Recently there have been numerous reports about all sorts of domain scams and high profile domain thefts by fraudsters and scammers.

Hackers and other criminal minds manage to steal domains and then barefacedly try to sell them in the domain aftermarket.

This sort of thing can be very horrendous to the victim (domain owner) but the domain industry on a whole is also a victim.

If people are stealing domains and then directly approaching end-users to offer them for sale it could throw this fragile domain industry into further disrepute.

Now, according to an email that I got this morning, it would appear that some people actively trying to sell domains that they do not even own or have control over.

Here is an email that I got this morning:

” Hi I have several domains that I want to sell such as Planets.com $700k, Amnesia.com $40k, Downline.com $25k, Lose.net $9k, eSales.com $100k, HardDrives.com $310k, etc. Are you interested in buying any of the mentioned domains yourselves?”

Normally you would get suspicious immediately when you receive these domains as the quality of the domains do not match the prices, which are normally well below their average retail market value. However, in this case the sender got the prices spot on.

However, I found it strange that someone with such high profile domains would be seeking to sell them in such a (desperate) manner.

A simply Whois check on the domains reveal that they are all owned by different individuals or companies based in different cities/countries.

Now I suspect the sender of the email is not the owner of these domains. The name in the email did not match any of the Whois records. Secondly, although a few of the domains are indeed for sale at the prices mentioned in the email, the sender did not identify himself as a domain broker or agent acting behalf of the domain owners.

Approaching a clueless end-user with premium domains that you do no even own is one thing, but trying to sell them to a seasoned domainer is just damn stupid and obnoxious.

The funny thing is, I get these types of emails on a daily basis.

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Here is an interesting article written by Rebecca Burn-Callander from Real Business wrote. It emphasizes the caution that one should exercise when buying premium domains.

When Pat Reeves and Rohan Blacker decided on the domain name sofa.com for their online sofa retailer, the acquisition trail took them to the US – and into a whole heap of trouble.

“We knew we had to have that domain name,” says Blacker, who co-founded the firm in 2006. “There are so few four letter words that are a product that can be sold online. It was an opportunity we couldn’t miss.”

The pair tracked down the owner, a chap named Steve Galstad of Dinesen’s Leather in Milwaukee, USA. Blacker and Reeves duly contacted Galstad and asked him if he was using the domain, to which he answered “No” so they then attempted to purchase it.

At first, Galstad asked for the exorbitant sum of $1m. The pair had the domain name valued by an independent consultancy, who worked out that the name was worth more in the region of $35,000. Reeves and Blacker offered Galstad $50,000.

“But he [Galstad] was very reticent to accept,” says Reeves. “He refused to speak by phone, would take up to four weeks to reply to emails. Finally, we agreed on the sum of $200,000. He asked to meet in New York to complete the deal. But he wanted me to bring the money in cash!”

When Reeves turned up without a locked briefcase, Galstad became very jumpy. The lawyers convinced him to sign all the legal papers and he eventually agreed to have the money wired across. Two weeks later, the domain name technically belonged to the entrepreneurs, but when they tried to transfer it from the States to the UK, they found a block.

“It turned out that he didn’t actually own the domain name,” says Reeves. “He was just the manager of the company.

“The account number he’d given us for the money transfer was his personal account. And he’d absconded to South America with a stripper from Vegas!”

Luckily, the contract was airtight, and even though Galstad was not technically the owner of the firm, he still held “apparent authority” at the time of the deal. Reeves and Blacker got to keep Sofa.com. And Galstad’s luck soon ran out.

“The money ran out ten months later,” says Reeves. “So the stripper left him. He started working as a bartender. When he won a “Bartender of the month” prize and ended up in the paper, the police tracked him down. He’s still serving his sentence now.”

Original article: realbusiness.co.uk