OnlineDomain.com Domain Name News & Opinions
VPN.com LLC has filed a multimillion lawsuit against long time domain investor George Dikian (California), Qiang Du (Hong Kong) and John Doe at the US District Court (California).
The lawsuit involves a $250,000 payment in Bitcoin and $6.625 million in owed commissions on multiple transactions involving 96 premium 2N.com and 3N.com domains.
John Doe is “an individual whose identity is unknown to VPN at this time, but who, upon information and belief, worked with and conspired with Dikian and Du in the scheme to defraud VPN.”
VPN.com is represented by Ji-In Lee Houck (THE HOUCK FIRM) and Brett Lewis, Esq. & Michael Cilento, Esq. (LEWIS & LIN, LLC).
The plaintiff states in the complaint:
“This is an action for the recovery of damages due to a massive fraud perpetrated by Dikian, Du, and Doe, spanning several months, that ultimately lured VPN into sending Defendants $250,000 as part of what turned out to be two completely fraudulent domain name sale transactions.
The Defendants used, inter alia, the reputation of Dikian, a wellknown domain name investor and reseller, as well as a sophisticated, fraudulent online website that posed as an escrow service, Intermediar.com (“Intermediar”), as the linchpins in their scheme to convince VPN that VPN was brokering legitimate transactions between Dikian and Du.
Once VPN remitted $250,000 directly to Dikian in accordance with the terms of one of the domain name transactions, Defendants then stalled both transactions, cut off all communications with VPN, and left VPN without recourse other than to file this suit.
VPN now seeks relief in this Court against Defendants with claims for fraud and violation of the Civil RICO statute, seeking, inter alia, the $250,000 that was unambiguously wired to and accepted by Defendants, VPN’s accrued, unpaid commissions from both transactions, which totals $6,625,000, and punitive damages that will deter Defendants from defrauding any further victims.
It all started on March 8, 2022, when VPN was approached by Du, who, upon information and belief, owns the entity called ZTE Holdings (中興新) (“ZTE”). Du stated that ZTE was interested in purchasing the domain name <89.com> (“89.com”) and sought VPN’s help in identifying the owner and
facilitating the transaction (the “Intermediar Transaction”).
After confirming Du’s serious intention to acquire 89.com, VPN began its work to identify the owner of 89.com and determine whether an acquisition could be possible. Upon investigation, VPN discovered that 89.com was owned by Dikian, whom VPN had communicated with in the past regarding certain potential domain name sale transactions. Dikian is a well-known domain name investor and reseller, with, upon information and belief, over 1,800 domain name registrations tied to his email address G*********@yahoo.com.
On March 8, 2022, Dikian responded to VPN and stated that 89.com could be acquired in the range of 2-3 million dollars. VPN then worked, over the course of several weeks, to broker the deal between Dikian and Du.
After several rounds of negotiation with Dikian, Dikian agreed on an acquisition price of $2,250,000 net to Dikian. After several rounds of negotiation with Du, Du agreed on an acquisition price of $4,400,000 to be paid by Du. VPN’s net proceeds for brokering the deal would be $2,150,000.
Despite VPN’s insistence that either Escrow.com or Epik.com be used to escrow and facilitate the transaction, Dikian insisted that the transaction
be done through Intermediar, which Dikian stated could easily facilitate payment in Bitcoin, causing less of a tax burden for Dikian on the transaction.
After further back and forth with Dikian on this issue, Dikian agreed to accept $2,000,000 in USD from Du through Intermediar and $250,000 in a direct Bitcoin payment from VPN, which VPN would send after its Broker commission payout was released by Intermediar.
On April 23, 2022, Intermediar confirmed that Du had partially funded the transaction by depositing $2,200,000 into Intermediar. This confirmation was false.
On April 24, 2022, Intermediar confirmed that Dikian had delivered 89.com into escrow with Intermediar. This confirmation was false, as Dikian never transferred the domain name.
On April 27, 2022, Intermediar confirmed that 89.com had been delivered to Du’s Intermediar account for a one-day inspection period. This confirmation was false, as 89.com was never transferred. On April 29, 2022, Intermediar confirmed that Du had accepted delivery of 89.com, that the transaction was now completed, and that payouts from the deal would be forthcoming. This statement was false.
While the Intermediar Transaction was coming to a close, Dikian provided VPN with 95 additional premium domains for transacting. VPN then began negotiating with Dikian on behalf of Du for an acquisition of the package of 95 three-number domain names, which can be seen on the list of Annex A
attached hereto (the “95 3N Domains”) (the “Escrow.com Transaction”).
After negotiations on both sides, VPN, Dikian and Du came to terms on the Escrow.com Transaction, with Du paying $12,530,000, Dikian receiving $8,025,000, and VPN receiving $4,475,000.
Several communications with Intermediar proved all to be lies and at some point Intermediar stopped responding.
On May 11, 2022, Dikian contacted VPN feigning ignorance of the entire 89.com transaction, insisting that it was “imposters/scammers” that had
taken over Dikian’s email address, and insisting that Dikian did not receive the Bitcoin that VPN sent. Notably, Dikian emailed VPN from the
g.dikian@yahoo.com email address that VPN first emailed Dikian at in March and on various emails since that time.
VPN later checked the headers for the various g.dikian@yahoo.com emails, all of which used IP addresses assigned to Oath Holdings, Inc., the original name of the company created by Verizon to hold Yahoo’s assets, after they were acquired by Verizon. The headers also specified that the emails “passed.” As such, the emails did not appear to have been spoofed.
According to Intermediar, the reason Dikian requested cancellation was that Dikian never received the $250,000 in Bitcoin.
On or around that same day of May 12, 2022, Dikian began withdrawing the 6.27 Bitcoin from the wallet VPN had sent the Bitcoin. The wallet was completely emptied by the following day, May 13, 2022.
On or around May 13, 2022, and continuing thereafter, VPN made several inquiries to Intermediar regarding the status of the Intermediar Transaction, informing them that Dikian had received and withdrew the Bitcoin sent to him, and demanding that Intermediar release VPN’s commission funds.
Intermediar refused to release the funds and eventually completely shut off all communication with VPN. VPN’s investigation reveals that 89.com was never transferred from its underlying registrar.
VPN respectfully requests judgment against Defendants as follows:
- Damages according to proof at trial, but in an amount not less than $6,625,000 in Broker commissions owed from both transactions, and
$250,000 that VPN wired to Defendants as part of Defendants’ fraud; - Enhanced (treble) monetary damages pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 1964(c);
- A preliminary and permanent injunction freezing the <89.com> domain name and the 95 3N Domains (as listed in Annex A);
- Litigation expenses, including reasonable attorneys’ fees, court costs, disbursement, and costs of collection;
- Punitive damages in the sum of not less than $5,000,000 or an amount otherwise to be decided by a jury; and
- Such other and further relief as this Court deems just and proper.”
Michael Gargiulo, VPN.com CEO on the record:
“We never seek litigation with anyone and do our absolute best to avoid it in all circumstances. This is especially true when we are dealing with long
time, highly respected individuals and portfolio owners. However, when this long time premium domain owner steals $250,000 in Bitcoin from us and refuses to pay $6.625 million in owed commissions on multiple transactions involving 96 premium 2N.com and 3N.com domains because of your fraud, we will use the fullest extent of the law to recover our damages and ensure no other person faces this criminality from this person again.
We turned to our legal experts from New York law firm, Lewis & Lin, to help us move forward in Federal Court. Brett Lewis is one of the smartest
and most aggressive attorneys I know.
Not only do we have this active civil case against the Defendant, he is now facing up to 20 years in prison for wire fraud in these transactions through a separate criminal investigation of this matter.
As you see in our court filings, the way the Defendant coordinated these crimes and damages also amounts to a claim of Civil Racketeer Influenced
and Corrupt Organization (RICO), in addition to Fraud. His time in jail could be much longer than 20 years depending on the outcome of our trial
and any others that have been scammed by this long time domainer, George Dikian.
Finally, because of our active Federal Lawsuit and criminal investigation into this matter all 96 domains have been locked until the outcome of these
civil and criminal cases. To all those who think they can take our property and scam us: you are messing with the wrong company, we will use every
legal authority at our disposal to recover what is owed.”
Full list of domains involved in these transactions, as seen on the complaint:
89.com
014.com
026.com
037.com
041.com
043.com
044.com
049.com
066.com
142.com
146.com
148.com
149.com
158.com
226.com
264.com
269.com
301.com
309.com
320.com
326.com
375.com
409.com
410.com
432.com
443.com
470.com
473.com
475.com
480.com
485.com
490.com
550.com
575.com
607.com
639.com
645.com
670.com
690.com
7-7.com
735.com
745.com
774.com
782.com
783.com
784.com
785.com
790.com
806.com
811.com
812.com
821.com
824.com
825.com
827.com
829.com
830.com
832.com
834.com
835.com
836.com
839.com
841.com
842.com
844.com
845.com
846.com
849.com
851.com
853.com
854.com
856.com
859.com
861.com
862.com
865.com
866.com
869.com
871.com
872.com
873.com
874.com
875.com
884.com
890.com
891.com
892.com
893.com
894.com
895.com
896.com
897.com
903.com
910.com
941.com
965.com
Court Documents:
[1] 2022-06-29 VPN — Complaint
[2] 2022-06-29 VPN — CCCS
[3] 2022-06-29 VPN — Corporate discosure statement
[4] 2022-06-29 VPN — Request for Summons (Dikian)
Update: I found a Namepros thread from May 5th, 2022 regarding George Dikian.
Scam Warning Regarding Seller Presenting as George Dikian: g.dikian@yahoo.com
Sticking with Escrow or Epik was the right intuitive move.
Not trusting their own escrow preference is costing them an expensive headache.
VPN was charging $6.6 million in commission to broker 2 domain deals.
seems like they were also trying to run a scam.
that is an staggeringly absurd amount of commission.
That certainly is an advertisement to me to never deal with them, with such HUUUGE margins. I guess even a larger business can get blinded by greed.
Sounds like VPN thought they would cash out a significant sum brokering a deal without the seller knowing that take, while at the same time, it was the seller orchestrating that. This is also known as the 419 scam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance-fee_scam
Mr. Gargulio would do well to talk to his very smart lawyer about making out of court statements about the case. It is extremely unlikely that Dikian had anything to do with the proposed “deal” under which Gargulio was looking to pocket $2M while being played by a scammer over his own greed in thinking he had a $4M purchaser for a $2M seller.
It is unlikely in the extreme that Dikian had anything to do with it. I have seen this sort of scenario more than once, and was first surprised by it in Express Media Group, LLC, et al. v. Express Corporation, et al., No. C 06-03504 WHA (N.D. Ca., May 10, 2007). What happened in that scenario, and many others since, is that a scammer had compromised a domain owner’s email address and carefully tended the inbox and sent items to conduct a negotiation to sell the domain name. As it turned out, the actual domain owner and user of that email address had no idea what was going on. This sort of thing has repeated itself many times over the years, and is familiar to anyone who has followed discussions of stolen domain names.
The probability that Dikian – a readily identifiable and findable individual – would simply steal $250k from Gargiulo, is pretty low. Yes, it was his email address and, certainly, the emails would have been transmitted through Oath’s system. But that does not mean that Dikian was the person sending them, if his account was compromised.
It’s one thing to make claims in a legal filing. Those sorts of claims are protected against being made the basis of a defamation claim by the litigation privilege. Also, the lawsuit provides a vehicle to get the relevant logs from Oath, and that’s fine. It’s a very different thing to call someone a thief in a public out-of-court statement.
Its Gargiulo, not Gargoyle lol
@John Berryhill,
No matter what comes out about VPN.com you consistently are negative and rude towards us. As some one who was a past client of yours, it’s kind of embarrassing.
Weve done nothing wrong to you and to some degree regret consulting you over the years if this is how you treat people and past clients in difficult situations.
If you’ve got an issue you can call me directly at +1-678-551-2630
I would also be careful about libeling people in public, especially past clients who have promoted you and featured you in many ways.
This reflects pretty poorly on you.
Michael
We, all want to know the commission in % for this deal.
50% on sale?
First off, VPN LLC has never been a client of mine. Secondly, having advised someone on a cybersquatting defense nearly ten years ago is not some lifetime commitment never to comment on a thoroughly unrelated contractual matter involving unrelated parties.
It is unfortunately common in the domain ecosystem for a hacker to gain access to an email account and then diligently filter communications to and from it while covering traces of their use of the account in order to impersonate the owner. That is exactly what happened in Express Media Group, LLC, et al. v. Express Corporation, et al., No. C 06-03504 WHA (N.D. Ca., May 10, 2007). When it was finally proven that the owner had not actually made any of the communications at issue, it was pretty stunning.
I frequently comment on legal mattes in domain blogs and forums, in order to point out things that people may or may not consider doing in relation to their legal problems.
Now, despite the fact that Dikian claimed his account was compromised, you have chosen to make damaging out-of-court statements about him. That’s simply a fact. It is not “negative or rude”. You have made a point of doing that.
I believe it is worthwhile for people who find themselves in this sort of situation, and is also something from which you may benefit, to understand that statements made in legal filings are privileged against being the basis of a defamation claim. However, statements made outside of court are not.
What that means is that while there is a perfectly reasonable basis to have filed the suit on these sorts of facts, if one then goes out an makes damaging statements about the defendant which turn out to be wrong, then you have simply handed the defendant a counterclaim to bring against you in the suit.
Again, that is not by any measure “negative or rude”, but a basic legal principle that applies to parties in litigation and of which others might benefit to know.
“After several rounds of negotiation with Dikian, Dikian agreed on an acquisition price of $2,250,000 net to Dikian. After several rounds of negotiation with Du, Du agreed on an acquisition price of $4,400,000 to be paid by Du. VPN’s net proceeds for brokering the deal would be $2,150,000.”
Why would any seller or buyer want to use these guys, beyond a joke
Incidentally, there are a few basic steps that one can take when dealing with “is this site real” dilemmas, that can sort out fake ones pretty quick.
If you take a look at the Intermediar.com website, you’ll notice they have a blog. Crooks don’t often have time or interest in composing a lot of text, so they usually just copy it from somewhere else. A quick way to figure this out is to simply copy an extended swath of text – for example an entire sentence – and then search it, in quotes, in Google. In this case, you will find out in seconds that most of the blog material at Intermediar.com is simply copied and pasted from other industry websites, such as Namecheap and Dan.com. Typically, you don’t want to do business with an “escrow” service that swipes its content from other sites on the internet, and this is a simple check that takes a moment’s time to do.
Another thing is to look at things like the terms of service for a site. Terms of service are contracts. One of the functions of a contract is to actually identify the parties to the contract. If you go to a site named “example.com” and the terms of service are between you and “example.com”, then it’s not very informative as to who or what is the entity which stands behind those terms. Real terms of service will identify the legal entity with whom you are doing business, and not simply state a domain name as the contracting party. For example, if you look at the terms of service for Dan.com, just to pick an example, they actually provide their company registration number, which you can check out with the Netherlands corporate formation authority: https://www.kvk.nl/orderstraat/product-kiezen/?kvknummer=610790490000
In this instance, there is no person or legal entity identified, and the address on the site is simply a 14 story office building, and there is no such registered company in the Netherlands as “Intermediar.com” identified in the terms of service on the site (which also consists of copied text from a site called Paylax).
These two quick simple checks of the Intermediar.com website, which take just a few moments to do, immediately produce more red flags than the opening ceremonies of the Chinese Olympic games. It is immediately obvious that the Intermediar.com website consists mostly of text copied from other sites, and fails to identify an existing person or legal entity of any kind.
One final note is that it is unusual for a company to misspell words in its contact address. The Dutch term for “post box” is “Postbus”. Oddly, the Intermediar site uses “Posbus” in its address, which is the Afrikaans spelling. Either the person responsible for the site simply mis-spelled “Postbus” or they didn’t realize that the Dutch spelling is different. Afrikaans is a language used by South African descendants of the Dutch settlers from long ago, which then branched off from the old form of Dutch they used, much like the “German” spoken by Amish in the US is based on the German they spoke when they migrated to the US in the 1800’s.
I don’t know what VPN[.]com is thinking, but this complaint doesn’t put themselves in a good light.
Beyond the obvious lack of due diligence (e.g. they don’t mention ever authenticating the parties by phone – everything appears to be via emails; use of a sketchy escrow; unclear if there were separate written legal contracts, etc.), there’s the hilarious “commission” that they negotiated for themselves (see paragraphs 23-25 on page 6 of the PDF).
VPN[.]com’s own own website, on the Intellectual Property → Domain Names page, claims:
“We Never Charge More Than 15%”
Another reason to deal with “Principals Only.”
@George I’m not quite sure I understand what your getting at. These numbers weren’t confidential and both parties agreed on many terms, well beyond price and a standard transaction.
As far as the second transaction, we didn’t send the $250k Bitcoin until the 2nd transaction at Escrow.com was verified and agreement was confirmed by both they
A verified Escrow.com account was used to agree and setup the transaction BEFORE we sent the Bitcoin. Two escrow providers telling you agreements are complete and account verifications are complete..
The sophistication of this scam was impressive. And we got scammed after TWO escrow agents confirmed the details.
As far as other transactions, I disagree COMPLETELY with what you are trying to say. Our customers are thankful for our work and full well know what they are approving, paying and getting, especially on transactions involving multiple assets, financing terms, altered payment structure etc.
@Michael: You don’t need to rely on my analysis, or opinion, or those of other posted. But, on your website you list brokerage firms (and rank them, including yourself!), like DomainBooth, BuckleyMedia, GoDaddy, VIP Brokerage, Grit Brokerage, Sedo, Media Options, Right of the Dot, and UNR. Separately, you list other “top” brokers such as Neil Bostick, Alvin Brown, Francois Carillo, Derick Clegg, David Clements, Ryan Colby, Yue Dai, Mark Daniel, Dave Evanson, Tracy Fogarty, Jeff Garbutt, Alan Hack, Brian Harbin, Brooke Hernandez, Tessa Holcomb, George Hong, Richard Leto, Riz M, Ryan McKegney, Gerard Michael, Andrew Miller, Mohit Patel, Andrew Rosener, Steven Sacks, Jen Sale, Sharjil Saleem, Bill Sweetman, and Joe Uddeme.
Talk to them — they’re your peers, presumably. Do they think your lawsuit is meritorious, in the best interests of brokers? Or, is it an “own goal”, providing insights to the public about brokers that people only suspected before, but now have proof (regarding high commissions with ‘dual agency’).
@George no, this is terrible what has happened. We spent hundreds of hours since March and lost a lot of resources into this. and now people like you, who have never done the first day of business with us, say these types of things that further damages against us.
Do you honestly think I wanted our company to get scammed $250,000? Do you think we wanted a lawsuit…? I would be curious to see how you react when someone steals from your family.
This is not the first time scammers have targeted us and it hurts the entire industry, I do agree with you there. But I find it strange you didnt even realized the actual crime that occurred and come so strongly to the defense of someone who is facing a Civil RICO claim.
Do you know this owner? What makes you overlook their fraud in this way?
Regardless, the lawsuit and criminal investigation will speak for themselves. Thanks.
There is a scam alert thread on NamePros that involves the same mail g.dikian@yahoo.com
https://www.namepros.com/threads/scam-warning-regarding-seller-presenting-as-george-dikian-g-dikian-yahoo-com.1272888/page-2#post-8662301
@Teddy, sadly we are not the only victim. The guy is facing 20 years in prison for each person he did this to
I’d say VPN just totally blew their reputation. Clear they did little due diligence and they are probably now suing an innocent party.
@snoopy Totally wrong. We were literally scammed $250,000 plus millions in commissions and you say this lol
I’m not sure how you gather this guy is innocent when he’s facing serious prison time and others have been scammed too.
I did a search in PACER for George Dikian, and I couldn’t find any actual criminal court case. If you have a case number, please provide it.
What’s far more likely is that George Dikian was hacked, and that he’s a victim.
You’d want to go after the hacker, whoever was the actual recipient of the bitcoin, and whoever operates the intermediar[.]com site. But, my guess is that they’re long gone, and that will eventually be a dead end.
Furthermore, Snoopy is right….your reputation is likely severely impacted now that your ‘commissions’ are wide open for all too see, given they deviate from your own website which stated “We Never Charge More Than 15%”
@George we worked on this for months, with unique terms that required more than we offer with standard transactions. Also, both Buyer and Seller paid a commission. Additional terms were involved like Bitcoin payment that are not included in our standard fee.
Furthermore, we regularly charge 5-10% in transactions, we don’t publish most deals and work to support both parties as best we can and agree.
Also, not sure who asked but here is the DeKalb County Criminal Case Number,
22-039917 Theft By Deception
Apart from what Berryhill mentioned, it is also a bit strange that an “escrow service” doesn’t even lock their own domain:
Domain Name: INTERMEDIAR.COM
Registry Domain ID: 99523023_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.metaregistrar.com
Registrar URL: http://www.metaregistrar.com
Updated Date: 2021-12-05T08:35:38Z
Creation Date: 2003-06-22T18:01:42Z
Registry Expiry Date: 2023-06-22T18:01:42Z
Registrar: Metaregistrar BV
Registrar IANA ID: 2288
Registrar Abuse Contact Email: abuse@metaregistrar.com
Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +31.858885692
Domain Status: ok https://icann.org/epp#ok
Name Server: DNS1.NAMECHEAPHOSTING.COM
Name Server: DNS2.NAMECHEAPHOSTING.COM
DNSSEC: unsigned
URL of the ICANN Whois Inaccuracy Complaint Form: https://www.icann.org/wicf/
>>> Last update of whois database: 2022-07-29T02:36:02Z <<<
While they *may* be one of the slime pits of the Internet, and not to defend them in any way, I just want to mention I have recently learned the hard way that some supposedly *reputable* registrars’ locking feature not only does not work to actually implement the lock at the registry, but they make it difficult to even contact support about it. When you do contact support after such difficulty, they still don’t fix it.
So…
If you do a “Reverse IP” search at DomainTools (or elsewhere), you can see the 400+ other websites hosted on the same IP address as Intermediar[.]com — they don’t inspire much confidence. This is a site that might possibly be hosted on a cheap shared hosting plan at NameCheap, with the MX records indicating that email is handled by the same IP (i.e. 198.54.115.4)!
@Michael (it won’t let me reply to your most recent post, as it’s probably too nested…)
I searched at: https://ody.dekalbcountyga.gov/portal/Home/Dashboard/29
and I couldn’t find any court records for “Dikian, George” in DeKalb county. Perhaps there’s just an investigation, rather than actual charges?
As for the brokerage fees, I doubt most rational and informed clients would consent to each paying such a commission. i.e. are you working for the buyer, or are you working for the seller? Or are you working for yourselves? When the “commission” is approximately 100% of what the seller received (or 50% of what the buyer paid), the math just doesn’t add up.
That’s probably why you didn’t do appropriate due diligence, as you were blinded by the potential for a big score — that’s what scammers count on, and you fell for it.
Given that we’re in a recession (although some debate the definition), lawyers are probably looking to find new cases. I’m not a lawyer, but a crafty lawyer might file a CLASS ACTION against your firm, to AUDIT all past transactions for potential review of commissions (as compared with the statements on your own website ass what they were limited to, i.e. 15%). I think that’s a far more likely scenario than ever recovering a penny in court against Dikian et al. All they need is one “representative plaintiff” to get the ball rolling.
“ass what they were limited” should be “AS what they were limited”…..typo.
I believe, some of them should get together and do it against VPN.
It would be fun to see.
Some articles that discusses “dual agency” brokerage…..
https://atgtitle.com/dual-agencies-the-benefits-risks-you-take/https://www.raleighrealtyhomes.com/blog/dual-agency-real-estate.htmlhttps://www.lawtimesnews.com/news/features/focus-case-a-reminder-about-perils-of-dual-agency/261317
although one can Google it (i.e. “dual agency broker” without the quotes, or similar terms) and see why it’s so controversial.
Since Epik’s escrow was mentioned here, I can confirm their escrow service is stellar and can’t recommend them more highly. Now that Escrow has a “concierge” service option, and any turbulence related to various company transitions is apparently in the past, they are also very good again so far. I’ve used both.
@Michael: (replying here, since it’s too nested for me to reply above) I have no relation with you, or anyone else who is a party to the case. But, I (and others) can assess the merits of the action based on what is in the filings, as well as my own 20+ year experience with domains, as I’ve noted in the previous comments.
As has been pointed out to you repeatedly, it’s highly likely that the domain name owner’s email was hacked, and they had nothing to do with any of the communications you received. The court will figure things out eventually, I’m sure.
That “DeKalb County Case Number” looks to me to be a police report number, not the number to a filed case. That would explain why nothing results from searches on the DeKalb County website for that case number or for the purported defendant.
And generally smart money files civil cases AFTER criminal ones for numerous reasons. First let the state do the investigation rather than paid private investigators and attorneys. And once a criminal conviction is had, civil liability is proven just about automatically once that conviction is introduced into evidence in the civil case.
It seems that this company wanted or needed to seem to be doing something proactive about the loss, so my guess is that they are handling the civil suit with in-house counsel. If not then they have fallen victim, this time, to some either incompetent or greedy civil lawyers.
I stand corrected. After looking at the complaint, it is being handled by outside counsel from New York pro hac vice’d through a California lawyer. I wonder how much they got paid to fire off this quick, summary fact-laden complaint? And why the rush to do it so far ahead of any real investigation?
The answer has been filed:
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.855964/gov.uscourts.cacd.855964.33.0.pdf
On a related side note – speaking of going for that big score and getting unduly influenced by the allure of it, don’t get me wrong, I’m not some kind of new TLD guy by any means, but I just checked the pricing on “.rich” because I would have registered a single one of them, and they’ve got to be kidding. Major “lol.”
Michael from VPN
Did you see this link on your website before you charged a ridiculous commission and a frivolous lawsuit?
I believe you have not read. Here it is
https://www.vpn.com/faith/
I never knew that about VPN, thanks for sharing that. That may definitely explain at least to a significant degree why some people are going quite this hard on VPN and Michael G. here, whom I don’t know or have any association with. Similar to how people on “the conservative right” are so heavily drooling, panting, frothing at the mouth and out for blood regarding Alec Baldwin because of his tragic shooting issue on the movie set. By now it’s long no secret how some of our industry’s “luminaries” lean socially/politically, even with regard to Christianity itself. And speaking as an anonymous rando nobody here, this isn’t even within a million miles of my own first rodeo with such issues and realities of people either.
Bad News:
And on a complete side note to the topic here, but relevant to us all, there is a horrible new industry “mandate” forming on the horizon now:
https://domainincite.com/28043-verisign-to-mandate-2fa-for-com-registrars#comment-19618
this guy Michael Gargiulo of vpn is himself very vert greedy , unethical in business and a fraud guy. i have seen his illegal works in my case against another fraud brent oxley. nice to see him getting taste of his own medicine. remember always if you cheat any innocent person in life definitely you will also get cheated . rhjs is law of karma and you cant run away from it.