The domain Candida.com was sold for $100,000 dollars in September 2022, using Epik as an escrow services mediator.
According to Kathleen Kalaf, the domain’s seller, Epik acknowledged the receipt of the funds and was therefore entitled to keeping 9% of it per the agreement. The remaining $91,000 dollars was never sent to Ms. Kalaf, however, who has been in talks with Epik’s officers on several occasions since.
We reached out to Ms. Kalaf for some additional details on the sale of Candida.com and the lack of payment from Epik, several weeks after she completed her part of the agreement.
Ms. Kalaf said that negotiations began on Epik and due to the way the system is set up she doesn’t know who is the buyer of the domain Candida.com. All she could see at the time was that they are in New Zealand; her questions about the buyer’s plans were not responded to.
It’s important to note that according to Ms. Kalaf she filled out standard banking details at Epik, in order to receive payment. That information wasn’t used, however, and instead once payment was received by Epik she was prompted to fill out a withdrawal form in Masterbucks, the proprietary cryptocurrency adopted by Epik more than a decade ago.
Subsequent attempts to withdraw the balance in Masterbucks were met by requests for new forms to fill out, alongside providing a photo and a copy of her driver’s license. Epik claimed that was necessary as part of the federal “Know Your Customer” guidelines. Between October 11 and Thanksgiving Ms. Kalaf was unable to withdraw her funds.
At Thanksgiving, Ms. Kalaf contacted Rob Monster, founder and former CEO of Epik, whom she’s known for a long time. He suggested that a payment plan could be set up – a shocking statement considering the $100,000 dollar balance that Epik had received in one lump sum, acting as an “escrow” service.
Conversations with Brian Royce, Epik’s current CEO, involved acknowledging the $91,000 dollar debt to Ms. Kalaf, and promising to pay her by the end of January 2023.
So far, the domain name Candida.com resolves to a landing page provided by Epik and no updates appear to have taken place since September 29, 2022.
Ms. Kalaf described the situation about her domain sale via Epik in a YouTube video, as seen below:
