Domain Name Rip Off Scam – Beware

From the Mail Bag:

Hi Dwayne
We can’t get to our website this morning. Is it something on your end? We were editing fine yesterday but this morning it’s down and we can’t get to FTP or the site. Please HELP ASAP. Thanks – Karrie

Hi Karrie;
I really regret having to inform you of this, but it looks like your domain name has been hijacked and is no longer pointed at our servers. Someone who had control of the domain name at your company has changed the settings so the name no longer works – and if the name is not configured to point to our servers the website cannot be seen by the world.

I did some quick research to try and help you and this is what I have discovered. 

Someone named (REDACTED) apparently controls this domain name. They may have moved it on purpose or they may have been duped into responding to a domain expiration email scheme used by Brandon Grey Internet Services (a well known domain name scam)

Here is the current administrator of the domain name:
Administrative contact:
Name:              REDACTED

Just for your information, this Brandon Grey Internet services outfit sends out fake domain name expiration notices via postal mail and email but they are really used to dupe the administrator into signing over the domain name so they can take it over and extort more payments. These message usually come from “Domain Name Registry of America”. This is a very old scam and has been going on for years. This is why we urge our clients to allow us to administer their domain names to prevent this from happening. In the future you can avoid this type of issue by letting us manage your name in our secure and private domain name registry.

Here are some links to help your organization explore the history of this scam.

http://www.consumerfraudreporting.org/domainnamescams.htm
http://www.ucan.org/blog/blog/scam_alert/domain_registry_of_america_scam
http://www.onlineverif.com/?go=pages/posts/posts&id=21064

This is just a small sample.
I truly hope this helps. Please let me know if I can be of further service.

At Your Servers…
Dwayne Coots

Rovin Net Internet Services