The trick is not new, and IDN domains have been used several times in the past in a way that distorts their intended purpose: to utilize words in different languages.
Using “foreign” character sets other than Latin, IDN domains can be created by characters that visually resemble “English” words.
Although Latin and IDN cannot be mixed in the same domain, there are several IDN sets that contain enough letters to manifest this practice.
These faux domains are definitely crap, as one can see here.
We were recently made aware of an eBay auction peddling such worthless IDN domains that resemble MAC.com, JAVA.com, TECH.com and others.
In the eBay listings, the domain seller states these are IDN domains and one should “research before buying,” however this disclaimer does not change the fact that these are crap domains.