The Canadian government has slapped a domain name scammer with a $40,000 fine and a 5 years prohibation notice.
Daniel Klemann tried the classic “renewal scam” in which he sent renewal notices to 73,000 businesses and non-profits in Canada. The notices implied that the recipients’ domain names were expiring and needed to be renewed. However, the domain names were not registered at Klemann’s company:
The Internet Registry of Canada, which offered an Internet domain name registration service, is accused of marketing its services by sending mail solicitations that appeared to be invoices sent on behalf of the Government of Canada or an officially sanctioned agency registering domain names in Canada, to individuals and organizations whose domain names were about to expire. The mailings allegedly gave the impression that domain name holders were existing customers of, and had to re-register their domain names with, the Internet Registry of Canada, which was not true.
(from CanadaOne)
In December 2005 two people were fined $2.3M for running a similar scam for .UK domain names.
Most domain registrars do not send renewal notices by mail. The people most likely to fall for this scam are businesses with accounts payable departments that get dozens of invoices a day. These deparments rarely question small invoices for under $100.
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