SUSPICIOUS??? I get an email from a guy

[draggar]

General rule of thumb someone who is truly interested in your domain won't care for an appraisal. They'll already have a price range and usually start negotiations from the bottom (and the seller has their price range and they usually start at the top).

[petrosc]

Here is the process of this scam, next time you see any of these signs you should stop negotiations (or not start them at all)

1. He will contact you usually pretending to be a CEO of a company, showing very much interest in a name.
2. You reply, he may reply back, he will usually mention an appraisal as a way of establishing a sales price, at this point, he may or may not give you directions on where to find a "trustworthy" appraisal service.
3. In his 3rd email he will definitely suggest what he considers trustworthy appraisal services (if he hasnt done so in his 2nd email), and he will do it in a rather clever way. He will not suggest one direcly, but he will give you a link to a fake forum thread, where people supposedly discuss about domain appraisal services (usually the ones leading the conversation have usernames that evoke trust, like Dr. Holmes etc). In that fake thread, they will mention a few of the usual services like sedo, but also talk about some other services you have never heard of and the purpose of the entire thread is to make you believe that these other services are in fact better than sedo and are as trustworthy as such a service can get. These sites are operated by the scammers, and if you fall into this scam you will order an appraisal, they might or might not reply with one, but the important thing is that the buyer will never get back to you after that. His goal was just to make you pay them $40 or so for the appraisal.

Here is an example of one of the many fake threads they use : http://discussnames.007sites.com/Archive/703581.htm

Notice how they promote http://www.DomainExplorer.org , which is their scam service

[JuniperPark]

Like Herpes, the appraisal scam just doesn't go away... it started AGAIN today:


-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin Hill [mailto:2kevinhill@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 2:23 AM
To: dns
Subject: Offer for CARDSFORHER.COM

We are interested to buy your domain name CARDSFORHER.COM and offer to buy it from you for 80% of the appraised market value.

As of now we accept appraisals from either one of the following leading appraisal companies:

- fleos.com <<== SCAM
- sedo.com

If you already have an appraisal please forward it to us.

As soon as we have received your appraisal we will send you our payment (we use paypal for amounts less than $2,000 and escrow for amounts above $2,000) as well as further instructions on how to complete the transfer of the domain name.

We appreciate your business,

Yours truly,

Kevin Hill

[lotk.com]

80% dang... he only told me 70%

We are interested to buy your domain name [removed] and offer to buy it from you for 70% of the appraised market value.
As of now we accept appraisals from either one of the following leading appraisal companies:
fleos.com
sedo.com
If you already have an appraisal please forward it to us.
As soon as we have received your appraisal we will send you our payment (we use paypal for amounts less than $2,000 and escrow.com for amounts above $2,000) as well as further instructions on how to complete the transfer of the domain name.
We appreciate your business,
Yours truly,
Brian Harris

[stewie]

It's a scam.

Delete it.

Delete it

[Sweety]

I always tell them that if they are interested in paying 15k for my name, then they should be able to afford the 30 bucks for the appraisal and deduct it off of the offer.

[allroundguy]

These scams will last until people finally understand that appraisals have no scientific ground at all.
It is all between the ears - a matter of belief.
Nobody is obliged to accept other people's opinion
Just too bad that the IRS believes in domain appraisals ...

[JuniperPark]

The scammer has now sent 30 more of these:

-----Original Message-----
From: Domain Resale [mailto:resaledomain@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, August 10, 2009 11:42 AM
To:
Subject: Domain name


Dear Sir,

we are interested to buy your domain name and offer 65% of the appraised market value.
As of now we accept appraisals from either one of the following leading appraisal companies:

sedo.com
pddomains.com
accuratedomains.com

If you already have an appraisal please forward it to us.

As soon as we have received your appraisal we will send you our payment (we use Paypal for amounts less than $2,000 and escrow.com for amounts above $2,000) as well as further instructions on how to complete the transfer of the domain name.

We appreciate your business,

Domain Resale

[URLtrader]

I got few emails from B. Phillips of Domain Resale last week. This is my reply :--

I have been in domain business since 1999 . I think appraisal of a domain is what a buyer is ready to pay for it. I do NOT waste my time and money on paid domain appraisals.

You are free to have my domain appraised at your cost and make me offer through escrow.com or sedo.com after deducting the money spent by you on appraisal.

I see that pddomains.com was registered on 2009-08-07 !!! Wow !!! So obviously you are the owner of accuratedomains.com . Correct ?

Regards

[JuniperPark]

I'm thinking about running a scam on the guy... maybe we can issue challenges here.

How about a contest to see who can get him to deposit some money in Patty Similien's account?

[tekz999]

Tell him to pay for the appraisal himself, then deduct that cost of the appraisal fee from the final appraisal price, and sell the name to him. Then if he even replies, then you have won the lottery. Yes, that is the situation, and the probability that he has made you a legitimate offer.

[gingeman]

I would desperately love to bring this scumbag down.

I am 99% certain that this appraisal scam is run by the operators of accuratedomains.com

This is a double whammy for me as I fear their name is confusingly similar to my own, (obviously legitimate) domain services company, which you can see in my sig.

If anybody can think of a way to stop this spammer from preying on the naive and dragging this industry into further disrepute I would love to help in any way I can.

I wrote a review on Alexa for their company a couple of days ago after receiving the 4th or 5th one in the last couple of days.

I always tell them exactly what I think of them if I bother replying to their email.

Can somebody get around the whois privacy to expose this piece of shit?

[JuniperPark]

It's a scam. He's sent me over 100 of those emails in the last 2 days.

I've forwarded a bunch to abuse@gmail.com to get his gmail account killed, but I think lots of people have to do that before they will do anything.

[gingeman]

codymecklenburg@hotmail.com

is the email he uses at alexa.

Anybody got any more info about this person?