SCAM: Domain Verification Bureau

[123domainname]

One of my clients were called by a company on Friday that kindly told them that someone wanted to register "theirdomainname".com and co.uk and they would release it at 5pm that day unless our client came up with a 2 year registration fee of £200 + VAT or £400 + VAT for 5 years!!!

Interestingly enough, the domains they claim to be able to release are actually on our DNS server and aren't even due to expire for another year or so!

The company is called the Domain Verification Bureau, based at Old Gloucester Street London and the chap who called my client was a Steve Verde.

I phoned the legal department at Nominet and they advised me that of course this is not legit and asked me to forward all the information I had on them. Just wanted to let you all know.

Anyone else heard from them?

[devolution]

Hey - DROE are based at Gloucester Road. Any coincidence?

[devolution]

On a more serious note, 123, this is cold hard fraud. You should contact the Fraud Office IMMEDIATELY. Do you have their phone number - they probably did 141 to withhold didn't they?

Also, contact Watchdog (watchdog@bbc.co.uk), and the Trading Standards (tradingstandards.gov.uk - but make sure you speak to them by phone!).

[123domainname]

Just to keep you all up to date. I have now taken the following actions:

Contacted Nominet's legal department
Contacted Office of Fair Trading
Contacted Trading Standards
Contacted Scotland Yard's Computer Crime Bureau (where I have a friend and they take this kind of thing very seriously)

I hope I've done at the necessary as a good registrar would do.

Incidentally I pretended when I spoke to them I was very interested. That's how I got their address and phone number and some contact names (which I passed directly on to all of the above).