12,000 Auctions, 8,900 Bidders and 350,000 Bids: We Conclude Halvarez Was The Only Shill Bidder At Snapnames
When Snapnames put each user’s entire auction history into there respective Snapnames.com account last Saturday night, we went to work.
We scraped all the data from every auction.
We got every bid, every bidder, and organized them into a searchable database.
We then computed how many auctions each bidder was involved in, how many of those auctions the bidder had placed a bid other than the initial bid (of generally $60), and computed what percentage of the auctions they won compared to the auctions they had bid on.
Here are some numbers:
Amount of auctions we were involved in 11,973
Number of unique bidder Id’s: 8,890
Amount of auctions we won: 4,771
Amount generated from all the auctions we were involved in : $13,200,000
Now Snapnames.com said there were 1,000,000 auctions during this period which means we were involved in, and have detailed records from about 1.2% of all auctions.
Snapnames.com also said that the bidder Halvarez was in 5% or about 50,000 auctions.
Going through our history we found Halvarez was in 2,023 of the auctions we were involved in or around 17%, obviously a much higher percentage than the overall average.
Of course we like to think we were in many of the better, higher priced domain auctions which may account for the higher participation rate of Halvarez in our auctions.
Out of the 2,023 auctions Halvarez placed an initial $60 bid getting him into the auction, he placed another bid in 590 of those or 29.2%.
Out of the 590 auctions he placed a bid in other than the initial bid, he won just 34 or 5.8%.
Compared to the 2,023 auctions he was in, Halvarez only won 1.7%
For comparison purposes, we placed bids (other than an initial bid) in 7,300 of the 12,000 auctions we participated in or 61.7%. We won 38.9% of all auctions we had an initial $60 bid in and 64.5% of all the auctions we placed additional bids in.
We then computed this same information for each of the 8,890 bidders compiling a list with the number of auctions each bidder was in, number of bids each bidder placed, number of auctions each bidder placed above the initial bid, and the win rate for each bidder.
We looked at those bidders that had a high bid rate but low win percentage.
We then went in and actually looked at each of those questionable bidder’s accounts to see each of the bids placed and their bidding patterns.
Bottom line we could not find any of these high volume, high bid, and low win accounts that matched Halvarez’s bidding pattern.
If you look at Halvarez’s bidding pattern on other domains, except those he apparently wanted to win, it was mostly “one timers”.
Typically in an auction bidders will increase their bids as other bidders increase their bids.
So a typical bidder will bid $1K, then $1,500, then $2,500, then $3,500, then $5,000, and so on, until they win the auction or until the high bid is more than they are willing to spend and drop out.
What you see with Halvarez is an initial $60 bid and then a “one time” bid which pushes against the high bidders proxy.
Having access to the system, Brady knew what the proxy bids were and he used this information to push the sales price close to the max proxy bid.
He was careful not to push you right to your limit.
If you saw time after time the auction ended at your maximum proxy bid you, would know something was up.
So Brady seemed to push the bidding up to somewhere between 80%-90% of your high proxy bid, seemingly dependent on the price range of the bid.
For example, lets say you had a proxy bid of $15,000, like I did on GreatJob.com, he put a one time bid close to the ending time of the auction of $12,500 pushing my proxy to the winning bid of $12,750. The previous high bid from a real bidder was $8,888.
So other than the initial bid of $60, he placed no others except for a $12,500 bid pushing on the proxy.
Another example of an auction where I was not the high bidder is AcAdapters.com. Halvarez placed a one time bid of $12,500 when the last real bidder was at $7,900, pushing the winning bidder bid to $12,750 based on a proxy.
Yet don’t get the idea that all Halvarez did is push up 4 and 5 figure bids.
A lot of his bidding activity was at much lower levels.
I won auctions with a bid as low as $80 where it was just Brady and I in the auction, and my proxy was $111 – like in the case of thejammer.com.
In another auction, makeabetterlife.com, that only Halvarez and I were in, my bid was pushed to $100 while my proxy was $111.
Themotive.com was another auction just between the two of us. In this case he pushed my proxy to $105.
I know it’s small change.
Nickel and dime stuff.
Amazing that a guy who must have cashed out for substantial dollars when Snap sold to Oversee would screw with $100 auctions.
But he did.
Time and time again.
Stupid.
In all there were 211 auctions of mine that I won in which Halvarez was the second highest bidder, and of the 12K auctions, he was the second highest bidder in 339 of them.
In terms of comparing all bidders, he was the 5th most frequent second bidder, winding up in 2nd place a whopping 58% of the time, while only winning 5.7%.
No other bidder came close.
Yes there were other bidders that had a high percentage of second place bids, but none had the volume as Halvarez.
The other substantial second place high bidders were all substantial winning bidders, those domainers you all know and widely regarded as having the best portfolios.
The fact that bids were placed to push up my proxy, not only on the four and five figure domains but on domain auctions as low as $80, tells me one thing for sure: Brady used a script to automatically place these bids, pushing up people’s proxies.
The first auction I have record of him pushing my proxy bid up was on 3/27/05 and the last one took place just a couple of months ago on 9/1/09.
So 50,000 auctions over 53 months, lets call it 1590 days, comes to almost 32 auctions a day.
But wait, Oversee says that 75% of Brady’s bidding was done before they acquired Snapnames.com.
Oversee acquired Snapnames.com in May 2007, so if that figure is correct then 37,500 of the auctions took place in that 26 month period or about 48 auctions a day, every day, 365 days a year.
If we use that number and see that bidding took place on domain auctions with prices as low as $80 I would say there is not way Brady was sitting around bidding on these auctions, there had to be a script.
So now we return to the main issue.
Were there other bidder IDs that were used by Brady for shill bidding?
So we ask are there any other bidders who had the same bidding pattern of Halvarez?
We couldn’t find any.
We not only looked at the stats described above, but we looked at the percentage of time that each bidder wound up being the second highest bidder vs. their percentage of winning bids.
What did we find?
No one came close to Halvarez.
In 58% of the auctions Halvarez bid in he came in second, while only winning 5.7%.
Moreover no other bidder had the sheer number of auctions they bid on like Halvarez 590 with such a low winning percentage.
Now for some disclaimers.
Of course once again we were in only in 1.2% of all auctions. That means we have no records on 98.8% of the auctions. We believe our sample should be representative of the whole, but of course it may not be.
Is it possible that Brady had other bidding IDs that he used, but did not use them in auctions we were involved in?
Its possible, but doesn’t seem all that probable.
Next disclaimer, we only looked at high volume accounts.
Those that had a significant amount of auctions, bids, and second place finishes.
Could Brady have set up say 500 different bidder ID’s and shill bid on just one auction using that ID?
I guess he could, but we also recognize that if he did, we would have no way of figuring that out from the bidding history.
We need volume to determine patterns.
You cannot see a pattern on an account which only had 1 or 2 auctions in 5 years, nor can you make a determination based on one or two questionable bids.
Did we go through all 8,890 bidders to see every bid they placed?
No
We looked at every bidder with statistically troubling numbers that had volume of transactions
In those accounts we either were able to recognize the domainer associated with the bidder ID, or when we looked at the detailed bidding in that account, saw normal bidding patterns.
Nothing that looked like the proxy pushing bidding of Halvarez.
Our conclusions:
1. We do not think there was another meaningful bidder ID used for shill bidding.
2. All of the auctions in which Halvarez pushed our proxy bid up with his shill bidding, Oversee properly noted and gave us credit for in the settlement agreement they sent.
3. Halvarez seemed to be especially interested in adult domains. This may also account for why he was in a higher percentage of my domain auctions than overall.
4. I hate Frank, Kevin, Buydomains, and Bonkers for outbidding me on a ton of great domains as well as costing me a fortune on the ones I won.
Now for the outstanding issues.
Although we cannot pinpoint any meaningful shill bidder other than Halvarez, there are still issues.
What to do when Halvarez was the 3rd or 4th bidder?
Before I ran the numbers I was concerned that I would find Brady started the high bidding off in most cases, triggering other high bids, winding up being the 3rd or 4th highest bidder, which Oversee is not offering compensation for.
Frankly this happened, but not as much as you would think.
However where it did happen its troubling.
Take the auction memoria.com for example, where Halvarez put in a one time bid of $10K , when at that point the high bid was just $6,100. After the $10K bid of Halvarez was placed, two other domainers bid on the domain back and forth until it sold for $10,805.
These are the most troubling for me as we all know if one guy doesn’t bid $10K maybe no one ever does.
Maybe the high bid winds up at $8K in this example, but then we will never know.
In another auction for the domain Clash.com, Halvarez placed bids for $22,500, $25,000 and $27,500. The auction found two other bidders before closing at $30,500.
Since there were two bidders higher than Halvarez, no compensation is offered by Oversee.
What would have happened if bids by Halvarez had not been placed?
Impossible to say.
We have seen many instances where a domain gets re-auctioned on NameJet.com for non-payment weeks after the first auction. The typical result is the domain almost never sells for close to the second bid of the first auction, but usually in the range of 50% of the first auction.
Why?
It has to do with the dynamics of the auction, psychology of bidders, certainly a topic worthy of a book more than a simple blog post.
I know one things for sure, you can’t stuff the genie back into the bottle.
You can’t predict what the outcome of an auction would have been if a bid had not been placed, no more than you could predict what would happen if the auction was rebid at a different time or place.
I do think some compensation is in order for these situations, but it’s well above my pay grade to figure out the right solution.
Does this mean we think you should accept the settlement?
That is a question which requires analysis of many other issues which go beyond this post.
One thing for sure, before you decide to settle read and then re-read the release that Oversee wants you to sign.
Its incredibly broad and overreaching.
It seeks to free them from any and all liability whether it is related to this exact situation or not.
If you have a meaningful settlement you should get the advice of counsel.
Are there other issues beyond these?
Yes.
There are some bidding anomalies we have not been able to resolve.
There are some domains that appear as they were won by one bidder but went to another domainer.
These issues are for another day, another post.
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GREAT ANALYSIS! I am truly impressed with the amount of work and time that you must have put in to this blog. Kudos to you, Mike.
Ditto
Great work Michael. The statistics themselves are fascinating.
The comment … “So Brady seemed to push the bidding up to somewhere between 80%-90% of your high proxy bid”
actually matches what many people had intuitively suspected. Someone (or something, bot, whatever) pushing up the bid close to the proxy.
Wow, some serious forensics going on here! I think the DoJ needs you to have a run at AIG and their cronies next! Beautiful piece of work.
Nice work Mike. We’re still combing through stuff too.
Thanks for spending the time and effort (and money) to do this. If you don’t mind sharing , how’d you pull down all the bidders into this too . Scraper of some sort ?
Great insight, you’d think someone that created a system as sophisticated as he did, he would have used multiple usernames – but from what you put together is appears he did not.
1. GREAT post Mike. Thanks.
2. Brady is an ASSHOLE!
3. Never leave proxy bids and wait till the end to bid.
4. Brady actively, knowingly and aggressively gamed the Snapnames system and it appears he did so to get the revenue (and thus the valuation up) for Snapnames. Maybe he got bonuses for revenue targets too? ALL that money needs to be returned to Oversee AND all his domains need to be returned to Oversee or given to the underbidders.
5. Snapnames General Manager Craig Snyder was CEO of iReit for three years while his company bought domains DIRECTLY from Brady. Mr. Snyder needs to tell Snapnames employees and the domain industry what he knew and when he knew it. If he knew nothing then can he explain how iReit paid Brady repeatedly for domains without knowing that they were paying Nelson Brady? Was iReit duped too or did iReit know they were buying domains from Nelson Brady? If so, did Mr. Snyder not know that Nelson Brady was VP of Operations for Snapnames?
Mr. Snyder, would you like to address these questions?
He cannot fix this HUGE problem with silence.
5.
Very thourough and interesting analysis Mike!
“So we ask are there any other bidders who had the same bidding pattern of Halvarez?”
“We couldn’t find any.”
If there were other shill bidding names on Brady’s script whould you really expect them to be all set to the same parameters as the Halvarez one ?
I would’nt of thought so unless Brady is a total idiot.
*****************************
“There are some domains that appear as they were won by one bidder but went to another domainer.”
Are they the domains using the second whois address in New York or the ones that use Moniker privacy ?
WOW. Great work. Thanks for the analysis. I know that I can get lost in the numbers and tangents on this kind of thing and have to work at maintaining focus.
Thanks for the work Mike.
I personally don’t think Nelson used a script…I think he did everything manual.
I was in contact with him many a time throughout the night and the guy seemed to never sleep (like me) and I know back in the day I could manually process and research thousands of domains so it would be no problem for a guy like him who was always awake.
Also, I believe the fact that he only, or at least mainly, used one bidder name shows that other employees knew about this. NO way can they not know about this Halvarez guy after all those auctions and all the years. Impossible.
Their release could have been one sentence: “I hear-by release Oversee and Snap for any liability arising from an auction involving Halvarez.”
The way they word that release is the single biggest reason for this unraveling and people looking for more of the story, who is involved and if it spills over to other companies. They want folks to sign away their rights since Day one of the Universe before you even know the extent of what might have really happened.. I think anyone that signs that does not have any idea of the far reaching impact it could have. It is absolutely INSANE to sign your rights away BEFORE all the facts are in and even then the release is so bad I think paying every domainer $10,000 whether affected or not would be a coup for them. Sign your LIFE away with this baby. INSANE!
In my book the facts remain the same;
” snapanames / Oversee ” are repsonsible, over 2 years of negligence (people cried wolf) .
Auction ending prices were inflated, domainers lost domains , opportunitties = buisness
The fact that some domain are in Oversee’s name still very fishy fishy.
They had the istorical dat for a few days (either fishy or dumb move by their lawyers it adds to the bad faith, the fact that they offered less than truly owed to some domainers likewise= bad faith)
Snap Oversee profited inmmensly from the fraud/scamm.
I wait for the authorities’ report and whatever will transpire during discovery in any lawsuit…
Nevertheless , thanks MHB.
You’ve got bollocks.
I say take the settlement.
Time-value-of-money is valueable.
Class action settlement could take years and you may only get a small fraction more.
Rick
I have to agree with you 100% on the release issue.
They are basically agreeing to compensate domainers for just one circumstance; for bids placed by one bidder ID Halvarez and limit compensation to just when he was the 2nd high bidder.
Therefore the most Oversee should be asking for is a release for any claims or damages related to Halvarez’s bidding, end of story,
Even with that each domainer would have to determine if they thought they had any additional damages, that would could be awarded by a court, the kind that Robbie talks about in his comments.
Again that is a huge issue in and of itself and not meant to be covered by this post.
But asking for a blanket release against anything and everything, every action or inaction, is way too broad in my opinion.
Moreover the settlement is opened for a year, so there is no rush to give your rights away as we are only into this mess for a week (I know it seems like months).
Posted by MHB
“Even with that each domainer would have to determine if they thought they had any additional damages, that would could be awarded by a court, the kind that Robbie talks about in his comments.”
That is a key issue, there is collateral dmage , whatver path each domainer takes it’s a personal decision, my guess is that the little sardines will be canned into a class auction “they have nothing to lose” the rest will need to fight and decide in thier own.
A friend lawyer told me this is a” Slam Dunk ‘ in court for any attorney, the evidence and negligence are overwhelming.
The largest damage overall IMO is what was done to the Industry (not over yet) , that in dollar and cents it’s in itself “priceless”.
Fab analysis, numbers rarely lie. While I’m not directly involved in any of these auctions, small fry compared to the numbers above, I do have a solution here. Snapnames and Oversee won’t like it, but its the only ‘fair’ one I see… refund ‘halvarez’s top bid for each auction he was involved in, irrespective if he was #3 or #20.
I see the problem this might cause snapnames, specially since its 50k auctions, but its the only way, imho, that they can claim that they didn’t profit from it, nor would like to be seen profiting from it.
Oh and signing away any rights against a repeat of this incidence in the future, as the agreement seems to convey, will give snapnames access to a list of the most stupid domainers on this planet. Unless those signing only do it to take the money and run and leave snapnames forever, which might not be feasible in the long run.
Robbie
The issue is what other damages are assessable by a court.
Oversee is already offered to give the overcharged money back, so you would have to try to get damages on other issues
Compensation for loss of opportunity?
Compensation for loss when Halvarez was the 3rd or 4th bidder?
Compensation for not bidding on an auction because Halvarez already placed a higher bid than you would be willing to pay?
Domains Halvarez won and paid for.
Domains Halvarez won and refunded himself for?
I don’t have the answer.
Don’t forget that attorneys are going to take 40% or more, plus your going to be fighting for years, so you have the time loss of money, and will need a judgment of double the offer just to break even.
So there are lots of considerations and issues.
As I said another post and time for those
“Halvarez” was in hundreds of my auctions, and when it was just the two of us, he never bid against me. A friend of mine had several auctions in which it was just the two of them and “halvarez” bid against him in a few of those auctions. I think your analysis has helped me figure out why. In my auctions, I never placed a proxy bid. If I wanted a name, I waited until the end and then bid – usually one minimum bid at a time. My friend had a proxy bid in place at the beginning of the auctions in which “halvarez” bid against him.
“Having access to the system, Brady knew what the proxy bids were and he used this information to push the sales price close to the max proxy bid.”
What a situation.
I have subscribed to this blog for a long time. It has always been good. It is now beyond great. This analysis is way in advance of anything anyone else is reporting, and highly appreciated.
It seems to me that if people go the class action route then closing Snapnames may be the best protection.
I feel that the Arrington commentary is not entirely justified. It should be said that this is a business that can fall foul of a rogue, just as we have seen in securities and i-banking many times.
But what remains to be seen is if this is broader, if Halvarez was not alone, if other companies are up to the same tricks. If the whole industry is rotten then I guess a former CEO of Pool would know?
Very informative.
However, I wonder how Brady ended up winning some auctions if the Halvarez account was a script programmed to bid, say, 90% of highest proxy.
+ I can’t wait for your next post re: other anomalies.
I don’t know what the problem is. Halvarez always bid against me but I always won. I always win at everything. haha
I think Halvarez has no future in domains, that is for sure.
Damn MHB, awesome analysis!
Had me glued to the screen for the whole post.
John
This is the most detailed analysis of the situation I have seen thus far. Thank you for sharing your findings, Mike.
I have analyzed another account:
Amount of auctions we were involved in 550+-
Number of unique bidder Id’s: 1,580
Amount of auctions we won: 130+-
Amount generated from all the auctions we were involved in: $840,000 +-
First Auction: Apr-2005
Last Auction: Oct-2009
Highest grossing auction (for reference): phonefree.com on: 09-Sep-2005 12:35 PDT for $61,361
Notes:
1. There are more unique bidders per auction (2.9) than in your account (0.75) and the average sale price for a domain (~ $1,500) is higher than in your account (~ $1,100).
2. Bidder ID “halvarez” is insignificant in this sample. He only participated in 9 auctions. He didn’t place any bid and won none. Bidder ID “someone”, the second most active after the account holder, was in 240 of the auctions or around 43%. He won 2. Bidder ID “100001″, the second most active after the account holder, was in 223 of the auctions or around 40%. He won 3. There are several other bidders with similar patterns.
3. A “shill bidder” will care more about participating than about winning. A bidder with such goals should usually have:
a. A high participation ratio.
b. Very low ratio of wins compared to number of auctions entered.
c. Some bidding activity.
All of the above are NOT present for “halvarez” because in this account he did not participate enough. Yet he was a “shill bidder”.
5. The absence of a pattern is not strong enough evidence to dismiss bidder IDs. Showing a pattern is strong enough indication for further examination, which may or may not result in identifying the bidder ID as a “shill bidder”.
6. Any “experienced, independent accounting forensics firm” could find such other Bidder IDs if it has access to the entire auction base.
7. There is one additional data point that can only be examined from outside the bidder account – it is – the auctions in which a bidder was the lone bidder. How many of those did “halvarez” have? at what ratios? How many other bidder IDs display the same pattern?
8. Let’s not jump to conclusions with partial data.
Someone
No one other than Snapnames has all the data.
We have the biggest sample that anyone has come forward with but as said right off the bat we are missing data on 98.8% of the auctions.
We did look at the bidder id’s “someone” and “100001″ in our study as well, as they had a high bid rate and low buy rate but looking at each bid placed in each account we could not find the same bidding pattern with Halvarez or many one time bids like he had.
We also looked at about 25 other accounts that had high bids, low wins and a lot of 2nd places.
Nothing conclusive on those.
“”"Any “experienced, independent accounting forensics firm” could find such other Bidder IDs if it has access to the entire auction base”"
I’m sure they could and we would welcome this but we will have to rely what individual domains see at this point, until or unless the whole database is made available in the future
MHB said: “we could not find the same bidding pattern with Halvarez”.
You are looking for for the wrong thing. Mohamed Atta was airborne. Army Major Nidal Hasan was ground bound. They don’t have the same “levitation pattern” but they have the same “motivational pattern”. Nough said.
It seems to me, that the biggest question of all has been left unanswered. WH Y HAVE NO CHARGES BEEN BROUGHT AGAINST BRADY? Why have we not heard from Jeff Kupietsky? Why have we not heard from Craig Snyder? Who else is involved in this obvious cover-up? Millions of dollars have been lost by domainers, yet no charges have been brought. Oversee spent millions of dollars acquiring Snapnames at a hugely inflated price, yet no charges have been brought. The domain industry is on the brink of possible collapse due to lack of trust, yet no charges have been brought. Who is protecting whom?
A child can see that laws have been broken and fraud has been committed, yet we hear absolutely nothing from the so-called defrauded company, Oversee. What are they hiding? Are they afraid that their own positions and livelihoods are in jeopardy?
It seems mighty strange to me that not one word has been heard from the company other than to send out the most ridiculous Settlement Offers with unbelievable releases that you have to be absolutely financially desperate to sign. The language contained in those releases is legally binding, yet unheard of in legal circles in its breadth of forgiveness and letting everybody off the hook. Again, what are they afraid of? I intend to address a separate post to the language of the releases.
Howard
You make a great point.
I was planning on addressing ridiculous terms of the release tomorrow as well, but take this as you invite to make a guest post.
@Someone
Since you know what domains ‘someone’ and ’100001′ won and since you seem to be suspicious of them, you must’ve checked the whois info on their won domains?
1. Mike, amazing post!
2. I think this is about damages – I cant believe Oversee had the nerves to call it “rebate”
3. If you win a class action you are going to get 40-50 percent of the amount won – not of the amount you could get from this so called “rebate”
4.Howard – I couldn’t agree more. I hope you will accept Mike’s invitation to make a guest blog.
5. What do you call a person who signs this?
I, the undersigned, individually and jointly, for myself and my successors, assigns, trustees, partners, joint venturers, directors, officers, affiliates, associates, managers, licensees, and for any other claiming through or under each or all of them and for any person or entity with or for whom I may have purchased the above mentioned names (collectively, the “Releasors”) hereby release and forever discharge, acquit, covenant not to sue and acknowledge complete satisfaction from, SnapNames, and its past and present parent companies (including Oversee.net), affiliates, successors, assigns, agents, attorneys, servants, representatives, employees, independent contractors, trustees, administrators, predecessors-in-interest, insurers, partners, joint venturers, stockholders, members, directors, officers, parent companies, associated companies, holding companies, subsidiaries, divisions, affiliates, associates, managers, licensees, accountants and consultants of any of the foregoing (collectively, the “Releasees”) for any and all claims, actions, arbitrations, charges, complaints, grievances, hearings, causes of action, actions, suits, damages, costs, expenses, judgments, liabilities, demands, inquiries, investigations, proceedings or suits of every kind and nature whatsoever, whether known or unknown, suspected or unsuspected, previously existing, or now existing, or hereafter arising, in law or in equity (collectively, the “Claims”), which the Releasors or any of them had, may have had, or now has, from the beginning of time to today’s date against the Releasees, collectively, or any of the Releasees, individually, for or by reason of any matter whatsoever relating to the auctions for and acquisition of the Domains, including without limitation, any Claims relating in whole or in part to the bidding activity of the SnapNames user associated with the user name “halvarez” (the “Released Matters”) for damages, restitution, disgorgement, unjust enrichment, civil penalties, statutory penalties, injunctive and/or declaratory relief, whether class, individual, representative, or otherwise in nature, including costs, expenses, penalties, and attorneys fees.
Tony
The name I saw come up on “someone” was Richard Meyer.
According to my records that bidder placed bids on 140 auctions, and only won 4.
He finished in second place only 17 times and the largest second place bid was less than $500.
100001 bid only in 61 auctions, won 19 of them and finished 2nd 11 times but once again none of his 2nd palace bids were more than $250.
Neither one is problematic.
WOW, amazing research! Good job!
Thanks, Mike. The lone shill bidder theory is the most likely to me also.
I want my rebate money ASAP. I believe Oversee is as much a victim if not more than any domainer that’s been involved. A bird in the hand is worth 2 in the bush 5 yrs from now. I want to reinvest that rebate money whilst people are still stung by this. It’s strictly business.
“The name I saw come up on “someone” was Richard Meyer.”
As most people know, I use to be very active on Snapnames.
However, I was frugal in the amount I was willing to bid.
When the big boys started bidding, I got out of the way.
I did not hide behind a fictitious screen name.
My bid name was clearly connected to me.
Plus, I probably won a thousand domains on Snapnames.
Tony said:
1. ” The lone shill bidder theory is the most likely to me also.”
2. “I want my rebate money ASAP.”
1 and 2 are closely related. Just like “perception” and “deception”.
And, I am not “someone”.
He is a well-known domainer (we both know) that went for traffic domains.
Tony said: “Since you know what domains ’someone’ and ‘100001′ won and since you seem to be suspicious of them, you must’ve checked the whois info on their won domains?”
That is irrelevant.
The number of bidder IDs is probably in the hundreds of thousands. There should be thousands with a suspect pattern to examine.
An “experienced, independent accounting forensics firm” would have gone with a top down methodology. They would have examined Whois among other things.
Pointing on a single bidder ID and trying to close the books with a fast rebate for his actions does not show any intention to do any real forensic work.
I think only refunding when Brady was the second winning bidder is a joke, and people should not accept that settlement.
Take this situation for example:
Bidder A: $5,000 w/ $12k proxy.
Brady: $11k (pushes Bidder A to $11,250)
Bidder B: $11,500 (pushes Bidder A to $11,750)
Bidder A wins at $11,750
In that case, Brady was clearly responsible for $6k of that $11,750 and that’s what your refund should be, NOT $0. Sure, we don’t know if Bidder B would have driven it up that high even if Brady wasn’t involved, but given the auction mentality, seeing two other bidders at that price point gives Bidder B confidence that it is a good investment.
Oversee needs to at least offer some compensation for this scenario. Sometimes nobody else would have gotten involved, and sometimes they would have driven it that high anyway. Maybe refunding 50% of the $6k in the example above would be a reasonable solution for both parties. I definitely don’t think ignoring that scenario is fair.
I had several phone conversations over a few years with Brady specifically about my concerns and skepticism about Halvarez. He assured me that Halveraez was a real and legit snap customer. I sent him a few E-mails about Halvarez too. In one E-mail I simply pointed out that Halverez was back in bidding action after being MIA for 2 or 3 months. Here is Nelson’s response: —– “I had not seen. Just today or earlier? Did he step on your toes yet?” — This deception by somebody that I trusted and talked to and E-mailed frequently irks me at least just as much as monetary issues.
It actually makes a lot of sense now…especially because on many of my backorders that were entered 1, 2 and 3 minutes before the daily cutoff time on the drop date…. Halvarez was ALWAYS the second bidder …behind me time-wise. Only an insider or a uber-hacker could do that type of “timing” !!!
>>WHY HAVE NO CHARGES BEEN BROUGHT AGAINST BRADY?<<
Well, for starters, have you notified the authorities yet?
Oversea is not going to be calling the FBI in…it's up to those affected.
How many here have notified the proper authorities?
>>WHY HAVE NO CHARGES BEEN BROUGHT AGAINST BRADY?<<
Have you notified the authorities yet yourself?
Oversea is not going to be bringing the FBI in so those affected need to make the calls.
Has anyone done so yet?
After reading all of that info and sinking in, I have a bit of a headache… But thanks for this detailed post, Mike. Good job for staying on top of things! We appreciate it.
Michael
I agree that something should be done for the bidder effected by Brady’s bidding even if he was not the second bidder.
You example is basically the auction for clash.com which I sited in the post.
Although I was not actively bidding in this auction (therefore I have no monetary interest in that domain auction) its clear Halvarez bumped up the bidding from $22,500 to $27,500.
Would the auction still have gone to $30K without his bid?
Who knows
Clearly he contributed to increased bidding levels on this domain and many others and some compensation should be offered
NetJohn,
Seems more and more like Nelson Brady was one SICK twisted bastard.
I hope the doors are locked at Oversee.
Seriously. Seems like Brady has everything to loose and nothing to gain at this point.
Michael, Thanks for the outstanding analysis and for making it so public. In the big picture, the entire domain industry is truly the biggest victim of this fraud. The 2nd biggest victim, unless there is evidence to implicate them directly, is Oversee.net. I believe that they are trying to handle this in the best and fairest way possible. I have been in plenty of other online auctions where I would never be able to track whether or not similar bid fraud had occurred. I will wait to hear comments about the agreement, as signing it does give me pause. My damages are relatively light ($2600 plus interest), so taking the money makes the most sense for me.
“I hate Frank, Kevin, Buydomains, and Bonkers for outbidding me on a ton of great domains as well as costing me a fortune on the ones I won.”
Amen to that. I really don’t hate them, but they all cost me many times what halverez cost me. Most of the good domains I did get at Snap were won against at least one of those 4, mostly Frank. I really had to pay to outbid my friend Frank :>)
Most of the time, if I saw that any 2 of the big 4 were in an auction, I just gave up after an initial proxy bid. I called those auctions “Clash of the Titans”
I reviewed all of my auctions, and the forensic accountant got all of mine right. The amazing thing is that halverez stopped bidding against me after 2005. I became less active in Snap auctions, but the last date he screwed me was 12/17/05. I did much more business with Snapnames before they went to auctions. Ah, those truly were the good old days.
Posted by howard Neu :
“It seems to me, that the biggest question of all has been left unanswered. WH Y HAVE NO CHARGES BEEN BROUGHT AGAINST BRADY? Why have we not heard from Jeff Kupietsky? Why have we not heard from Craig Snyder? Who else is involved in this obvious cover-up?”
1)We don’t truly know if charges have been brought up against Nelson aka ” Hanky Pank Alvarez” or not..do we?
2) We haven’t heard from Jeff K/Craig S… because the law firm says so…or because they haven’t been cleared of any wrong doing..
IMO they picked a lemon as far as Law firms is concerned, they have mishandled this from day one
1) No History posted till the Domainer’s Cry became to loud , yet they *Rust* had it at hand
2) shorting domainers of what was honestly due to them at least in my case and a few others that I know of .
3)Nobody at the firm thouguht about the domainers’ claim on domains won by Hanky Panky Alvarez…what to do with them?
3)”Who else is involved in this obvious….?”
Patience surpasses knowledge
“I believe that they are trying to handle this in the best and fairest way possible.”
Howard, yes, Oversee is trying to handle this but not so much Snapnames.
Let’s treat Oversee different than Snapnames here.
Oversee is the victim. Snapnames is the problem.
Why won’t Craig Snyder tell us why iReit bought domains from Brady for the three years that he was CEO there?
Maybe Oversee needs to clean up Snapnames and Craig Snyder is needs to go?
Rob
i have great respect for your opinions. However – Let’s treat Oversee different than Snapnames here. – I just don’t buy. Who is offering the Settlement? OVERSEE. Who is requiring that everyone now or forever associated in any way with them be released by everyone accepting the Settlement? OVERSEE. Why are they being so generous and not going after the alleged culprit or culprits? Sorry, but I don’t see OVERSEE as a victim here. Their actions admit liability.
Bull Crap.
Oversee profited for over 2 years, they own this goose, they have responsabilties, they have a compliance department, they audited and saw no problems , yet they were told point blank by scores of domainers for 2 years or longer…
You don’t collect millions i nprofits and suddenly cry “I am the victim” pleeeeease! muah muha
aside with haven’t heard the rest of the story…have we?
The lawsuits are and will be against Fat wallet Oversee…
Their Greeed blinded them.
Time to face the music.
Howard H
“I hate Frank, Kevin, Buydomains, and Bonkers for outbidding me on a ton of great domains as well as costing me a fortune on the ones I won.” “Amen to that. I really don’t hate them”
I really don’t hate them either, just trying to add a little light to a dark subject.