Aussie registrar guilty of $6 million slamming campaign

Domain seller Domain Register Pty Ltd has reportedly been found guilty of scamming thousands of Australians out of a total of $6 million with bogus domain renewal notices.

The Herald Sun reports today that a Federal court ruled that the company’s sales tactics were “misleading or deceptive, or likely to mislead or deceive in breach of state and federal laws”.

The company, at one time a TPP Wholesale reseller but apparently never ICANN-accredited itself, was notorious for being a leading Aussie practitioner of the old “domain slamming” scam popularized by the Brandon Gray gang through fronts such as Domain Registry of America.

It sent paper invoices that appeared to the casual reader to be renewal notices for .com.au names, but were in fact solicitations to buy matching .com names for an outrageous $249 ($195) per year.

So convincing were the notices that the hit rate was one out of every 14 organizations targeted, the Herald Sun reported. Over 21,000 suckers in total.

According to the newspaper, the court was told that Domain Register made AUD 7.7 million ($6 million) from 31,000 registrations and renewals from January 1, 2011, to May 30, 2014.

The lawsuit was filed by Australian state government watchdog Consumer Affairs Victoria a year ago, but the domain industry was warning punters about the scam as far back as 2011.

Domain Register’s punishment has yet to be determined, but the agency had been seeking refunds for victims along with punitive penalties.