PAYPAL and GoDaddy Support and Protect Scammers

Everyone please Digg this. If there is public awareness about what is going on maybe something will happen.

Recent events have made it very evident that both PayPal and GoDaddy support and protect internet scamming, identity theft, and fraudulent account activities. PayPal and GoDaddy are giants in their respective market segments and domainers have been using both for years. Domainers trusted their domain sales and transfers in the hands of these two corporations, but I do not think that trend will continue much longer.

Recently there have been a lot of scammers going on to forums and initiating sales and purchases of LLLL.com (4 letter .com domain names.) What happens is the scammer either creates a new username at a forum or he somehow hacks into a preexisting username and emulates another user. The scammer then sends out private messages (PM) to users that have posted their domains for sale and offers to buy them. Once negotiations have ended and a price has been established by both the seller and scammer, the scammer sends payment. Currently these scammers only pay via PayPal and only buy names that are registered at GoDaddy; of course, there is a reason for that.

The scammer sends payment via a STOLEN or HACKED PayPal account, assuming the identity of that person. Once the seller receives/confirms payment via PayPal he or she transfers the domains registered at GoDaddy to the Scammer. In order to complete the transfer of the domain the buyer (scammer) must provide the following information: Name, Complete Address, Country, Phone, and Email corresponding to the GoDaddy account where the domains will be transferred to. Usually, the account information is manipulated to match the identical information as the stolen PayPal account, preventing suspicion. Now the seller transfers the domains to the scammers GoDaddy account. Once the domains have been transferred a confirmation PM is sent and the scammer of course says everything is perfect. The seller goes to sleep happy and the scammer is grinning ear to ear because within minutes the scammer initiates a Chargeback on the stolen PayPal account. A chargeback occurs when fraudulent activity or unauthorized purchases have occurred and PayPal immediately reclaims the funds, without question. After the chargeback is completed the funds in the sellers PayPal account are $0.00. At this point the Scammer has the seller's domains and the seller has neither the money for the domains nor the domains themselves.

This is where both PayPal and GoDaddy facilitate and condone the scammer's getaway. The seller calls PayPal and asks," What happened to my money?"
PayPal responds with, "We are sorry sir but the funds you received for the following transaction were fraudulently acquired and the TRUE owner of the account denies initiating the transaction."
The seller then asks, "Well, do I get my money back? What about my domains can I get those back?"
PayPal responds with, "Actually sir because domains are an INTANGIBLE item they do not comply with the Seller Protection Agreement and are not covered by PayPal, only TANGIBLE items are covered against charge backs. We recommend contacting your registrar to see if they can help you."
Seller says, "Ok, so the TRUE owner of the account gets his money back, the scammer gets my domains and I am left with neither! I don't understand how this is possible. Can you provide me with information that you uncover about the scammer so I can contact him or her?"
PayPal representative, "Unfortunately there is nothing we can do for you on our end. Any information that we find can only be obtained by SUBPEONA. The only thing you can do is take legal action against the perpetrator."
Seller says something along the line of, "This is unethical and you will hear from my lawyers, I will never use your services again,” and then hangs up.

So that’s step one in the Scammer's getaway. PayPal is concealing the identity of the scammer; they can easily track him or her down via a reverse IP lookup to see who initiated the transaction. They protect the TRUE owner of the account and the thief but they do not protect the seller? The seller is the one that has to pay the 3.2% fees, for what, what are those fees going towards if they cannot even protect you. If a transaction is for intangible goods then you should not be FORCED to pay their fees, there is no point.

Here comes step 2 in this disappearing act. By now the seller is feeling agitated but still feels that their is light at the end of the GoDaddy tunnel. The seller checks the WhoIs.sc information for the stolen domains and sees that they are still registered to the THIEF and remain in the GoDaddy system. Surely it would be easy to reverse the transfer; it should not be that hard, you have the GoDaddy email along with all the other contact info to which the domains were transferred to...WRONG! You decide to contact GoDaddy and see what they can do. After explaining your situation to the representative they respond with this, "Unfortunately, GoDaddy does not get involved in third party disputes. This is why we have TDNAM, so you can sell your domains safely."

TDNAM is an online auction site OWNED by GoDaddy wherein the seller must pay a yearly fee of $6.95 and Escrow fees.

Seller says, "WHAT! These domains were stolen from me and they are in your system. They were just transferred hours ago and I can't get them back?”
GoDaddy, “I’m sorry sir, but since these domains were not transferred via TDNAM we have no responsibility to the buyer or the seller. Once the account change is initiated and accepted we are not involved.”
You go back and forth with the GoDaddy representative but get nowhere, there is nothing you can do, and you just got SCAMMED.
The only way to get your domains back is by legal action or reporting the problem to ICAAN.org. Or by the grace of God you find out who the scammer is and harass them to the point of forfeiture. Other than that you are shit out of luck and there is nothing to be done.

That is how I and countless other sellers got scammed and all we can do is sit here holding the bag. The scammers know every angle, they choose GoDaddy and PayPal because they know that they do not pursue or amend fraudulent transfers and charge backs. The next step is to file a class action lawsuit against PayPal and GoDaddy . All I ask is that anyone that has had this occurrence please email me at , I will compile a list of victims and their situations.

 

amen......PP & GD totally suck and its clear they've been made well aware of this scam yet they continue to let the scam & the scammer opperate unchecked.

I'll post your write up on my forum as well!
http://www.lazyforums.net/showthread.php?p=2841591#post2841591

 

PP really sucks. They give scammer loads of time to transfer their accumulated funds before they can come up with a lame excuse that you have won arbitration but scammer does not have enough funds in his account.

 

Let's get together and lodge complaints here: www dot ic3 dot gov/.


I'm too new here to post live links. After somebody verifies this link, will you please start a post that can be 'stickied', with an approiate title? THanks in advance. Frank

 

I didn't know it was this serious. After I realised a few hours after I got scammed I immedietly emailed Godaddy Official Support Team and they were very responsive and helped me out a lot. I got my domains back after a week (and that was because I followed the procedured late) all-in-all if I were faster I could have get my domains back in just 2 days because after I submitted all the required forms the next day I got my domains back.

Godaddy has a system were the domains are locked down for a whole 10days after complaint was submitted. I submitted my claim on the 11th day but still got it back.

So, that was why I got really confused on why a lot of people hasn't got their scammed domains back.

p/s- I am not working or getting any income whatsoever by writing this post coz this is my true expierince. I was scammed in DP and you can see my post
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=675180
where I was scammed.

 

We posted about the same time. Go to the link I provided and let them know.

 

not sure how they helped you out, b/c it seems like everyone of us in the past several days that has had this happened have emailed & called & emailed & called only to hear "we dont get involved in 3rd party disputes, had you used our auction site tdnam we could have helped"

glad it worked for you, but my 30+ emails to them cc'ing my attorney & ICANN all came back w/ the same bullshit responses.

Its no dispute, its a scam and they allow it!

 

Wussa,

Can you elaborate a bit more how you contact GD and what info is required?
I've holding back selling GD domains because of all these scamming,
and your experience will be very helpful for all of us.

 

my friend on my forum posted this....no real new info, just funny to hear it from some1 that worked at GD for a bit:


Yeah, 'money in account' means jack shit with PayPal... someone can reverse payment up to the point of you actually removing that money from the account. I refuse to use them for anything due to this.

I worked at GoDaddy for 6 months on a contract awhile ago. They don't care. It's as simple as that. Most registrars don't. Once you have authorized a transfer, there is very little anyone can do, even if it was done fraudulently.

 

MY GODADDY EXPERIENCE

Thats really simple.
The first thing when I realised I lost my domain for free (scammed) is that I replied to the email from the email - "telling me that I have intiatiated transfer" @ confirmation letter.

The support department told me to email this to about my request and the undo department replied to my email
The email was about like this:
" We have locked the domains XXX.com,XXX.com,xxxx.com for 10 days to allow transfering back the domains. Please fill in the form attached and send it back in 10days or else we will consider this case closed."

and they gave me documents to fill in. I fill it up and took pictures of it and then send it back.
The first pictures was a bit cloudy so they asked me to take the pics again so I did. The second time I emailed the completed form back - the following day I got an email - please open a new account a Godaddy to allow us to transfer the domain xxx.com, xxx.com, xxx.com back to you. Please send us the Customer ID code..
I got back the domains and manage to sell it back here at DP without any problem.

Cheers.

It was simple and easy.Not to mention they allowed me to take pictures as I don't have any scanner

p/s- thats why I mentioned how could DP members got scammed and lost domains up to thousands of bucks via godaddy registrar.

 

That's bad news. Paypal sucks, never served me any good always helped the scammers.

 

thats pretty impressive, i have yet to hear any of us have such an experience w/ them.....so far all of us get the same BS "we dont get involved in 3rd party disputes" letter

 

Thanks for posting my article on your forum Wagz. We really need to get together and crush PayPal and GoDaddy. Kill 2 birds with one stone. Fuck, maybe they are the ones scamming...doesnt that make an interesting theory

 

This is BAD news!
I got burned by GoDaddy a long long time ago although it was a completely different issue. After half a dozen emails requesting for help, it was obvious I was getting nowhere. I lost several important domains because of that.

First thing I did was to transfer all my domains away from them to another registrar.

If everyone here does this, it would be a quick way to 'hurt' them. And who knows, may even force them to make some changes to protect their own clients from the scammers.

 

They dont care bout a hundred or thousdand domains being transfered, they already got your reg fee.

In response to the Undo of Change form that wussadotcom was talking about, it seems that you got really lucky. Because this is the response I got from them after asking about it.

"Thank you for contacting us. In your previous emails you explained that you sold your domains and since then pay pal has reversed the payment. Since you entered into an agreement with another party to sell the domains, GoDaddy can not get involved with 3rd party purchase agreements.



Any further disputes over the ownership or wording of the domain name will need to be sent either to the registrant, through an arbitration forum such as World Intellectual Property Organization (http://www.wipo.int), or the court system. Please be assured that if we receive notice of a pending legal dispute we will lock the name so that it cannot be transferred or otherwise modified. Likewise when we receive a Decision we will update the name accordingly.



Thank you.



Undo Department"

Same generic bullshit...they get so many of these emails a day that they even have an automated response that filters out key words, I doubt anyone even reads them.

 

that seems to be their standard BS stance

 

GoDaddy is allowing the scammers to get away with this.. How could they not freeze a domain name once being told it is stolen. Do they even try to contact the current, scammer owner? Do they not see all the domain names being funneled into this guys account/IP address? ARE THEY BLIND?

 

Actually, these registrars thrive on your renewals. And if you're using them you'll probably register more domains with them as well. But if you're using a different registrar, then you don't give them another cent. If enough of us start doing that, then godaddy will sit up and take notice.

YOU won't be a victim anymore if you're not using them!

The point is: if godaddy is "helping" the scammers with their inaction, why continue to use them and then cry. The scammers have found a loophole in godaddy and unfortunately godaddy does not think it is serious enough to plug it. Another scammer will find another loophole and a whole new round of scams will make its round.

 

Still don't believe this one, unless I will experience it in the future. But to this date, both PP and GD works well with their respective segment industry. I hope every huge company like them can protect both all their users and customers for a smooth process of transactions and become a well trusted companies....

 

Please list all your stolen domains here: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=6560752#post6560752

Only list your names and keep it clean and simple, this is to have one spot with all the stolen domains listed and nothing else for easy reference.