Welcome to RCF - WHF

fishead · Feb 09, 2005

Domain Theft is a crime that is hard for a police officer to understand and equally as hard to doing anything about. This high tech crime can span international boundaries and go undetected until months after it has happened. By the time the victim realizes it the real thief is no where to be found. The new owner of the domain name may have thought they were getting a really good deal but will soon understand why the price was so low. The thief steals the domain and prices the domain low enough so that any domainer that understands the value of that domain would appear stupid if they didn’t buy the domain at that price.

This is the case of Raven.com. A man named Don Teske in Minneapolis started a company called Raven Computer Systems and in 1992 he registered the generic domain name, Raven.com. Several years went by and everything was fine for Raven Computer Systems. Don eventually died in October 3, 2005. That would seem like a pretty normal story if the story was to end at this point. However the story doesn’t end there. The widow of Mr. Teske had her email address at the domain and used it daily. One day her email stopped working and an IT person who was problem solving it for her let her know that she no longer controlled the domain. The domain was originally set to expire in 2008. So the obvious answer would have been that the domain had expired and she failed to pay the bill. This was not the case. She was clearly within her ownership window and didn’t need to renew the domain for another year.

This June the whois changed at Network Solutions. The dead man’s email address changed from to “Kushaiah Gostowski<don_teske@yahoo.com>”. A new guy was on the record and his email address said, Don Teske at Yahoo.com. Someone had tricked Network Solutions to change the whois record. Kushaiah was now the person controlling the domain, Kushaiah quickly used his new ownership status to transfer the domain away from Network Solutions before Network Solutions could figure out they had been tricked. Domain theft 101, once you gain control of the domain, move it away from the current registrar.

The domain was moved to DirectNic 7 days later,� with the fake address now listed on the whois record as 123 Main St. Fresno, CA 94205. The address changed again to the new fake address of One Wilshire Blvd, Los angeles, CA 90010 and was listed for sale on Sedo. Mark Colton with the email address of then profited $3,500 from the sale on July 3rd 2007.� The winner of the Sedo auction is unknown because they transfered the domain to GoDaddy on July 12th and hid behind a proxy service of GoDaddy. Did the thief launder the domain and make it look like it was sold to someone? Or did someone truly buy the domain for $3,500. The reason this theft was spotted was because the domain Raven.com should be worth $75,000 to $200,000. The quick sale at Sedo makes it look like the theft got quick cash for the domain or it was a fake transaction. But why did the domain go up for sale on eBay after the move to GoDaddy. Yes, it was once again listed for sale however this time no one bid.

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http://blog.domaintools.com/tags/stolen-domain/

Jaddon · Oct 12, 2005

Wow what makes the domain name worth so much?

fishead · Feb 09, 2005

It identifies with a business. Like if you had mcdonalds.com, it would be worth a mil. So people are stealing these names and making the owner pay ransom or they sell to someone else or mcdonalds can't use their own domain name.