Toby Clements
Domain investor and broker, Toby Clements, fell off the face of the earth on or around March 10th. No updates of his Twitter or Facebook since, made many people worry about payments to pending domain transactions.
Since then, there has been no recorded activity in the domain circles, and some domainers whose domains Toby brokered are getting very nervous.
We humorously speculated that Toby Clements might have joined NASA, but there have been no other leads on his whereabouts.
Until now.
Toby’s domain, Toby.com, has changed hands, as seen in this DomainTools record updated yesterday.
Whether Toby.com was sold to pay bills, or is being brokered, we aren’t sure – either way, that’s the first sign of life Toby Clements has shown in more than 10 weeks.
Strangely, Toby Clements was interviewed a year ago almost exactly to the day of his “disappearance”; watch the video below.
Update: According to the current owner of Toby.com, he acquired the domain from the lending company that Toby Clements still owed payments to – not directly from Toby.
I’m still waiting for payout from a February transaction. After months of excuses and promises for payouts later in the week, Toby just stopped responding all together. I’ve even tried to be reasonable by asking for domains as compensation if the money is an issue (shouldn’t be since he provides an escrow service with high minimum fees). I’m only out $600, but I’m sure there are plenty of others out much more.
Not impressed.
I have on two words for Toby Clements…..cowboy posters
Something fishy is going on and toby needs to start explaining himself yo his customers. If anyone has been fleeced I think they should get yogether and file a report and maybe as a group of domainers we can get together and give him a public beating with any profits going to victims. People like him should be publicly shamed at the next TRAFFIC by the king himself.
Is he alive? Was not domain sold by his family?
Just wanted to share this response from Toby from back in late March. Also, I thought my transaction was from February, but it was actually the end of December 2013.
“I’m sorry for my silence and you won’t need to call this a loss.
The truth is I have made some major accounting errors and have been doing everything possible to fix them.
I have been offline for a week trying to get things sorted out and the good news is I have made a very large sale that will be closing via escrow.com. I hope to have this deal closed out and paid this week. I will be instructing escrow.com to send the funds to you directly once this happens.
Again, I’m very sorry and will get this wrapped up asap.”
He still owes me money. He actually sold one of my names knowing he wouldn’t be able to pay me. I found out later he was already having issues a month before he sold mine. If anyone makes a move on any class action, I’m in. If not, I’ll be handling it legally anyway. I’m going to give him another week or two before I officially make it a legal matter.
He’s also done a runner (it would seem) for a $10,000 domain my friend bought. He’s got the cash and never even contacted the seller to say the price was met – so basically he’s stolen the money.
I experienced the same situation with Toby at the beginning of the year and I hounded him on all fronts until I finally got him to pay but it took a month. This is just conjecture, but I got the feeling that he was using one account; using money from domain sales to fund other things and he over-extended himself… again, just conjecture. If he was using one account with his commissions to fund his projects / expenses and another account with client money, then this wouldn’t be a topic.. it’s literally impossible to screw something up that is so simple to track.
Update: According to the current owner of Toby.com, he acquired the domain from the lending company that Toby Clements still owed payments to – not directly from Toby.
You stupid fucks should know to deal only with LICENSED escrow companies
Licensed, audited, bonded (pay say $250,000 performance bond lodged with superisory body)
Not like some “escrow” run from someone’s bedroom (eg Francois Car-dildo)…
You can trust these cowboys…until shit happens..
You greedy fucks – trying to save a few pennies – deserve to be scammed!
Haha
@Scwartz’s Anus
Can you please use stronger language?
Watch this part of the video.
Adam – Thanks for the link, quite ironic.
Toby was always slow to pay, but he always came through. I’ve probably sold around 10 names through him in the last year or so and never had an issue. I’m just thanking my lucky stars that the one he fucked me on was only a $2k sale.
This was particularly devastating to me. To the Guy who called us names, some of us don’t really have a clue, it doesn’t make us a DF, just not experienced in this arena. My husband owned 60 domain names when he died. I didn’t know what to do with them and contacted Toby, who seemed legit and without complaints at the end of 2013. These were my husband’s only assets. Yes, it sucks to have someone steal from you. He kept promising that he would get me the money somehow. I’m guessing he might have trouble sleeping at night.