A man in Nevada is facing a possible 20 years in jail after trying to defraud people out of their domain names. David Scali pleaded guilty in court to a charge of mail fraud after being caught out in the scam.Scali registered an email under a false name and pretended to be an intellectual property lawyer, threatening $100,000 lawsuits unless domain name holders signed over their property within 48 hours.
The man targeted websites with similar names to popular sites. When internet users mistype URLs the traffic these sites generate can be used to sell advertising on the misspelt sites, a practice known as domain-squatting or typo-squatting.
Domain Typo-Squatter Fraudster Pleads Guilty: Faces 20 Years In Jail [vnu.co.uk]
Typo-squatting grifter faces the slammer
[theregister.co.uk...]
The agreement talks of a sentence between probation and six months' imprisonment, but this is just a guideline for the judge in the case, who'll have the final say.
I'm assuming 20 years is the maximum sentence, which won't be the ruling most likely.
[edited by: physics at 6:12 pm (utc) on Sep. 11, 2007]
lol
The funny part is that it sounds like he was scamming scammers.
Indeed it does. I would think that registering a domain similar to citysearch.com (as the person mentioned in the article did) would get you into trouble at least with citysearch if not the law...
Drama Queens! Reporters love to talk about the maximum and hate to say nobody gets it 99.99999% of the time. Or talk about sentencing guidelines which usually rule out the maximum as even an option.
But the guy might get more than Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan.
p/g
Once he is done with the probation, he will get a round trip ticket to Belize (why round trip? Because it's cheaper than one way :)).
He will retire on a beach with ample money. (Presuming he has been doing this for an 'extended' period.)
As Mikko of F-Secure said it today, and I am paraphrasing - malware and spam will continue, because it pays. Rarely they get caught, and when caught they do not get punished sufficienty.
Once he is done with the probation, he will get a round trip ticket to Belize (why round trip? Because it's cheaper than one way :)).
he might as well get a round trip to Germany.
All he needs to do there is
1. get a laywer who's out of work,
2. form a so called "Abmahnverein"
3. search the Web (.de-domains) for something that's not correct (and there is always something that's not correct)
4. send out letters damanding the addressee pay 100-200 Euro, sign a letter of complience (if breached, that costs 5-10 K per case then) and threaten to take the webmaster to court if he doesn't pay.)
5. order a nice set of wheels shortly after beginning.
The advantage: it's completely legal, because it benefits the community.
