Kevin Medina, you're a dirty, dirty man.

[JRBHosting]

Does anybody just happen to have a telephone number for the administration/management at ICANN and/or RegisterFly?

 

[Theo]

Does anybody just happen to have a telephone number for the administration/management at ICANN and/or RegisterFly?

No, but I'm sure the hired escort does.

 

[JRBHosting]

Wouldn't be suprised

Appearantly, neither does their NJ-based tech support? Bull!@#$.

 

[JMJ]

In case you're not reading the thread on the other forum it appears that most people that are having EEP code, lock/unlock and renewal problems had the protectfly on. Try turning off the protectfly to unlock or get your EPP. Worse case scenario create another account and push the name to the new account and it will turn off the protectfly. This will also allow you to renew if you have issues there as well. I never used the protectfly nor added it when I made my purchases so I've never came across this one.

 

[Theo]

Next time folks don't get caught with your "fly" open.

 

[companyone]

Hi,

Web Hosting and Domain Name Provider Registerfly Files Suit Against Former CEO

February 22, 2007 - (HOSTSEARCH.COM) - Web hosting and domain name provider Registerfly has filed a suit against its former CEO, The Register (http://www.theregister.co.uk) reported today. Kevin Medina is being taken to court by Unifiednames, his former employer, with filed documents listing a number of allegations against him.

The Register�s report suggests Unifiednames is seeking damages for 75,000 lost domain names. The complaint against Mr. Medina is that he misappropriated corporate funds and, as a result, the company was unable to cover registry fees. The company claims the misappropriated funds amounted to tens of thousands of dollars and that Mr. Medina used this money for a variety of purchases including a Miami Beach apartment.

The Register�s report goes on to suggest that 900,000 owners of domains registering with Registerfly have been trying to reacquire rights over domain names that have not been renewed, despite renewal being paid for. The Register�s analysis of the situation is that ICANN (the domain name governing body) should bear some responsibility for the situation for not adequately supervising accredited registrar activity. This drew a response from ICANN's ombudsman, Frank Fowlie, who suggested ICANN does not police the activities of accredited registrars.

Registrar threatened with ICANN shutdown
22nd February 2007
By Kevin Murphy

ICANN has given scandal-hit domain name registrar Registerfly.com 15 days to sort its problems out or risk losing its license to sell domains.

The organization, which oversees the domain name system's policies and practices, sent a letter with the ultimatum to New Jersey-based Registerfly yesterday, and published it on its own web site.

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“It's a rare move for us to send a letter that indicates that we will consider terminating the agreement,” said ICANN vice president Paul Levins.

The move came after several weeks of angst from Registerfly's customers, many of which claim to have lost their domains or to have been overcharged for names that they ultimately lost anyway.

ICANN also sent a separate letter, which has not been published, demanding that Registerfly make all its data available for inspection and copying no later than 10am Friday, according to Levins.

All registrars are obliged to provide their data to ICANN escrow under the terms of their registrar accreditation agreement, Levins said. ICANN would be able to enforce these terms in court if not complied with, he said.

This, it is hoped, will give the registrants of Registerfly's roughly 900,000 domain names some confidence that their data will not be lost if something should happen to Registerfly.

There has been an internal feud at the company for some time between joint owners Kevin Medina, CEO, and John Naruszewicz, vice president, which culminated in a February 12 lawsuit.

Naruszewicz sought, and received, a preliminary court injunction preventing Medina from accessing the company's funds. Naruszewicz claimed that Medina had been using corporate money to pay for a life of luxury, at the expense of the company and its customers.

Among the allegations were claims that Medina has used Registerfly's money to pay for a $10,000-a-month Miami Beach penthouse, a $9,000 escort, and $6,000 of liposuction surgery.

ICANN's seven-page letter outlines several breaches of the registrar contract, and outlines a timeline of customer complaints reaching as far back as late 2005.

It says Registerfly failed to provide its customers with the codes they need to transfer their names to competing registrars and that it kept customers' names in a “locked” status, so they could not be moved.

It also says that ICANN received many complaints that customers were being double, triple or quadruple-billed for domain names, and that the company would deny users access to their names if they tried to chargeback their credit cards.

On one occasion a Registerfly customer complained that their domain's contact information had been altered to “Kevin Medina”, the name of Registerfly's CEO.

Medina told ICANN's registrar liaison these problems were due to “growing pains”, according to ICANN's letter. However, ICANN continued to receive an “inordinate amount of complaints” about the company throughout 2006.

ICANN also received complaints that paid-for multi-year domain registrations would only be made for one year, and that in late 2006 thousands of domains that customers paid for were not registered because Registerfly did not have a sufficient cash float with the domain registry.

“Registerfly’s pattern of neglect of its obligations to ICANN, fellow registrars, and customers demonstrated by the above circumstances is unacceptable,” the letter says. “Registerfly has repeatedly taken what appears to be a cavalier attitude toward the promises it made.”

“The inability to retain sufficient funding for Registry Accounts also raises concerns that Registerfly may be bankrupt or insolvent, which would allow ICANN to immediately terminate the RAA,” ICANN's letter says.

Registerfly now has 15 days to get its act together, or risk losing its ICANN accreditation.

While the enforcement move by ICANN may come as some comfort to Registerfly's customers, it does highlight the fact that ICANN has been aware of the company's customer service problems for the last 15 months and, save securing promises during a handful of backroom meetings, was unable to prevent them continuing.

ICANN now seems set on getting its hands on Registerfly's customer data, to protect currently registered domains should it come to the worst. However, it's less clear what this means for Registerfly's customers at this point.

 

[GAMEFINEST]

kevin medina is a dumbass

 

[Gerry]

$9,000.00 on three separate occasions for a personal escort.
$10,000.00 monthly rent for a Miami Beach penthouse.
$6,000.00 for liposuction.

Damn, does this mean they have a spot open on the board?

Where’s the application link?

 

[MediaHound]

http://www.icann.org/correspondence/registerfly-notice-of-breach-21feb07.pdf

 

[Theo]

http://whois.domaintools.com/kevinmedinasucks.com

Site was up earlier but now it looks like it's down.

 

[Rockefeller]

Does anybody just happen to have a telephone number for the administration/management at ICANN and/or RegisterFly?

Marina del Rey, CA, USA

4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330
Marina del Rey, CA 90292-6601
USA

Phone: +1.310.823.9358
FAX: +1.310.823.8649

 

[GAMEFINEST]

such a good company going down the drain

 

[domain newbie]

..

 

[Dave Zan]

Anyone up for a potential laugh?

http://www.internetcommerceassociation.org/registerfly_under_fire

ICANN itself has been silent, but Paul Levins, its vice president of corporate affairs, told us yesterday that the organization has been talking with Registerfly behind the scenes for a time.

"We've reached the point today where we've decided to make some very decisive action," he said, declining to elaborate. "We're proceeding swiftly to protect the interests of people who have the 900,000 names registered."

 

[companyone]

Heres The Latest...

Brawling RegisterFly partners in fight to the death
Malaysia Sun
Saturday 24th February, 2007
(Big News Network)

Big News Network.com: The extraordinary unraveling of embattled domain registrar RegisterFly.com has continued into the weekend.

The two principal shareholders John Naruszewicz and Kevin Medina at the weeks-end were still trading verbal blows, while ICANN stepped in to the fray after nearly three years of complaints. Whilst most focus has been on the failure of the company's support systems, allegations of fraud and corruption were flowing freely Friday, not only from the principals involved, but from ICANN.

Meantime the control of RegisterFly.com, seized by Naruszewicz on Tuesday, was back in the hands of Medina late Friday. Both parties are accusing the other of hijacking the company's Web site and administration, which has been effectively dysfunctional for weeks. Medina has also replicated the current site at www.registerfly-inc.com so if he loses control again, or the original site is brought down, he can continue to trade on.

Whilst existing customers are up in arms over the loss of control of their intellectual property, and their inability to obtain redress, RegisterFly remains open for business, offering its services to new, unsuspecting customers. Despite its registration, renewal, and transfer systems all being dysfunctional, RegisterFly continues to take payments for orders it cannot fulfill.

One large customer who was unaware of the behind-the-scenes debacle tried to acquire what is called a "Flypack" around two weeks ago. A Flypack is a coupon for multiple domains which reduces in price dependant on the volume. These "coupons" can be used to register, renew, or transfer domain names. With the system in-operative the customer's attempts to pay a few thousand dollars for several hundred domains on his credit card was unsuccessful. The customer issued a support ticket and sent an email asking for help. Late Friday Kevin Medina emailed the customer saying he had tried to put the charge of nearly $7,000 through, but was unsuccessful. "I tried to charge your card and it failed," he wrote. "I tried to charge in different amounts but it did not work," he added. He asked the customer to contact the credit card company and have them approve the amount.

While the two 50% shareholders fight for control, the company's hundreds of thousands of customers are getting angrier and angrier. In a normal situation they would be leaving the company in droves. The only problem is their domain names are locked up, and their authorization codes are being withheld preventing transfers to alternative registrars. Domain names reaching their expiry date are simply being lost. With many of these involving Web sites a large number of customers are losing complete businesses or at the very least, important business tools. Compounding the problem is that many of RegisterFly's customers are managing domains and Web sites on behalf of others.

Court documents filed last week by interests associated with Naruszewicz claim 75,000 domain names have been forfeited by RegisterFly.com in the past month alone, due to the registrar's failure to pay registration fees.

Due to the inability of the courts to move swiftly, and ICANN having only initiated a potential breach notice, it appears that without the principals entering into a form of settlement, the death of RegisterFly.com is inevitable.

Already ICANN in its breach notice has raised concerns the registrar "may be bankrupt or insolvent." Even more concerning is that a number of complaints received by ICANN relate to allegations of fraud. Another bombshell from the domain name authority in its breach notice which was made public Friday, but was issued Wednesday, is that the complaints date back to at least 2005. One of the most frequent complaints was that customers were being overcharged two, three and four times per transaction. RegisterFly customers who believe the current serial support issues at their registry are a recent phenomena will be disturbed to know that from late 2005 until early 2006 ICANN was receiving large numbers of complaints that emails and support tickets were going unanswered, and the call hold time was frequently in excess of 30 minutes.

If customers had their credit card company reverse any overcharges, ICANN says RegisterFly "retaliated by denying the customers access to all of the registered names in their account," not just the names involved in the relevant transactions.

It appears ICANN simply forwarded all the complaints received to eNom, which was the primary registrar, with RegisterFly being a reseller.

On January 17 2006 ICANN told eNom it was receiving an "unusually high number of complaints concerning RegisterFly." eNom responded with an explanation from its reseller RegisterFly, which indicated that RegisterFly intended to move its customers domain names from eNom to its own account. Incredibly a month later, at the very time ICANN was accrediting RegisterFly, eNom was contacted again and was told its own accreditation was in potential breach as a result of allegations that its reseller RegisterFly was altering customers' Whois data and populating the Whois record with "intentionally inaccurate data." eNom was told at the time that any domain registrations through its accreditation, even if processed through RegisterFly, were eNom's responsibility.

In April last year ICANN says it continued to receive complaints about RegisterFly. Customers reported being locked out of their accounts, and having domain names disappearing from their accounts. Kevin Medina, says ICANN, responded by saying the issues were as a result of "growing pains."

In May 2006 the complaints started to include reports of "stolen" registrations and renewals. On the 19th of May ICANN says it received a complaint from an owner of 220 domain names who, after a heated argument with RegisterFly, noted the Whois information for his 220 names was changed to reflect "Kevin Medina" as the registrant instead of the domains owner. It took several weeks for RegisterFly to address this issue with ICANN, culminating at a meeting between ICANN staff, Medina, and RegisterFly.com's Glenn Stansbury, where the "inordinate number of complaints ICANN had received regarding RegisterFly" was discussed. Medina and Stansbury both assured ICANN that "RegisterFly was working hard to improve its customer service."

The pair also said they were working to relieve the pressure on their employees in the Risk/Fraud department. It was in this discussion that the RegisterFly executives dropped another bombshell: employees in the Risk/Fraud department were being paid "strictly on commission." The policy was changed "as a result of RegisterFly's discussions with ICANN."

By early December 2006 ICANN says it was still receiving "ever-increasing complaints from RegisterFly customers about over-charging." At a meeting on December 3rd 2006 ICANN met with Stansbury and Mark Klein, the company's Vice President of Sales, who had only joined the company weeks earlier after 5 years at Tucows Inc., to discuss the high volume of complaints which included issues surrounding RegisterFly's failure to renew customers domain names, failure of the support systems, billing errors, insufficient funding of registry accounts, and nonpayment of ICANN invoices.

ICANN says Stansbury and Klein repeated previous assurances that the issues were being corrected, and that the registrar was opening a new customer service facility within a week. ICANN's concerns were detailed in a document handed to the RegisterFly executives at the meeting. Stansbury promised to respond in writing within one month (January 3 2007). ICANN never received a response.

In January 2007 ICANN continued to receive complaints from RegisterFly customers, but complaints by then were also coming in from other ICANN-accredited registrars, ICANN board members, and the U.S. Department of Commerce. Deeply disturbing was the fact that the most common complaint by RegisterFly customers was that transactions that were billed and paid for were not being effected at the registry. "In addition, multiple-year renewals and registrations were only being processed for one year instead of the number of years that had been paid for."

With Naruszewicz and Medina heavily engaged in a bitter dispute, their business dysfunctional but still trading, serious allegations of fraud, misrepresentation, misleading conduct, and theft, afoot; and control of the company's Web site and administration constantly changing amidst claims (by both sides) of hijackings and sabotage, it is unlikely customers can do anything other than stand on the sidelines while the drama plays out.

A slim hope may be concerted action by the domain names industry involving ICANN and some of the leading accredited-registrars. Action could include making application for a court order for authorization codes to be released to customers so transfers can take place, ICANN extending expiry dates of names under RegisterFly's control for up to a period of say six months from now (as a first step) to ensure no more names are lost, and alternative registrars dividing up and taking over blocks of domain names, and acting as interim registrars, at least until the dust settles.

John Naruszewicz, in a statement published Thursday on Registerflies.com said he had personally pledged all of his personal assets, mortgaged his home, leveraged all assets, and was securing large letters of credit to restore the company. Regardless of his motivation, and the extent of his commitment, he needs first to get control of the company's Web site, and it seems even the support emails, which were all clearly in the hands of his partner, Kevin Medina, as of late Friday night.

As for Medina, regardless of the slanging match between he and his partner and the very public, but unproved, claims raised against him in court documents, he has been the President and CEO of RegisterFly during its history of failures, and is unlikely to be part of any solution to the company's woes. His time in any event, since regaining control of RegisterFly late Friday, has been spent trying to process credit card payments from unsuspecting customers, for fictitious services.

For all intensive purposes it appears RegisterFly has flown.

 

[Rockefeller]

For all intensive purposes it appears RegisterFly has flown.

They need to get the court order for the authorization codes..this will relieve alot of stress for thousands of people.

 

[JuniperPark]

The fact that they are online right now, accepting credit card payments for a service they know they can't offer should be considered outright fraud by the credit card companies. How are they able to keep their merchant account??

 

[Theo]

I say they will settle out of court and Registerfly will bounce back like a horsefly off a gigantic steamy pile of manure. What do you think?

 

[GAMEFINEST]

i agree , registerfly most likley will be bought by another company and will turn itself around or do something close to it....its a great company mishandled by alot of greedy ppl

 

[JMJ]

Lots of the reports/articles are misinformed which is adding to the problem. I think the biggest problem is people don't know where to obtain their authorization codes rather than not being able to obtain them. Coupled with the whois privacy causing problems there and everyone saying that it can't be done. Names are being transferred out, I personally can obtain codes and unlock names so when it comes to these things there's not much ICANN can do. The fraud claims will have to be dealt with outside of the other issues. As well as the partner problems.

If the partners had any sense they would see that if they keep screwing around neither one of them is going to end up with anything except a lot of lawsuits. They should just sell out for whatever they can get payoff whatever debts they can and save themselves and their clients a lot of unnecessary headaches. Salvaging the business isn't really an option at this point because it appears that they aren't going to get along and/or sell out to the other..

Here's the supposed latest from both supposed parties/partners.

"As the Current CEO (always have been), I can assure you John Naruszewicz and Glenn Stansbury are FOS. Our legal counsel has sent the appropriate response. There is a restraining order being sent to both parties to ensure the charade of impersonating employees of RegisterFly is over. Both John Naruszewicz and Glenn Stansbury were terminated on 2/12. We sent more details and requested to provide evidence to the administrator of this site and he did not respond and in fact adapted a pro-john response. John\'s access to our systems were revoked today (contrary to what he said). He is NOT an employee of the company nor is glenn stansbury. Bother have been terminated and proof of their termination can be provided. The proof and the damages to be filed against both of the aforementioned will be visible within the few weeks. Mr Naruszewicz tool what is a personal relationship vendatta(10 year relationship gone bad) to the doorstep of the company and it is a shame."


"CEASE ALL TRANSACTIONS WITH REGISTERFLY!
Written by Administrator
Friday, 23 February 2007
Site Hacked and Data Corrupted

Attention everyone. I just received confirmation that the Registerfly site has currently been hacked into and taken over by Kevin Medina in the Florida office. I was asked to put this up here due to the amount of customers that are sending money. At this moment, they are trying to get police in Florida to arrest Kevin immediately.

I'm relaying a message that they have asked me to put up on here. They have lost control of even the site and are locked out of the system. The data has been corrupted but they do have a back up and are scrambling to get this situation resolved.

Your support forms on this site will be held right now and forwarded when we know the proper management team has control of the data.

This is only what I've been told and this is currently the only medium of communication that the current management of Registerfly has. More updates soon.

"I see on your main site that you say that we don’t have any access to help customers. That isn’t entirely true. We do have access but it is very limited. We just don’t have any access to make updates to the website over the weekend. I feel we will have full access back on Monday and I found out something that will most certainly have kevin arrested and put in prison for a very long time."


This is a freaking mess. Now appears the so called saviors could very well be the scammers themselves.

I can't confirm the validity of these but they sure put a twist on the tale..

http://img217.imageshack.us/my.php?image=medinanjzc2.jpg
http://img409.imageshack.us/img409/4927/medinafla1vc0.jpg
http://img442.imageshack.us/my.php?image=medinafla2gx6.jpg