Amende de € 1,4 million pour deux fraudeurs (Bradley Norrish + Chesley Rafferty)
from: http://www.domainesinfo.fr/article.php?art_id=813 (French)
Translated into English by Google: http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.domainesinfo.fr%2Farticle.php%3Fart_id%3D813&langpair=fr%7Cen&hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&prev=%2Flanguage_tools
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Amend € 1,4 million for two defrauders
4 Jan 2006An Australian court has just sent a very clear signal to the swindlers: to give false opinion of expiry or recording of domain names is a serious, detrimental act and severely punished.
To have usurped the law from the copyright, two defrauders have just bailed out of a fine of 2,3 million Australian dollars, that is to say a little more than 1,4 million euros.
An exemplary judgment for a couple of swindler emblematic. Because Brad Norrish and Chesley Rafferty made much speak about them since two years and half. The two “contractors” had succeeded in plundering the base of data WHOIS of the English register Nominet, thus obtaining the co-ordinates of owners of domain names.
They had used this information to make false opinion and to send them within the framework of mailings of mass to the owners of names. The opinions, seemingly very official, tried to convince the “victim” to pay at the full price is the renewal of a name which it did not even have, that is to say the recording of a name “potentially interesting” for this victim and currently available.
Serious consequences
Approximately 50 000 owners of names would have been concerned with this operation, launched while using companies like Domain Names Australia (DNA) based in Melbourne in Australia.
The consequences of this business had been very serious since Nominet, which carried felt sorry for against the two men in 2003, was obliged temporarily to close its base WHOIS to protect it.
In addition, in Australia, several governmental organizations gathered to prevent this kind of swindle. An interesting initiative at the time when, in France, one has noted for a few months a recrudescence of attempts at frauds. Thus several known companies would have been contacted by so-called registry offices indicating to them that they had just received a request for recording on names attacking the laws the company. The latter then saw herself encouraging to record the names “in a preventive way” by the company in question.
Source:
The Australian… “