yeah, the lawyer was also acting as escrow and my understanding from the lawyer and buyer was that the lawyer could then hold it on behalf of the buyer while the buyer presumably would establish a canadian presence in the future. I considered that risk to be theirs and not mine. All I know is that my legal sale document was to the texas company. But to be honest, cira doesn't appear to do much about it anyways, the most I've heard them do is say "fix it"... and only then if you don't fix it do you risk losing it... since bankrate.com is the current owner, I highly doubt they would investigate a past owner, so the question is does bankrate.com have a legitimate canadian presence? Even if not, cira will likely not do anything drastic (like drop a domain) from them. I've seen plenty of u.s. companies that provide service or product to canadians - and register their corresponding .ca to market directly to canadians, despite not having a physical canadian presence. I personally am annoyed when I go to a .ca domain to buy a product only to find out the products ship from outside of canada and will be subject to duties/brokerage/etc... it is annoying, but I doubt cira really cares too much about compliance. If CIRA _really_ cared, they would require registrants with non-canadian addresses to file actual documents proving their canadian presence requirements prior to being allowed to own a domain. But that would require someone to actually validate and file those documents and approve cira accounts....