I started a thread yesterday on the DigitalPoint forums asking for 3 character domains to buy and 2 members already tried to scam me. Surprisingly the way they try to do it is extremely simple – they try to sell you a domain they don’t really own and accept payment through Western Union, Bank Wire, or MoneyBookers or even paypal even though with paypal the transaction can be reversed. But I suppose they might be able to transfer the funds away before you do a chargeback in this case.
One of them is ShayGA. He pmed me offering to buy A66.com for $500. However a quick check reveals that it’s an active site and they are not likely to be interested in selling the domain. So I asked him to confirm that he owns the domain and he never replied. I dug a bit on him and found out that he only joined a couple days ago, but already had a lot of ‘sales’ going on. Most of these threads end with the members accusing the topic starter of being a scammer. I guess there are people who actually buy into this, otherwise he wouldn’t be doing it.
Update: I was told by another fellow domainer that this guy is also trying to “sell” that domain on NamePros. Luckily on NP and DNF the mods and members are alert and swift in banning scammers.
Another one was Venliven – a recently joined member, I guess he joined when he saw my thread because that is where he made his first and second posts. It took me about 5 seconds to realize this might be a scammer by the strange question “What is your payment method?” – naturally it’s going to be paypal. I decided to play it out and see if I can get his details to post them here.
So I replied to his pm asking what were the domains – he answered with www.wut.com and www.juk.com. To get the final confirmation that it was a scammer I decided to lowball and offered $2k for each (the actual market price for these would be at least $5k each) and told him that if he accepts to pm me his bank and western union details, as well as moneybookers and I’ll see what’s easier for me to pay with. Scammers register new usernames daily, but in case someone asks you to send money to these addresses you’ll know who you are dealing with:
Western Union:
Zaid Lutfi , United arab emirates
Western Union:
Steven Burken
UpHill Sight 3/2
MoneyBookers:
Bank Account in UK:
39032157
Afterwards I asked him to confirm that he actually owns the domains by adding something in the whois contacts – he started sending weird messages with all kinds of lame excuses. Many of them didn’t even make much sense: “Without my hosting on I don’t have a server” – huh?
There are so many scammers on DP it’s ridiculous. And the mods don’t usually ban them since they don’t break any petty rules, while DP mods don’t get involved in business between members. However those scammers are very easy to recognize. More sophisticated are the scammers that actually steal or sell stolen domains. Sometimes even experienced domainers fall victim to such crimes in this popular thread at dnf.
It is really easy to setup and catch scammers on DP. It’s sad because there are actually lots of good members there that have good priced services to offer. Too bad the mods/admin don’t really care to clean up the forum and make it a safer place for their members. DP is definitely not a place to shop for domains for this reason.
The title should be Caught, not Cought
That’s true DP is full of scums… Some stolen my domain undn.org. He was very clever he told me to transfer domain to godaddy. I transferred the domain and he never paid. Then he says me that I stolen his domain. He hacked my dp password by sending mail from ___@digitalpoint.com asking for password for resolving this issue. I was shocked that how come he can send mail from dp server? After all both of our account was banned from dp.
With
I had a similar situation from a member name VIP TRADES. The person was not able to produce the domain name.
DP…well what can you expect? The owners themselves face criminal charges, they seem to welcome scammers, and go out of their way to penalize honest and constructive posters for trivial errors.
Yet, there are still deals to be made, if you don’t mind the sleazy company.
time to start some serious scam baiting on dp.
Wow Guys! It seems very scary hanging around at DP. I just joint a member, but never do any threats so far down there. I’ve even read that they are pro indonesian hackers at DP who can make life very miserable out there.
I am more active on names pros and Noomle. Rules there are very strict.
I’ve been scammed by someone on DP a few months ago. But he was very good , i mean he had a good story and some other things (needing some fast money to buy a domain etc) and he pushed the domain to me instant. I paid after , with paypal personal (i did not know it’s not reversible) and the domain was stolen. After 1 day , the rightful owner got his domain back , and i was left without the domain name and my money. Anyway , i learned a lot from that transaction … but i still feel stupid when i think of it.
btw – nice blog , you got a new subscriber!!
Hi Eugen, thanks for telling your story! I recently had another potential scammer offer me a domain to buy on DP. At first it all seemed good and I was thinking of buying it, although it seemed bit suspicious so I started digging. And I found out he was banned on NamePros and some of his NamePros threads included people posting that he scammed them. Still not a conclusive proof as he was good at hiding it, but I just decided to give it up. Over the years I’ve learned that whenever something seems suspicious best thing is to do is just avoid it even if it looks like a good deal.
The domain was 88w.com I wonder if anyone bought it, but you can look that up on DP. I think the risk is high that it was stolen, even though it’s a pretty good deal at $355 and still reasonably priced.
i didn’t know the prices for 3 char domains , so when i got scammed i bought 72k.com with 100$. I saw it as the best deal ever …. but ended up scammed
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DirektOnline.se scammed me! I hired them to do SEO-work and they just spammed my URL in forums and got me banned!