SCAM: Asian/China Domain Name Scam

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One of our customers contacted us to ask about a domain name email they received from an Asian Domain Name Registrar. This email, minus some grammatical errors, looked to be partially legit. With 708 Media managing their domain, they forwarded the email to me. As I read this email, it seemed a tad fishy. My client received another email similar to this one the next day however it had all different information. Once this second one came in, I was 99.9 percent sure this was a scam. I ran a quick Google search on the first sentence of the email and found that many other websites have received the same or similar email. Several even when as far to check it out. They discovered this is a scam. This company will talk to you via the phone and email and convince you that you need to register your domain name with them, and at a very outrageous price. It is unknown for sure if they just take your money and run or if they take your money and your valuable domain and run. Either way… DO NOT FALL FOR THIS ONE!

Here are the emails below that my client received from them:

Email 1:

Dear CEO,

We are the department of Asian Domain registration service in China, have something need to confirm with you. we formally received an application on August 15,2010.  one company which called “Brazil Kniko Investment S.A” are applying to register “xxxxxxxxx” as Brand Name and Domains.

xxxxxxxxx.asia           (Asia)
xxxxxxxxx.com.hk            (Hong Kong)
xxxxxxxxx.com.tw            (Taiwan)
xxxxxxxxx.hk            (Hong Kong)
xxxxxxxxx.tw            (Taiwan)
xxxxxxxxx.co.in            (India)
xxxxxxxxx.in            (India)
xxxxxxxxx.org.cn            (China)
xxxxxxxxx.net.cn            (China)
xxxxxxxxx.com.cn       (China)
xxxxxxxxx.cn            (China)

But we found that “Brazil Kniko Investment S.A” is not the original owner of the brand and trademark in the checking period,which  belong to your company .I need confirm with you whether your company authorized that company to register these domain name.If you have done that ,We will finish the registration for them and link to their website.

If not ,please let me know ASAP.In addition, we hereby affirm that our time limit for dissent application is 7 workdays. If your company files no dissent within the time limit, we will unconditionally approve the application.

Best Regards,Peter Yan(Mr)Auditing  Consultant
Tel: +0086-566-2629-555     Fax: +0086-566-2629-666 Address:Room205, No.D4 Qingxi South Garden, South-ChangJiang Road,Guichi Shi District,Chizhou,China

Email 2:

Dear CEO & Manager

We are a domain name registration and dispute organization in Asia, which mainly deal with the global companies’ domain name registration and internet Intellectual property right protection in Asia. Currently, we have a pretty important issue needing to confirm with your company.

On August 16,2010, we received an application formally. One company named ” QHD company” wanted to applied for the Network Brand “xxxxxxxxx” and some domain names through our body.

Now we are handling with the registration of these domain names and find that these domain names and Network Brand is identical with your company’s. So we have to confirm with you at two points:

1. If your company consign QHD company to register these domain names and Network Brand, we will send application form to them and help them finish the registration at once.

2. If your company have nothing to do with QHD company, they maybe have other purposes to register these domain names and Network Brand.

I want to confirm that are you the corporate representative of this company? If you do, I will feedback some problems to you; if you do not, please send my words to your company’s corporate representative or lawyer. We need your answer of force adeffect. In order to deal with this issue better, please contact us by telephone or email as soon as possible.

Best Regards,

Eric

Auditing Department

Tel: 00852-81359178

Fax: 00852-81359278

Email:  Eric@bestnet.hk

Website:  http://www.bestnet.hk

Most of the time, these emails advertise a website they are from. I have looked around to see what some of the website addresses they use and they are as follows:

As you can see, there are MANY different domains they use to get at you. Most of these come from the following TLDs: .cn / .com.cn / .net.cn / .org.cn / .hk / .tw / .asia. Be careful not to ever fall for these types of scams. These domain name scams often try to take advantage of those small business owners who do not fully understand how the domain name business works.