Raven.com - stolen name - was sold on Sedo

[jberryhill]

Yeh, it's not really sedo's fault if people abuse there system

Not entirely. I have not once bought a stolen car from a dealer.

It is 'due diligence' here.

Bingo. Sedo's idea of diligence ends with "did the payment clear".

 

[DNQuest.com]

13 whois changes since July 16th under whois privacy. Soemthing fishy is here.

 

[jberryhill]

13 whois changes since July 16th under whois privacy. Soemthing fishy is here

Here is the summary:

Raven.com was originally registered through NSI in 1992 to:

RAVEN Computer Systems
PO Box 44309
Minneapolis, MN 55344
USA

Administrative, Technical Contact:
Teske, Don [email protected]

As was noted on the web page for 15 years

(http://web.archive.org/web/20040602192346/www.raven.com/faq.html)

Is the RAVEN domain for sale?

No, this domain is not for sale.

According to the Social Security Death Index, the principal of the company, Mr. Teske, died on October 3, 2005. His widow continued to use her raven.com email address.

In June 2007, an interesting change happened to the WHOIS at NSI:

Administrative Contact
Gostowski, Kushaiah [email protected]

Several days later, the domain was transferred to Directnic as:

Registrant:
Raven
123 Main St
Fresno, CA 94205
US
4152273833

Administrative Contact:
Gostowski, Kushaiah [email protected]

And was offered for sale via Sedo after a quick change to:

Registrant:
Raven
One Wilshire Blvd
Los angeles, CA 90010
US
3109009783

Administrative Contact:
Colton, Mark [email protected]

The name sold at Sedo for $3,500 on July 3, 2007, was shipped out to GoDaddy, and is now registered as:

Registrant:

Domains by Proxy, Inc.
DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States

Administrative Contact:
Private, Registration [email protected]

At the moment, it is up for auction at Ebay, Item 330151932746

This is the first time this domain is for sale since
registration in 1992

raven.com

You will never get a chance like this again.

My local pawn shop does more in the way of verifying the identity of sellers than Sedo does.

 

[Dave Zan]

Two registrar transfers from roughly June to July? :?:

 

[Raider]

It looks to me as though the hijacker and buyer are one of the same, nice safety cusion in case anyone questions where he got it.

 

[Theo]

I hope the tech guy who stepped in to help the owner's widow will help her press charges. This domain is about to change hands again. I suggest we all report the name via GoDaddy's system linking the GD support to the Domainstate thread.

 

[groundctrl]

ok, i'm a n00b, so i'm not familiar with these situations, but let me just say, i'm seriously impressed with the way you guys are talking about this. it says a lot about the domain industry that its veterans are so up-in-arms about this issue. i'm buying you all beers.

 

[Theo]

i'm buying you all beers.

I'd never turn down a good beer, especially a Labatt Blue

The buyer actually came forth in the Domainstate thread with this statement:

[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica] This is all misunderstood[/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, helvetica]This is to all the people who left messages on this board. I bought this domain raven.com legally from sedo.com and after getting emails about this domain being stolen contacted the widow who owned it.
Back and forth I paid her a very large sum of money to keep the domain.
This can be verified with Deb Teske the original owner of the domain phone number is 952 906 9975.
If any person has any grievences go after the people who actully stole the domain and put it on Sedo. I will help any law enforcement agency who contacts me.

Any person who wants to contact me please feel free to do so at [email protected] or 310 930 5416.

This domain is no longer hijacked or in a stolen status.[/FONT]

 

[GAMEFINEST]

Well that explains that for now ..

 

[Bill Roy]

Question remains is he the one selling it on eBay, and if so why is he lying about it never having been sold since 1992? Why so many changes in ownership in the past 2 months? Still questions to answer here!

 

[Focus]

He probably paid her pennies for it! lol

 

[typeins]

If it turns out that he did pay her.. no more questions to answer.. can change ownership as many times as they want.

Does look dodgy though

 

[Naruto]

At least now i understand why the domain got sold for such a ridiculous price. It could be him hiring someone to steal the domain and put it on Sedo so that he can purchase it? Else why the domain didn't go into public auction and why the BIN is so low? How did he manage to hijack the domain in the first place and how to prevent this from happening to us?

 

[Bill Roy]

Naruto, the answer is to stop trading with those involved! Unless of course they change their ways, but until such time hurt them where they can really be hurt, in the pocket.

As soon as Sedo had wind that the domain was stolen they, and I repeat 'they', should have without hesitation contacted the relevent law enforcement agencies and supplied them with all details (names, addresses, credit card details, everything), also they should have stopped the transfer process immediately. However, it would seem that Sedo do not consider protecting the innocent domain owner and bringing the guilty to book as any of their concern, hence their total lack of action on this matter. I doubt any court in the US would look on them as an 'innocent party' in this matter, I think hence the reason they would rather now stay silent about it than dig themselves in any further into the dungheap pile.

If 'due diligence' is not observed initially by the largest parking company in the world, and that same company does not act pro-actively to bring the culprits to book then you have no protection except to not trade with that company.

As an advertising portal and an escrow service Sedo does not only have to show 'due diligence' but also has a 'duty of care' to those that use the companys services. However, we all know Sedo could not give a jot about domainers let alone the law as demonstrated by this case.

 

[Creature]

deleted. misread

 

[Theo]

As an advertising portal and an escrow service Sedo does not only have to show 'due diligence' but also has a 'duty of care' to those that use the companys services. However, we all know Sedo could not give a jot about domainers let alone the law as demonstrated by this case.

In case you missed this one....

 

[Bill Roy]

Edited.......

This is much bigger than someone paying under the odds no doubt for a domain name. We already know that if the 'buyer' of the domain is the same one as selling it on eBay then he 'misleads' (I would use another word but caution prevents it) as the wording on eBay says this domain has not been sold since 1992! Can we trut the word of someone like that?

This matter is far from closed.

.....................

Acro, no I didn't, but just goes to show how much the company seems to smell of something, and I don't think many women would class it as a nice perfume!

 

[Theo]

Indeed, this is like throwing crumbs to a person that has little knowledge of the market in order to take the domain under the veil of an ongoing theft. Had this been at a large domain auction, it would have sold for 6 figures.

There are 3 guilty parties in this transaction: The thief, the buyer & Sedo.

 

[Focus]

I bid on a domain at sedo like a week ago and offered a very small amount for a high traffic mortgage typo from a major bank..this was sent to auction and ended at my bid with no other bids, the day it ended I was expecting an email from them that I had either won or lost the auction since I was'nt really paying attention to the end-time, etc. So I login to my account the next day (late that night actually)and low and behold it says I am the winner, then I click on the domain name for more information and it says something like "auction cancelled - this domain has been removed from the sales listing on sedo" so wtf man..they pull it because it ended at $100 or so? Can the seller do this after sending it to "No Reserve" auction?

 

[typeins]

always good to have a list of logins to domain accounts in a safe place along with notes in your will regarding assets