Domain Name Scam Alert: ICANN Does NOT Provide Domain Name Appraisals

There is a pretty nasty domain name appraisal scam going around that you need to be aware of if you own domain names. The scammer’s only intent is to make money from a domain name appraisal service, which is fake. Furthermore, the scammer, Roland Gordan, and Authority-ICANN.org, tries to make it look like the real ICANN.org is offering domain name appraisals. This is a scam, and domain name owners should not fall for this online scheme.

Here’s how this domain name scam works.

– You receive an email from someone claiming that they are a domain name broker and want to buy your domain name.
– If you respond (they want you to name a price), they will email you back saying that their client needs to have an appraisal in writing from an independent firm.
– They point you to a place where you can go.
– They profit from you ordering the domain name appraisal.
– They never plan on buying your domain name.

Since I knew something was fishy from the start, I went ahead and “played along”, just to see what this scam is all about. Here’s the email I got, initially, wanting to buy a domain name I own, local-plumber.com:

“On Tuesday, July 15, 2014 3:40 AM, “[email protected]” wrote:

Hello!
I’m a broker of an investor from Montreal (Canada). He wants to buy local-plumber.com.
My client has $482,000 budget for 40-50 domains. Please specify your asking price in the subject of your message.
Our company is in a web hosting business. We also provide brokerage services for domain buyers.
If you have other domains please email me the list with prices. I may offer your domains for sale to my clients.
How can we transfer money to you (escrow, wire, Paypal or Western Union)?
I can also help you with the transfer process.

Best Regards,
Jacob Bartmann
Vice President | Web Technologies & Systems
Switzerland
Basel
Centralbahnstrasse 41
Phone: 061 219 48 571

I responded, with this:

local-plumber.com is $1500.

So, this guy then responds to my short email of “local-plumber.com is $1500.” (I know exactly how much I want for that domain name, as the searches are competitive. I won’t change my price. That is the price of this domain.) He responded with this:

From: Domain Broker
Date: Saturday, July 26, 2014 at 2:12 PM
To: Bill Hartzer
Subject: Re: local-plumber.com

$1500 – Ok. Great! Before we proceed my investor needs only one thing from you:

As you may know all major domain brokers does not allow listing above $1000 or higher if you don’t have an official appraisal. Since the sale price is not low in our case, my client needs an official certificate of price (appraisal). He also needs to know you have no trademark problems. It won’t be a problem since I know an official appraiser that offers this option (trademark infringement verification) for free as a part of the appraisal service.

I’m also interested in a good valuation and a high sale price because my client pays me a commission (10-15% of the sale price) on every domain purchase. So I’m not interested in low sales too.

Of course, you should not use a free automated service like Estibot or similar services. My client won’t accept them. I was working for Estibot and knew they were using automated scripts for free appraisals. In our case we need a real manual valuation.

To avoid mistakes and wasting money on useless automated services I asked in the forum about reliable manual valuation/TM verification services. Please read this: http://answers.archive-google.com/answers/threadview19472586.htm (“Domain Broker” is my nickname).

The process is very easy:

1. Go to the appraisal site and order the valuation with the TM verification. Submit your domains to them and let them know you have a buyer with $X,XXX offer so you need the appraisal near this value. After several hours you will get the results.

2. Then send these results via email and we’ll proceed with the deal.

If you are new to the appraisal process I can help you with a step by step instructions.

The guy points you to a website, answers.archive-google.com, which is NOT owned by Google. It’s a fake site, a phishing site of sorts, that makes you believe that there’s a site called ICANN that will give you an appraisal. There are links in there to authority-icann.org, which is NOT the official ICANN organization’s website. In fact, this website is only set up as a part of this domain name appraisal scam.

There is no home page of archive-google.com, it’s just a placeholder blank page from what I can tell. The only reason the domain name exists is to host this fake Google answers page.

After this guy emailed me a response, I went and responded to him:

I don’t care about appraisals. If you want the domain then the price is $1500. This price is valid for 5 days, and the price will go up after that.

To this, he responded:

You don’t care but my client cares. He will not proceed without it. This service can be ordered by the domain owner only.

I cannot order the appraisal.

I tried to order but I could not. Here is the response I received from the customer support:
Dear Sir,

No. This service is for domain owners only. The certificate becomes a property of the owner. Ask the real domain owner to order it if you need the appraisal.

Sincerely,

Sandra Miller

Customer Support

Hi,

please let me know if I may order appraisals for domains that I don’t own?

I then replied this way, and haven’t gotten a response:

Well then I guess your “client” won’t be buying the domain. Have a good day.

At this point, it’s clear to me that this really is a pretty nasty scam that is going around, and I’m sure that plenty of people are falling for it, with the inclusion of “Google answers” and his use of a fake ICANN website. People like this just make me sick.

Please don’t fall for this scam.

Just so that there’s a chance that this person can get caught and shut down, here’s the whois on the associated domain(s) with this scam:

virtual-space-technologies.info
Registrant Contact
Name: Roland Gordon
Organization:
Mailing Address: mattenstrasse 12, Cham Cham 6330 CH
Phone: +41.794024086
Email: [email protected]

The domain name virtual-space-technologies.info redirects to another domain:

vpspace.com
Registrant Contact
Name: Michael Shavit
Organization: Binarics GmbH
Mailing Address: Südquaistrasse 14, Basel BS 4057 CH
Phone: +41.616312200
Email:[email protected]

There is domain privacy on the archive-google.com domain name.

Looks like this is the same scam that Morgan Linton came across a while back. This time, though, they’re getting a little bit more convincing, as they’re using “Google Answers” in order to convince people to order a fake appraisal for a domain name that they’re not interested in buying.

UPDATE:
As a result of this post, I received the following from Christian, who also got this Cristian:

From: Cristian
Subject: The following scam happened to me too!

Message Body:
Your article: https://www.billhartzer.com/pages/domain-name-scam-alert-icann-does-not-provide-domain-name-appraisals/

I just received the email and i’ll play along … to see where it goes now.

Please add this information to the article too, since no comments are allowed on the article.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Sent from: [email protected]
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Hello!

I’m a broker of an investor from New Brunswick (Canada). He wants to buy ######.us.

My client has $525,000 budget for 40-50 domains. Please specify your asking price in the subject of your message.

Our company is in a web hosting business. We also provide brokerage services for domain buyers.

If you have other domains please email me the list with prices. I may offer your domains for sale to my clients.

How can we transfer money to you (escrow, wire, Paypal or Western Union)?

Best Regards,

Alex Gertman

Vice President | VPISpace Hosting Solutions

Switzerland
Basel
Centralbahnstrasse 14
Phone: 061 259 42 609

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
WHOIS INFORMATION:
Registrant Contact Information:
Name: Roland Gordon
City: Cham
State: Cham
Zip: 6330
Country: CH
Phone: +41.794024086
Email: [email protected]
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

I wonder, do they have an entire crew of people working on this scam? En entire bogus firm?