When the theft of Lightly.com came up, only the very tip of the iceberg was visible, so we started digging; with every layer, we found more clues about organized crime targeting domain owners.
Stolen at GoDaddy and then transferred to the Chinese registrar, Ename, Lightly.com shares the same path as 8si.com, a domain whose owner documented its theft and loss in detail.
Our investigation of Lightly.com has provided lots of material regarding the activity of China based criminals preying on owners of domains, mostly registered at GoDaddy.
Using phishing emails redirecting unsuspecting owners to fake registrar portals, the Chinese cyberthieves obtain access to their accounts and domain names.
The next step involves transferring the domains to the Chinese domain registrar, Ename.com, where the stolen domains are soon sold for a few hundred dollars, being “laundered” clean after a couple of resales.
Through our research, we located one such undocumented domain theft involving the domain name TX2.com and contacted its last legitimate owner, Sean O’Carroll.
Mr. O’Carroll is a Phoenix, Arizona realtor and a neighbor of GoDaddy; he’s personally witnessed the growth of GoDaddy from a shop of Bob Parsons to the mega-million corporation and #1 domain registrar in the world.
“I’m both a realtor and a domain investor, and had offers of up to $10,000 for TX2.com which I turned down,” said Mr. O’Carroll, who is very unhappy with the current situation involving TX2.com.
Like many other business people, O’Carroll had no idea who to turn to, in order to report the theft of TX2.com which occurred late last year. Although he opened a ticket at GoDaddy and followed their instructions, there was no resolution and the domain was not returned.
TX2.com changed hands a total of 4 times after being stolen from Sean O’Carroll, and the current registrant from China might be completely oblivious of the domain’s status. Whether he is aware of it or not, the domain TX2.com is still stolen, and still parked at Ename.com.
Tomorrow, we will continue our revelations with additional details on the theft of TX2.com and how it can affect legitimate Chinese domain investors and entrepreneurs that buy and sell domain names on Ename.com, 4.CN and other domain venues.
If your domain becomes stolen, you could open a UDRP case, though I do understand that it costs $1500, but blame ICANN for not regulating the market enough and allowing registars like ename to still operate, I hope everyone sends an email of complaint requesting ename to be delisted if they do not comply, and next time to everyone who’s had their domain stolen use 2FA, or someone like namebright, who text your mobile with a code to let you login.
Part 2 has been posted: http://domaingang.com/domain-news/stolen-godaddy-sold-ename-tx2-com-stolen-domain-part-2/