The Respondent in a UDRP against the domain insightinvestment.co, attempted to facilitate fraud in a novel way.
After registering the domain that closely matched the .com, Hossein Fazlollahi of Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa, sent an email to the executives of Insight Investment Management Ltd., a British company:
“Good morning, Atul, – Can you please do me a favor and perform a wire transfer for me?”
The sender’s email matched that of the CEO of the British company, in an apparent attempt to impersonate the company’s officer.
From that point on, the Complainant’s interest was not solely a matter of enforcing their registered trademark, INSIGHT INVESTMENT, but to also fend off a fraudster.
The UDRP at the WIPO outlined those key points, in particular:
“(c) The impersonation of the Complainant’s CEO by creation of an email address using a misspelling of his name and the sending of an email to the Complainant’s COO also demonstrates use of the disputed domain name in bad faith.
(d) The Panel agrees with the Complainant that by registration and use of the disputed domain name, the Respondent is intentionally attempting to confuse parties receiving emails from email accounts connected to the disputed domain name into believing that they are from the Complainant, with the intention of conducting fraud.”
Subsequently, the sole panelist decided that the domain insightinvestment.co should be transferred to the Complainant.
For the full text of this UDRP, click here.
