For the first time a domain theft goes to criminal justice
For the first time the thief of a domain name is arrested in the USA. The domain sex.com thief went to jail but because he did not want to pay the sum of $ 12 million civil justice asked him to reimburse his victim.
Trials are pending on the civil justice but the techniques involved by domain theft are so complicated that the criminal justice system had always given up for lack of evidence.
Once again, it is the registrar Godaddy.com which is involved in a domain theft. It is true that with 30 million domains under management, it is normal that it is often involved, but its system of direct transfer from account to account simplifies many theft and on the other hand, it appears that he was aware two other domain were theft by the same person previously.
Albert Angel and his wife had acquired p2p.com in 2005 for $ 160 000. They own 800 domain names including profreedom.com and drugoverdose.com which were also stolen by Goncalves.
Daniel Goncalves, computer specialist for 25 years, has developed an elaborate procedure to take the p2p.com domain.
He hacked the email account on AOL of Angel and used it to retrieve the login of the domain account at Godaddy, the registrar. He created another account on Godaddy as Daniel Louvado and transferred the domain to this account.
This pirate also simulated an online payment on paypal.com to let believe that he has acquired the domain for $ 1500 with Angel.
Then he puts the domain for sales on eBay in 2006. The auctions are won by a basketball player (Mark Madsen) for $ 111 000. It is still the owner.
Begins a long legal journey for Angel, particularly because of the residence for parties in different states.
They call on Joshua Pelissero who specializes in tracking stolen domain names. They thus gained evidence of the actions by Goncalves, the thief.
In May 2009, Angel bring this amount of evidence to the prosecutor in New Jersey, so that he can finally pursue the thief. He was arrested June 30 and his computer seized.