OnlineDomain.com Domain Name News & Opinions
I was at NamesCon and people were asking if Adam Dicker was coming or not.
Some people told me that Adam Dicker owes them money. I didn’t have any complaints send to me until the whole scandal broke out and even after that, no one actually complained to me personally about Adam. (Except some minor complaint about an unfinished website at Domaining Europe 2015.)
Nevertheless I wrote an article of what I was thinking at the time about the whole Adam Dicker situation. After talking to all the people at NamesCon I have to say that my view has changed. I feel that I should write this article and have my opinion heard.
I met people that Adam owes them sums of $500 or $750 up to thousands of dollars. (Even 6-figures…) According to what I was told personally and what I have read my rough estimation is that Adam could be in the hole for more than a million dollars. The original Namepros forum post (that now has thousands of replies) has more than 20 complaints from people that claim that Adam Dicker owes them money. The list includes several pretty well known domainers such as Frank Schilling, Claude Dauman, Joseph Peterson, etc. Shane Cultra talked about some other people that Adam owes money to. (“There are a lot of people that feel that they paid for website development and did not get what they paid for. This is not one, two, or ten. It is more.”)
There are tens of articles that describe this whole mess and all include tens of complaints and fraud accusations for Adam Dicker. Here are a few:
- Addressing the elephant in the room
- With latest industry scandal domaining needs to look inward to protect newcomers
- Thoughts on the latest domain name “scandal”
- An update on the Adam Dicker allegations
- If You Plan on Doing Business With Adam Dicker You Should Read this First
- DomainSherpa : Videos of Adam Dicker removed from web site
- Unbelievable. Adam Dicker Allegedly Continues to Take Money and Not Provide Services
- The Art of the Scam
It seems to me that Adam Dicker was agreeing to all sorts of ventures and deals with anyone he could find. That is without having the time, resources and in many cases the skills to deliver the results. He would take any money in advance whether that was for Q&A sessions over Skype, building websites, consulting and anything related to the internet and domain names. By “any money” I mean that he would take $500 or $5,000 or even tens of thousands in advance. He would take anything he could.
He was known to domainers but what made him a “celebrity” in our small community was the purchase of DNForum.com. I think that was what made a lot of people trust him.
Now I am sure that he knew he could not deliver and he will never deliver. One of the people involved said: “He promised the world and never delivered!”.
I don’t know the specifics of each deal but not delivering the promised results will most likely get you sued by the tens of people involved.
OnlineDomain.com - © Copyright 2012-2024 - All Rights Reserved
And he didn’t manage to sell rams.com a few days ago to the Los Angeles Rams…
Link: http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/14/news/rams-domain-name-sale-los-angeles-st-louis/
Even though it’s of course not likely that he would have used that money to pay off his debts.
It is sad. I remember wanting to get a website built so I emailed Adam about it, seeing his company was offering these services. I wanted a few fairly detailed things and functions on the site. I expected to get some questions back about what I wanted, asking for more details, and to have a little back and forth, but all he replied was yes he could do it. I thought that was a bit strange at the time. Glad now I didn’t go ahead with it.
It wasn’t DNForum that made him a celebrity. It was DomainSherpa that made him out to be a domain “expert” and showcased him to thousands of newbies and every show he was on was a commercial for his NicheWebsites.com. I say that not to criticize Michael Cyger but to state a fact.
The amount of money that is involved should’ve involved the Federal authorities a long time ago but he chose well the naive and meek.
Maybe you are right.
But I knew him from dnforum and didn’t watch domainsherpa until recently. So I missed him there…
It’s true that Adam’s reach was greatly expanded thanks to his regular appearances on DomainSherpa. I’d be willing to bet that most domainers who fell into his hands encountered him there first.
They trusted Adam because he was in the spotlight. And beause he could afford to pay for ads as a DomainSherpa sponsor. (God only knows whose money he paid for those ads with!) They also trusted Adam because of Michael Cyger’s endorsements. Remember, Cyger vouched for the authenticity of Dicker’s business claims. Cyger also publicly silenced Adam’s critics (who tried to expose him early on) and privately dismissed people who had grievances with Adam. Eventually, the weight of evidence became simply too great to ignore; so Michael Cyger had no choice but figure things out … silently. Not a word of warning, though. Domainers could fend for themselves.
Adam also worked closely with Troy Rushton, himself an earlier sponsor of DomainSherpa. (You may remember hearing about Protrada during the earliest episodes.) Presumably, Michael Cyger introduced the 2 men. If memory serves, Troy marketed Adam as a guest speaker, and together they sold expensive “How To” courses about domaining. As I recall, they were certifying them as official domain brokers, whatever that means – for a hefty fee.
So the 2 names most closely connected with Adam Dicker’s recent career would surely be Michael Cyger and Troy Rushton. But Adam was already fairly well known to domainers before he ever appeared on DomainSherpa.
DNForum members knew him as the owner and consequently a “big fish”; but Adam was notoriously an absentee landlord, seldom engaging in discussions there.
The main exception to that rule was his “DNF College” experiment, which ran for a few years. In the beginning, I recall it being mainly geared toward affiliate sales pitches. Yes, I was a new domainer the first year he did this. So I paid attention.
In more recent iterations, the discussion was walled off from veteran members of the forum – i.e. the people likely to look out for the welfare of novices. That way, Adam could interact directly with the newbies away from prying eyes. That was a red flag, but most of us assumed he was just pushing affiliate packages with fairly low fees.
Based on what has emerged since, it seems Adam adopted a new tactic during this period. He began convincing his “pupils” to purchase expensive web design (which allegedly wasn’t delivered as described or even not delivered at all). In some cases, he’d convince them to work for him unpaid, based on vague promises of future success.
It seems these pupils were managing each other in something resembling a weird human pyramid scheme. They were expected to step in and run Adam’s web design business, somehow fulfilling orders with zero experience.
Another of Adam’s habits was meeting owners of valuable domains, then trying to convince them to sign over 50% ownership in exchange for the honor of having him aboard as a “partner”. What exactly he’d provide to earn his equity share, who knows? Perhaps some people were simply awe struck and flattered that such an amazingly successful “Sherpa” wanted to give them the time of day.
What angels we have among us here in the domain industry, eh!
Yes I forgot to say that this million USD I mention is also for work that people did for Adam and never got paid.
Actually he is continuing with DNF College and he is somewhat active on Facebook.
I didn’t know about this 50% ownership thing.
From what I know the people saying they worked for Adam did get paid. That includes Lanelle Barber who had to be moved from 3 different positions because all her direct reports kept complaining about her. They all said she could not manage at all.
Then I guess you don’t know right. Maybe someone is lying to you. Have you thought about that?
I met someone that got nothing and Adam is MIA.
I don’t know who Lanelle Barber is but I bet it was not all her fault.
Based on your description of what happened, it is fraud. You screw that many people, it will eventually come back to him – one way or another. It’s the law of the universe.
Funny thing is he was complaining about all these random ugly letter 4L.com, I think he had close to 3500 of them, and he probably sold what today would be close to a million dollars of CHIPS for about $85K, about 2 months prior to them blowing up.
I use visa on everything, If I have a problem with any service, I take it up with visa and get my money back.
If Enough complaints come in they shut down the affiliates or owners account. I really don’t understand why people are so lazy and don’t just complain and write a letter to visa outlining this.
They offer more protection that people realize.
Donny
Do something, ask Adam what happened with the mega project he had with the 3 letter .ca domains where about 20 people invested at least $ 5000 to $ 10.000 each with the warranty to resell the domains and make lot of money, after couple of year all the domains dropped and nobody get money back, he offered in exchange to make web sites to the people involved to cover the damage but never made (at least for me) the web sites and did not answered emails.
I heard he is married to a school teacher, isn’t this ironic
Maybe take down the rest of the Dicker stuff on your site too ? Below the comments there’s links to more of his stuff that’s propping him up to be an expert still. Like this gem : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koirRKv5vWo&t=0m13s “I’m running 12 different businesses myself . .. each making $50,000 . . . . a month”
Good idea…
So here’s the thing: you go and watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koirRKv5vWo&t=0m13s and you can see that Dicker is just reviewing whether or not a domain name would be a good website, and HOW MUCH IT WOULD COST TO BUILD IT INTO A MONEY MAKING BUSINESS. Listen to it! What a load of crap!
Does anyone else not see the issue here? He claims he’s making millions per year from his NicheWebsites.com, and all he does is sell website development to unsuspecting domainers who know nothing about development but most WISH they had an operating business.
Someone should contact YouTube and ask them to remove all the videos. Of course Dicker would need to be proven to be a fraud and lose a lawsuit in order to prove it to YouTube.
I remember on the sherpa show when he printed out a picture of toby clemens , then put a picture of a lamb on the top and made a comment that toby clemens was still on the lamb.
Strange how things have turned out.
People in glass houses shouldn’t throw rocks, eh? 🙂
I think people should file a class action lawsuit against Adam Dicker seeking compensation for mental anguish, monetary damages including penalty and accrued interest payments for each persons money.
This will teach him a lesson.
When you are robbed who do you call first? The police or your attorney? Depends on how wealthy you are or what was stolen I suppose. For most of us, we call the police, right?
For something like this, for persons taken by him who reside in the USA, the correct law enforcement agency would be the FBI.
They enjoy wire fraud and Internet fraud cases……. and they have peers in Canada that they communicate and share information with..
Call the authorities and let them handle it. If you call an attorney then only the attorney will get paid.
He has moved most of his domains to another register under privacy, even rams.com was under privacy until the article came out, and he probably did that just in case someone wanting to make an offer.
Konstantinos, did any of the big domainers tell you they were cheated or just the smaller guys?
I don’t want to tell. Either way I will narrow it down.
I wish the really big domainers would come out and denounce this activity like you are doing here – kudos! You cant imagine how many people it is helping!
Check out this comment:
If those who are owed money are like me they are hard at work ensuring AD has as little wiggle room as possible. Our summons has been issued (they just need to serve him) for the 40k plus that he owes us and it will take a couple of weeks before we know what excuse he will put forward as his defence. It will make no difference though we have over 60 emails from Adam promising to pay us back along with a number of payment plans that he missed and then cancelled Pay Pal ECheques. Also the domain names he offered as security that never eventuated! He has no room to move here but we expect he will try to defend to buy more time.. Luckily he asked us to pay him into his personal account so I have a personal action to go on rather than one of his so called “companies”.
Actions speak louder than words here, my advice do not waste your time talking to him, and as for his lawyer I think his brief is limited to damage control, not resolution, two emails to him with no response! He wont even confirm he is acting for AD nor will he confirm he can accept service of the summons.
Once again thanks to all the posters that have provided solid evidence to us to assist us in our claim, after 6 months of promises this blog made us realise we to had been tricked. As a small sign of our appreciation we plan to donate 20 percent of the net proceeds we receive from our claim to pay those who have confirmed their debt with Shane to be paid on a pro rata bases.
Good luck to you all.
https://www.namepros.com/threads/is-adam-dicker-a-criminal-you-decide.883579/page-129
Yes, somebody should be able to shout at something bad. The domain industry, where sponsored postings are so prevalent misleading their leaders, particularly needs that.
Leaders corrected to readers. Sorry.
Domain Sherpa is not worth watching, it became advertising bi.. of Frank Schilling
It’s amazing how people have opinions without facts. The millions of dollars comment is a completely uneducated joke.
Many of the the people in Shane Bellone’s thread are resolved but unmarked as resolved.
The 40K guy is also resolved.
Domainsherpa.com was a joke once he started taking ads and guests with zero venting.
Forget about panelists, Mike Cyger is liable for promoting guests he never vented as well.
So you know everything and I know nothing. Right?
And all the people I talked to at NamesCon were all lying.
I didn’t talk to this 40k guy. Were you at NamesCon?
I am not saying you know nothing, what I am saying is you post a line like he owes millions and you better have facts or a good lawyer.
I said 1 million, not millions, and if I add up all those I talked too then we come pretty close to that.
Someone else needs a good lawyer.
Keep defending him. No matter how hard you scrub – he’s still dirty.
Clearly “Mark Belle” is Adam.
Yea, I thought the same.
I don’t think he is.
Shame on this industry for honoring scumbags such as you see many speak at Domain Conferences, winning awards such as Adam did as Developer of the year, etc. 50% of these so called experts are “con men”. Didn’t go to Namescon, but I did noticed a couple of “fraudsters” on the speaking panel, very very disappointed. It’s getting worse and worse as well. Still lot’s of good guys left, but be very very cautious of these so called experts.
I would like to hear who these fraudsters are…
There are more fraudsters? I want to know more.
Jim, can you name them please ? It is important to share that.
What I dislike about this whole thing ( besides the industry complacency and obvious wrongness commited, as it appears ) is how people ( namep’s forum ) are stereotyping Canada and Canada’s law enforcement ( and hence Canadians ).
I don’t know Adam Dicker personally ( nor had any business with him ), also I am not a barrister but I would suggest filing your unifiedly petitions directly to the Ontario magistrate, because it is free and because it works. If you are south of the border, consider driving across and doing so yourselves ( please don’t pay any middle-barrister’s retainer ), very much like Health care, the law is accessible to all (i.e.: FREE), in Canada and Québec.
There are 29million Canadians, and there are over 300 millions Americans,
which lane do you think will go faster, to the purposes of eventually settling ?
Don’t blame Canada, please. Yes, I am Canadian, 🙂
I wish and hope all of you get your money back.
He still owes me $3K. Broken promises after broken promises. He’s an embarrassment to the domain industry and to all Canadians. Shame be upon him.
Anon,
Kanye West and Donald Trump are Americans, but we are not blaming the entire nation.
To be fair, we are sorry for Celine Dion and Justin Bieb….
I told Konstantinos how thankful i was to be able to comment and participate on his blog without having to pay for a gold, silver or bronze plan.
Thanks again…
Hey, just realized you are out of comment credits! Please send 10 pounds of gold ASAP!
Just kidding! 🙂
I hope your kidding, i only made 2 comments this month.
I paid for the VIP plan, so it seems you owe me credits…lol.
This happens when people blindly start to follow the celebs. Their word or opinion on something is like gospel, can’t be wrong, they forsee the future so do as you were “advised”. At the end they are human too and can fail like everyone else.
When Adam worked for Godaddy he did some unethical things, there were lot’s of red flags. Regarding, some of the other so-called experts, guru’s, etc, just did some investigative search on your own, to see what there background is, you will find out. Google “rip off report” on some of these guys, you will see. If they were scumbags in the past, they are scumbags now. There are lot’s of great guys in the industry, but make sure you check these guys out, there past, before you do business with them.
Thanks!
If you think that ADAM DICKER is the only SHARK in the domain name enclosure, then I have a fail safe, iron clad million dollar proposition where you assign 1/2 ownership of your one word generic, dictionary, short .com domain name to me for the pleasure of my considerable expertise.
This sad tale of alleged transgressions by Adam Dicker is a microcosm of the domain name business in it’s entirety.
I have watched at least 100 Domain Sherpa shows from start to finish and about half of the guests, so called “Sherpas” made them hard to watch because of the larcenous attitudes.
Rick Schwartz, Michael Berkens and Frank Schilling are obviously experts and credible and believable.
I love Rick’s candor. I love how Michael is measured and respectful of everyone and Frank is a savant with domain name acumen off the charts. I found that I learned from these three gentlemen and I can tell you, I am no ass kisser.
I pretty much call things the way I see them.
There are many aspects of the domain name business that are hard to fathom.
The blatant ” CONFLICT OF INTEREST ” where domain registrars engage also in the brokering of domains is another powder keg that has to be reckoned with.
How many times have you as domain registrants been hood winked in one way or the other by registrars where the result has been the loss of a good or great or possibly super premium domain name.
Don’t get me started..
How many times have you as domain name owners been bullied by domain brokers working for the big aftermarket sites?
There is an element of the “domain name brokerage” community that pride themselves as seedy used car salesmen using a drill to turn back the odometer of that old buick would in putting one over on the rabble, unwashed, naive, hapless domain owner.
Adam Dicker is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.
Robert McLean
Please share some specific examples, otherwise what you say is sugar coated fluff.
I remember talking to Adam Dicker at the Namescon 2015 a couple of times.
He was really working the crowd and getting a lot of customers by speaking on several panels and parading himself as an expert.
After the panels several people wanted to talk to him so I had to wait for a while each time.
He fit the role of expert perfectly and everything he said made sense.
I was also considering becoming a customer but then in one panel (or after the panel) he introduced the people he was building the websites with who would do the actual work and these guys didn’t seem so knowledgeable and gave off a wrong kind of vibe like pretending too much and one of those guys had really shaky hands.
The final nail in the coffin was when I lost Dickers business card (It’s vegas 🙂 and asked for another one the next day after he had another expert slot and he gave me a completely different business card with different company name and different details with only the name Adam Dicker being the same and said that the other business cards had run out.
I decided to pass on spending 4 figures with him and I’m lucky I did.
For the people wondering whether Adam Dicker would show up at 2016 Namescon and thinking he might come I think that even if Adam repaid every domain investor he scammed he would still not be welcome in Namescon because I’m quite sure Richard Lau is furious with Dicker that Adam Dicker abused the expert panelist role at Namescon 2015 by getting customers and then scamming them so my guess is Adam Dicker will NEVER be seen at namescons and likewise I would be really suprised if The Domain Name conference by Neu wouldn’t also tell Adam Dicker to take a hike if he tried coming there.
My guess is if Adam Dicker is again seen in a conference it will be Affiliate Summit where he will try to re-invent himself like others who have left the domaining space in disgrace and scandal have done.
Several clips of Adam Dicker speaking at the Domain name Conference as expert:
http://www.rickwedzinga.com/the-domain-conference-2015/
Adam is really BS’ing and the best line is that Dicker actually says that if you write on your website you are successful people believe it in the newbie introduction clip.
I paid for a DNFORUM membership lifetime one, this guy took it offline, and took off with my money, how do I find him?
watching and listening to Adam Dicker in the link given here
http://www.rickwedzinga.com/the-domain-conference-2015/
is painful.
It’s embarrassing
Guys google these guys, see some of there charges and convictions that had against them in the past. It will blow your mind. Many of them committed fraud in other industries, than came to the domain industry where nobody regulates things and than they become a so called expert, where they are really a bunch of scammers. All this information if public for anybody to see. Shame on the industry for not doing there due diligence. Love this industry been full time domaining since 1998, some great people in the industry, just got to expose the scammers, many of them are speaking at domain conferences as experts.
Agree with Jim Holleran, there are many good guys but also many sharks in the domain industry, it’s very similar to the financial industry which is my background.
Some of those scammers come from the real estate industry and they are exploiting the fact that the domain space is unregulated to play dirty ..
And some of those bad guys are “protected” by a “caste” of other people in the industry, including those who OMIT or CENSOR relevant facts about those bad guys and/or frauds, like some domain blogger (I’m not referring to you Kostas), as I’ve personally experienced when I tried to post comments on some “obscure” transactions, scams, and/or people involved in those shady (when not unlawful) practices …
As regards Adam, I’ve nothing personal against him, he always acted correctly with us, but if he has done something wrong he will have to pay for it, if he has defrauded someone he deserves to be sued.
That said, from a human point of view, I hope Adam will be able to fix his issues, understand and learn from his mistakes and get out from this mess in a positive way, as a better person.
I will add my name to the list of people Adam Dicker took money from for services he failed to deliver. My husband and I have tried for many months now to get Adam and nichwebsites.com to deliver what we paid him several thousand to provide. We get promises with delays, but nothing comes of it. His outsourced web developer from Pakistan even contacted me asking me to pay him to develop the websites I had already paid Adam to develop.
The outsourcer stated that Adam had not paid him in over 3 months.
It seems the list of people Adam Dicker has cheated is never ending.
You guys dont remember what Dicker did on TDNAM? The man looked at our high bids then put fake accounts to bid up the names all the way to our max right before the auction end. LEaving everyone shocked.
Back then I would bid in bulk and caught the jerk when I accidentally bid 1000 instead of 100 on some crappy name. He then fake bidded me up to just a few dollars under my bid! After he was caught we didnt get refunds
The guy is a thief. A criminal. This article alludes to being in debt for a mil but Id bet its more. He needs to be locked up.
I heard he is married to a school teacher, isn’t this ironic
My husband worked for Adam Dicker and he owes him 10.000 dollar. He is promissing now for 2 years that he will pay him for his services, but this has not happend until now. Adam Dicker is a fraudster and a cheater in my opinion. He diserves to be sued.
Dicker failed again to pay money owed as promised:
https://onlinedomain.com/2021/05/27/domain-name-news/dicker-failed-again-to-pay-money-owed-as-promised/