or is selling has this Jona guy in the WHOIS info. So it turns out that the seller on DP that sold me the domain = guy who is now threatening me via email. I posted the emails he sent me along with our PM's back and forth negotiating the price of the domain he sold me and then started a "Jona is a scammer" thread on DP. The guy might have just forgot that he sold me this domain, but I'm fucking him up anyhow. If he doesn't lay off and apologize I'll be getting his DP account banned, his Paypal account shut down, and emailing all his domain registrars letting them know of his aggressive/lying behavior. I have a feeling he'll be scrambling to do PR and try to repair his image, but for now I expect him to just stop fucking with me. Thanks for the replies in this thread - everyone pretty much stated what I assumed and let me know that I had nothing to worry about from this asshat.
 
Nice catch what a douche...although I doubt you'll have much luck with DP the threads will probably get locked. Left him some neg rep tho.
 
Sorry I didn't read all of the OP but I noticed something regarding RegisterFly. Any domain that was originally registered or is currently tied up in RegisterFly is going to be a major problem. There was a meltdown over there a few months ago and ICANN had to get involved (I had domains there and this story has been all over the news) and now there's a major class action lawsuit against RF by all the registrants who lost domains due to their incompetence. Trust me. Run. Like the wind.
 
Never trust a guy with a last name that has THREE words. So you mean to tell me that the Count of Vundershtroodle is now selling domains on DP?
 
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