Domain slammer Rafferty bust (Chesley Rafferty)
Domain slammer Rafferty bust
http://www.computerworld.co.nz/cw.nsf/UNID/D8CC28D9395E03B0CC2570C4000E7B55
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The pigeons have come home to roost of Chesley Rafferty, of Domain Names Australia/America infamy. Rafferty sent out countless letters which looked like invoices to domain name holders, telling them that their registration was about to expire and asked for hundreds of dollars to renew them.
By Juha Saarinen, Auckland | Friday, 25 November, 2005
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Domain slammer Rafferty bust
The pigeons have come home to roost of Chesley Rafferty, of Domain Names Australia/America infamy. Rafferty sent out countless letters which looked like invoices to domain name holders, telling them that their registration was about to expire and asked for hundreds of dollars to renew them.
Nobody knows exactly how much money Rafferty made from the scam, but some reckon it’s millions. The Commerce Commission alone stopped over $500,000 worth of credit card transactions going into a Swiss bank account in Rafferty and fellow slammer Bradley Norrish’s names. The pair also raided the Nominet whois database for .uk, and hit British domain name holders with a mass mailout from Internet Registry UK, asking them for £175 fees.
Whereas our Commerce Commission didn’t take legal action against Rafferty, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission did, and also the Australian Domain Administration, which manages the .au namespace. They went after Rafferty in 2002 and last year, the Australian Federal Court found Rafferty guilty of breaching the Trade Practices Act, and ordered him to pay costs to the ACCC and auDA.
Both the ACCC and auDA petioned for Paul Chesley Rafferty, 26, to be made bankrupt, but it seems he beat them to it and fell on his own sword instead. Norrish meanwhile seems to be busy still through his Internet Registrations Worldwide company that has registered around 2,000 .us domains. He is also involved in a premium-rate SMS scheme whereby people are lured into entering a competition to win a plasma TV if they sign up for a horoscope service at A$2.50 per message.
Incidentally, Rafferty is not a friend of the FryUp. It appears he took umbrage to us describing him as a “scammerâ€. He was “embarrassed†for the FryUp that we didn’t bother to find out any factual detail and he threatened to sue unless we printed a retraction, as those without leg to stand on sometimes do. Check out the FryUp below for our response. Ah, good times. Good times.
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