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AU$2.3 Million fine for domain name scamming Australian pair

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On January 3, 2006, 4:02 PM EST

Domain registration is usually a fairly simple and often cheap process. It's so easy today, it's point and click. Of course, that can backfire. Somehow, a pair in Australia managed to rake in several million dollars using scams for domain registration. The old tricks may be the best tricks, but awareness for digital crime is rising. The two were caught and have been fined AU$2.3 Million total by the Australian Federal Court. This didn't start in an investigation, but rather litigation, when UK Registrar Nominet sued the pair. The two used what are essentially phishing tactics to lure unsuspecting owners of names to cough up more money for a service they'd already paid for. Business owners are targets of fraudsters too, not just end users, of course, no big surprise there. Of course, don't plan on phishing to be reduced anytime soon. It continues to grow, and probably will for quite some time. In this instance, crime didn't pay.

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User Comments (8)

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cyrax
on January 3, 2006
5:41 PM
Ouch! That will teach scammers that the world refuses to lie dead and let them walk over. 2.3 million is still too small a fine.

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nathanskywalker
on January 3, 2006
5:59 PM
lol, sorry that just seems slightly humerous to me, the whole plot. Wow, yeah fine away!

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PanicX
on January 3, 2006
6:01 PM
[b]Originally posted by cyrax:[/b][quote]Ouch! That will teach scammers that the world refuses to lie dead and let them walk over. 2.3 million is still too small a fine.[/quote]Well, the 2 that got fined at least. Otherwise you can expect it to have about the same amount of impact on scammers as the RIAA has had on "pirates".

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blue_dragon
on January 3, 2006
7:11 PM
I dont think this is good enough punishment in my opinion, they should be sent to prison for like 50 yearsTRicking innocent victims is not cool

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vigilante
on January 3, 2006
10:36 PM
It used to be somebody had to rob you for hundreds of dollars and hope to get away with it.Nowadays, someone can rob thousands or millions of people for a few pennies and get rich from it. Would you miss $.50 cents? Would you even know you lost it?People need awareness, the Internet is just an open world, there are good guys and bad guys, just like the open "real" world. There will always be bad guys. People need more awareness of the dangers of the Internet. It's like sending your 15 year old son to go buy a car for the first time from a dealer, with no warnings on tricks of pricing and scheming. Something dumb will happen.We will never build a perfect Internet.

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otmakus
on January 3, 2006
11:30 PM
Being fined 2,3 mil after raking "several mil" is still profitable to the pair, and if people are still so gullible they can be scammed by 2 person and spend million of dollars on domain name, we can expect the internet crime to actually rise, instead of decline.

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mentaljedi
on January 4, 2006
8:42 AM
When it comes to scams, always be vigilent. I never bu something or even look at a sight that i don't know whether it is real or not. I never take choices on the internet when it comes to money unless i'm 100% positive its real.

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iluvnug
on January 5, 2006
2:44 AM
I have a friend who currently in litigation against a US company who tricked him out of his website name. It's a shame to see things like this happen to good people. And it's good that these two got caught doing this.

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