A couple weeks ago I wrote a piece about the CQD.com ordeal, a post that has become one of the all time forum reads.
Since then the thread has really heated up with a lot more evidence coming out and a lot of detective work provided by some members such as TheLegendaryJp, Grilled, Silentptnr, etc…
The gist of the story is that James Booth paid $25,000 plus escrow for CQD.com, the domain was taken out of his account, he was scammed and the Escrow.com KYC did not prevent it. He got legal team involved, Web.com investigated for 3 months and gave him the name back. The real owner (22 years of ownership) came to Namepros saying she was scammed. Booth posted he proposed a solution.
Things have gotten a bit contentious as James Booth has been pissed about a RipOffReport that was filed by Rebecca has cast light on his integrity, and it’s a bit misleading because he did not steal anything as far as we know, but he is in possession of stolen property allegedly.
It seems a lot of parties are being quiet Escrow.com who Rebecca said someone from there told her a check was cashed by a man in L.A. Silentptnr asked a couple times who was this person? Web.com owner of Network Solutions who actually did a 3 month investigation of the transaction and gave the name back to Booth after they initially stripped him of the name.
TheLegendaryJp has posed the following to James:
James, no fault of your own, you bought a stolen domain, give it back and save the nice lady her time and lawyer fee’s. Tell me what you will have gained by forcing her to act, losing money yourself on legal fee’s, dragging this out and ruining your name all to end up losing any ways.
Any decent sleuth can see it was stolen, unless you have rock solid evidence you paid Rebecca, game over.
And that seems to be where most are at this point, why prolong it? But to be fair James can play his cards however he likes, he believes he bought the name properly and did proper due diligence.
Rebecca posted an update on what she has done so far with regard to taking action to get her domain back.
have you made any law enforcement progress? (like a case number being assigned by law enforcement, don’t post it anything though)?
yes i have a case number with my local police authorities and my report of the stolen domain.
yes, i confirmed receipt of my complaint to the FBI
yes i have emails from ICANN and Versign. ICANN has gone silent. Verisign not helpful.
yes i have reports and responses from FCC
yes i have been in close contact with my contact at network solutions/web.com – very attainable but very neutral at the same time. they are protecting themselves. i am about a 50 minute drive from their office and can be at their door within an hour.any responses from law enforcement authorities after reporting this?
truth be told, most of them don’t understand any of this, but all are helping me.Who exactly emailed you the first screenshot you posted of the escrow 19k transaction?
i am going through all my mac mail. my rjb yahoo mail and my spoiltrider gmail to find that original email to answer this question with zero quesiton. at this point there is a huge amount of paperwork i am going through for other agencies requests as well. i am working on this to confirm where it came from and exact day and time.
NOTE: mac mail is my only incoming and outgoing mail program. i do not log into yahoo or gmail or domain mail from the websites. they all run through mac mail. i had 14 emails in mac mail…until now …i have 15 now since i had to create my @comquestdesign.com email….only 1 of my emails is IMAP to my handhelds, it is/was not @cqd.com. only my real estate emails come through that domain and pointer domain to my handhelds. so any email i sent out was from my mac computer, mac mail) i can prove what a real email from rebecca@cqd.com would look like for years and years. i have pulled one from
Any idea why the second screenshot posted had a different email address on it?
sorry, what screen shot with what different email address?
You can read the whole story here
This story is an eye opener for a lot of domain investors with regards, to due diligence, escrow responsibility, account protection.
Did they spend 3 months actively working the investigation or did they sit on it for three months and after a 10 second glance, make a decision?
Some domainers are just that good they can dissect 3 months worth of information in hours.
Why are you pissing on guys helping someone out, you are probably a cheerleader who is holding this poor ladies property at ransom. He is in possession of stolen property, living in one exiled country from another months at a time, is he trying to outrun interpol or something.
Give the lady back her name James, you FKED up in buying it, you should have at least called the damn phone number tied to the name, listed all over the net.
I am NOT “pissing on guys helping someone out” I was questioning if NetSol actually spent those 3 months investigating.
right! my question is how is an investigation conducted without interviews?
i am now forced to use my pointer domain that was stealth, and procured over a year ago in the event I (me) ever negotiated a deal on the sale of my CQD.com domain.
There could be a security breach or an inside job inside the registrar and they don’t want to admit it.
Domains don’t just disappeared overnite. There is always a net trail.
He could be charged for buying stolen properties and worst still he knew about it.
What’s worse is he is asking the legit owner for $25K to give their domain back.
If you buy stolen goods, that is your problem, your risk is your reward.
The Booth boys where all tangled up in the moviezone.com NAMEJET bidding fiasco a few months back also.
Guy can’t keep his nose clean, better he just stay MO paperboy.
thank you!
Just realized I mis spelled sleuth while reading my quote, please make the correction, I feel silly.
Thanks Raymond 🙂
I was going to make a joke on Namepros saying I don’t think Sloth’s work that hard but figured wrong tone for that thread.
Edited your post to sleuth.
Many thanks Ray 😉
To me the craziest part of the story is Network Solutions. If you are their customer and you say “Hey I was hacked don’t transfer my name” Then they shouldn’t transfer the name. That simple.
@Nick
This is going back a bit before things became very ” red tape” but I had helped plenty of people prove to their rar the name was stolen and they returned it, thankfully so. Thief’s rarely ever complain 😉 Asking the rar to investigate properly such as IP log investigation and so on. The old saying ” if you don’t ask you don’t receive” is very true, their efforts on customers behalf’s are mediocre at best.
Fast forward to the last 3-5 years, I have ran into and obliged rar’s asking for the victim to sign papers stating the rar takes no legal resp. should the other party sue after the name is taken and placed back into their account. Which of course is no issue for a victim to sign since again, thieves do not complain. Keep in mind even getting to that point of discussion is a real fight. The most recent case where I had this done was with Web.com, legal required one in a 4L case I helped.
It seems however there is no rhyme or reason why a rar will cooperate and oddly enough I have had plenty of very obvious cases get reversed and some where they do not act and I am left frustrated. Many variables dictate how willing the rar is to take up the cross. Sadly if you are a foreigner, English is not your first language or the rar is foreign to North America, good luck, odds drop.
This case cqd.com is unique in that James is not considered a thief and my guess would be they just avoided the most likely or present threat of legal action and gave Booth the name back. Rebecca present no present threat so… As @DonnaMahony alluded to I would also suspect Netsol was given screen shots, emails etc of documents they could never verify as accurate (no blame it’s understandable) Booth may have threatened legal action (unconfirmed just guessing) and they glanced and said sure here you go.
In all my years and helping countless people and dealing with tons of RAR’s, Netsol is by far the WORST to expect help from followed close by a foreign rar.
It’s not like the victim even asked NetSol to get her domain back though. She said the domain was still in her account , so she only asked to keep it in her account and stop the transfer. There is zero way NetSol could lose a lawsuit from Booth for keeping a domain in an owners account as requested. NetSol’s actions are just crazy to me.
I accidently replied to @Ralph below, I was meaning to reply to @Nick….
Ok a few things…
1. If I were her the minute this happened I would have had my lawyer send Netsol a request to lock it down pending legal action, securing its ownership in my account. From there we could battle ownership in the courts if James were to insist he paid me the rightful owner for it. She of course never would have thought of this.
2. Sometimes the cost/time involved play huge factors and yes Netsol simply caved to the first person who appeared to have legal representation (assuming he did, think I read that somewhere). Saying Netsol could never lose this or that goes down a road I wish to avoid for times sake and the variables a discussion like this could have and the ease of which gone over a face to face would solve but never say never.
I think it safe to say never since all lawsuits would be against her, and not NetSol. NetSol is in no way obligated to ever transfer a domain unless requested by owner or government. If someone paid money and doesn’t get a domain, that is what courts are for.
Again not a discussion for replies section but I will attempt one more time. The domain name was moved from her account to his, correct therefore your assumption of the lawsuits outcome is bunk, Netsol did technically move it back to the last owners account, BOOTH’s. The mess would have been moving it back to hers. You actually have it backwards my friend. Netsol is not acting as a judge in the case of a theft rather moving it back to where it was last, Booth’s account. I am not faulting them for this rather stating it was a shame she didn’t act in time. So it is safe to say you are 100% looking at it backwards.
@Josh you seem to think the transfer could not have been stopped before it reached Booth’s account the first time. Maybe you are right, but that is not the way I read it on her ripoffreport. Sounded like she said she reported it before the transfer ever took place. This story needs a timeline.
Supposedly attorney Zak was involved in this process where the domain came back to JB account, from what I have ready in the namepros thread.
Ok a few things…
1. If I were her the minute this happened I would have had my lawyer send Netsol a request to lock it down pending legal action, securing its ownership in my account. From there we could battle ownership in the courts if James were to insist he paid me the rightful owner for it. She of course never would have thought of this.
2. Sometimes the cost/time involved play huge factors and yes Netsol simply caved to the first person who appeared to have legal representation (assuming he did, think I read that somewhere). Saying Netsol could never lose this or that goes down a road I wish to avoid for times sake and the variables a discussion like this could have and the ease of which gone over a face to face would solve but never say never.
Yes you are correct Josh, he did have representation according to what he posted.
Ultimately, giving the domain back won’t be James Booth’s decision. Registrars are obliged to figure out this mess – or, failing that, to cooperate with a UDRP outcome, law enforcement, or some other authority. And if any of these entities concludes that the domain was stolen, then it will be taken out of James Booth’s account by the registrar and handed back to the original owner – with or without James Booth’s consent.
If he purchased a stolen domain, that’s unfortunate. He might try to recover the money from the person who sold him stolen merchandise. Unlikely to succeed, but he could theoretically try. What he can’t do is prevail in keeping a stolen domain. Even if the original owner doesn’t take it back from Booth, what happens if Booth tries to sell it to someone else himself? The original owner might go after that subsequent buyer instead. And then James Booth would be liable when that buyer – his customer – sues him for not disclosing that the domain was allegedly stolen.
There is no conceivable victory here for Booth unless it can be conclusively proven that the domain was NOT stolen. If it was stolen, then Booth is facing problems from either the original owner or anyone to whom he might try to sell this hot potato. If it’s stolen, then relinquish it! A hard pill to swallow, but it’s probably inevitable.
Nice to see you Joseph, it’s been awhile, hope you are well.
Thanks, Ray. I’m still alive most of the time.
I thought she initially said her employees sold the domain. Isn’t that something people should be paying more attention to.
she always said she had no employees from what I read
James is banking on the figure the lawyers are going to give her to fight thing thing, and hoping she just settles, as it would be cheaper, obvious to him he has to defend it if he wants to attempt to keep it, but it will be a hard one to defend as this Rebecca seems pretty credible with her record keeping, and stats.
It looks like Rebecca is based out of Gainesville, FL, and Web.com has their corporate offices in Jacksonville, FL, about an hour away from each other. It looks like James Booth with the help of Zak M petitioned Network Solutions to put the domain back into his account. Obviously when Rebecca who seems hell bent on this being her last quest in life is going to see them in court, will refute all this, where it will be up to J B to show he acquired this domain from the legal owner, which at this point is impossible to prove. Only shame is a whole ton of money has to be wasted to get back to square 1.
I’ve never seen anything like this. The alleged victim, Rebecca, doesn’t seem to have much of a grasp of what happened to her. The purchaser and current registrant is confident he performed adequate due diligence before completing the purchase on Escrow.com.
This is perhaps one of the most elaborate scams I have ever seen in over 20 years of domaining.
Both the current registrant and the previous registrant appear baffled as to who they were dealing with. Both believe they were dealing with each other.
As this incident develops, it will be interesting to see what each party does.
I can tell you this. I believe that the person claiming they were scammed truly needs to collect her thoughts and her memories of what transpired. It will ultimately be a critical factor in how this plays out.
Based on what I’ve read so far, James should carefully evaluate Rebecca’s claims. Rebecca should embrace James as it is clear that he had nothing to do with the alleged theft of the domain.
Hopefully in the end, neither party will sustain any losses beyond what damage has been done already.
Your comments in the NP thread are particularly unhelpful.
I think you even posted a video of the wrong James Booth.
Hmm…Maybe he will sue?
Crazy stuff. Tons of tantrum and weird unrelated stuff from one side, total denial (probably backed by lawyers advice) from another side. But what bothers me a lot is that lot of NP’ers are quick jumping in with their verdicts and morality. I’m sure only a competent court would establish the truth in this case.
According to screenshots this is a collaboration of two or more friends. At least one of them has been involved in popular penny stock boiler-room scandal in CA.
I don’t want to point fingers but did someone tried to see this matter from a different perspective? Just as an hypothesis, what if Rebecca actually staged the whole theft thing and she was working with the mysterious guy to cash some money from time to time from this domain? Someone said in the forum that this domain was moved in last 2 years to a Chinese registrar for some months and then moved back to NetSol. Rebecca did not mention anything about this previous “theft” which occurred some time ago and i think a move of the domain to a Chinese registrar could not pass unnoticed by Rebecca which is “actively reading her e-mails”. Was the domain stolen twice? Or is Rebecca staging thefts for this name at 1-2 years periods?
Very unfortunate. If the name was stolen you need to follow the money to find the crook and only escrow.com knows where the money was sent. I would expect that they have been working with the victims and law enforcement.
Let me make a point very clear.
Netsol is NOT the judge jury and executioner.
Netsol reviewed the case, true and to what degree no one knows.
Netsol will always follow their legal advice which is likely to return or release the name to the last account owner in a case like this.
James obvious submitted some proof he paid, all Rebecca did was complain with no lobbying from someone such as me.
Even still the logical and legal path Netsol took was not shocking.
They returned or released the name to the last account holder who claimed he bought it.
Even IF they believed Rebecca and believed the right thing to do was return the name to her, they cannot due to legalities.
Each situation is different but in a case such as this they were dealing with a buyer not a thief so they took the only path they could, you two figure it out name goes into last account.
Hope that is clear.
If he gives the domain back, he loses 25K and if he does not then Rebecca loses her domain. Can Escrow.com or NetSol not track the thief and recover the 25K?
They can certainly provide the important details to help find the thief but do so themselves, no.